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Hulu May Begin Charging For Video Content
An anonymous reader writes "According to Jonathan Miller, News Corp's CDO, Hulu may soon begin charging subscription fees for some of their online content. News Corp is the parent company of Fox, which owns a huge portion of Hulu. When Miller of Newscorp was asked if Hulu would begin charging for online content during an Interview with Daily Finance, he said that 'the answer could be yes.' He went on to say that he doesn't 'see why over time that shouldn't happen.'"
Since we still can't watch Hulu in Canada, I won't be paying anything. It's probably cheaper than cable anyways.
Jeruvy
I think what works for consumers most likely -- and this has to be tested, frankly -- is bundles. I think you have to figure out what are the right bundles that people buy and what's contained in that bundle. For example, you could have -- and I'm making this up entirely -- you could have a New York bundle, and that could consist of various papers or publications that are relevant to the audience in New York, and you could make that all, potentially, a bundle to a consumer at one price.
For what it's worth, he also made this statement:
I went from paying $14 to The Wall Street Journal to paying $10 to Amazon. Now the splits there, and I think this is relatively well known, are very, very much in favor of Amazon. So I became very much less valuable to The Wall Street Journal. That's part one. Part two is they don't know I exist. I went from being someone who's their subscriber to being someone who is an Amazon subscriber, which The Wall Street Journal has no visibility back to and cannot manage that customer relationship. . . . So they've lost both the customer management and, trust me, the lion's share of the economics.
You know I hate to be voice of calm reason, folks but this is all the original source reported:
Asked specifically about the future of online video joint venture Hulu, which is currently advertising-supported, he said it "is an environment for premium content." Pointing to the popularity of iPhone applications, he added: "We're seeing the beginning of a very strong app economy."
From there, you can trace a very hilarious wave of the telephone game from blog to blog of people slowly blowing it out of proportion as it's put together that this guy is talking about paid subscriptions and he's in charge of Hulu therefore Hulu must be becoming a paid subscription service.
My work here is dung.
Do they feel the need to add a subscription fee when they already show commercials....? Isn't that what drives dissatisfaction with cable?
real headline should be "Hulu expects viewership to drop off significantly."
If they charge for on demand content, then people will just go back to downloading it for free.
I came here for a good argument
Fine, but it's either subscription or ads. You don't get to do both.
Well I think ultimately the issue is this: Everyone sees the writing on the wall. TV shows and movies are going to have to be offered available online, or else people will get it through pirate channels. So the movie studios and everyone are starting to reluctantly jump on board, but they don't have the business model all worked out.
So can they make enough money from advertisements? Can they make enough money from subscriptions, or a la carte sales? Can they work out some kind of combination, or will consumers balk at the idea of paying for a subscription and still watching ads? People already do that with cable (pay for it and still watch tons of ads), so it's not unthinkable.
iTunes is doing the a la carte sales, Hulu is doing ads. If someone else isn't doing subscriptions, someone will probably try it soon.
The first hit's always free...
it's a great business model if you can afford front the startup costs without any initial customers. Attracts a lot more initial customers because you get a lot of people that normally would not pay for your service, but once they've had a sample of it they change their mind. Of course you'll lose a bunch of people when you switch to pay, but the only hit you'll take on that is what you've already fronted them with so it doesn't come as a surprise or a bad hit you didn't see coming or couldn't calculate/prepare for.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Did anyone really think they were going to give away their content for free forever?
What, you mean like broadcast television?
My biggest frustration with Hulu today is their use of horrendously inefficient and technically inferior player implementations.
Adobe Flash Player is a resource hog - I've had issues with 720p video playing smoothly even on a Core 2 Quad with a GeForce 9800GT under Linux.
The same video plays smoothly on my old Athlon XP 2800+ with a GeForce 7800GS if I use rtmpdump on a CBS high def stream and then play it back with mplayer. (Not an available option for Hulu.)
If they used a player that were:
1) As cross-platform as the existing solution (MacOS, Linux, Windows - this kills Silverlight for which Linux support typically lags at least one full version behind on)
2) Played back 720p video smoothly on my old Athlon XP 2800+ and 480p video smoothly on my Asus Eee 1000HE.
I would consider a subscription if reasonably priced and ads were removed. I would NOT consider pay-per-view.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Seriously I try to get this through people's heads all the time... for geeks we sure can be dumb. It is and has been free. If everyone ignores the service if/when it goes pay or even if only parts go pay only IGNORE them, also make it known you are NOT going to pay for the content... ads are enough to deal with for the content. Then Hulu (which is already successful) will find alternate avenues for revenue. If everyone just jumps in right off the bat you have instantly ensured all future video services like this will be pay-only. Wake up! Please.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
For a download based service, sure, I can see that. But streaming sucks, more so on video. Unless connections get a whole lot better, I'm not the least bit interested in streaming. With downloads, I can do HD, no problems. About 1GB per hour at the standard illegal sources last time I checked. It doesn't take a whole lot to screw up a stream with those sorts of bandwith requirements. Downloads just go a little slower for a bit. Unencrypted, 720p or 1080p, h264 video (3Mbit/sec minimum, probably about 6Mbit/sec for 1080p), AC3 audio, MKV container preferred.
Sell me that, with a fast server to download from and an RSS feed I can automate the process from, for a reasonable price, and I *WILL* buy. Reasonable price would be about half what the season goes for on Blu-Ray. I'm not getting media, packaging, shipping, etc., so I won't pay for it either. And if I'm paying, it must be ad-free. If I'm not paying, or getting a significant discount, ads would be acceptable. I personally wouldn't take any more than about 5min/hour of ads though. If I'm paying, it must also include re-download rights. Perhaps restricted to off-peak, or with a small fee for using up said capacity, but a very small fraction of the original purchase price. I would also require that the episodes be made available by midnight of the original air date. If they want to compete with PirateBay and friends, they have to provide all of the above. People will pay for the convenience, quality, and knowing they are legal. Cause paying customers issues, and they will go elsewhere, or just not bother. The studios have the ability to take the online market by storm and keep it. They just have to step up. Not that they will.
Streaming crap quality with encryption... Not interested.
I dumped cable and live a-la-web tv. I pay for Netflix streaming and find it is worth it.
If Hulu got rid of the stupid 5 trailing episodes thing and had full catalogs of the shows, got some decent movies, and got rid of the commercials I would pay. I *will not* pay for a special section that gets a few bones thrown in every month or if I have to put up with their 8 commercials over and over and over..holy crap water torture over and over.
Go big, do it right, and I would pay.