Hulu to begin charging in 2010 says exec
It appears the halcyon days of all free content at Hulu may be coming to a close in 2010.
According to Broadcast & Cable, News Corp. Deputy Chairman Chase Carey was speaking at the OnScreen Summit, and brought up the potential of beginning to charge for content at Hulu in 2010. “It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online,” said Mr. Carey. He also went on to add, “The strategy needs to be more than just fighting piracy and Google.”
What exactly the pay content will be is unclear at this time as Mr. Carey has only attended one Hulu board meeting thus far, but he did hint that it might be just for content that is especially created for the site, or the possibility of mobile viewing. (iPhone app, anyone?) Mr. Carey did, however, make it clear that he did not feel throwing a pay wall up around the entire site was the correct solution.
Of course, as an outside observer, I can think of several different things they can do that would bring in revenue. Take Arrested Development for instance, you can currently watch all three seasons for free on Hulu, why not rotate which episodes are free and make access to all of them available for a fee? Add the ability to stream content to your TV via Apple TV, a Roku box or the Xbox 360 for a small fee each month? (This is something people are dying for, you know they would be willing to pay a couple dollars a month for it.)
Totally free content has been nice while it lasted, but it isn’t terribly surprising to see that companies are at least pondering trying to charge us for some of the content. Considering how ratings for televised programming have been dropping as online viewing has been doing nothing but growing, you knew this had to happen at some point. The only question now is how painful it will be.
Related Posts:
October 23rd, 2009
The beginning of the end for Hulu
October 23rd, 2009
How much TV do we really need? The commercial they had about turning our brains to goo had an element of truth in it.
I’ve been there a few times… I won’t really miss it.
October 23rd, 2009
There’s really not that much on Hulu that makes it worth paying for. Pay per website is a bad idea. I read Rupert Murdoch is going to do that with his websites. Who is going to pay their monthly internet fees and want to pay to view each website and also get advertising shoved down their throat?
October 24th, 2009
I think this is a very bad idea, and they should come up with a way to keep it free and increase revenue. More advertising or another method.
November 8th, 2009
Whatever. Before we start spouting about the free content apocalypse, has anyone who uses Hulu noticed that they have COMMERCIALS supporting all of their content? You’d have to be incredibly naive to believe that a company as smart as Hulu would walk away on the very model that has made them so successful. But to believe that Hulu might offer users the option to view content commercial free at a small subscription based cost… is that so absurd? Free content is not going away, and existing TV and cable models will not survive the 21st century – despite what a rich, jealous old coot like Chase Carey might want to believe.