Hulu May Begin Charging For Video Content 313
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.'"
Still not available (Score:5, Insightful)
Since we still can't watch Hulu in Canada, I won't be paying anything. It's probably cheaper than cable anyways.
Re:Still not available (Score:5, Interesting)
My initial reaction was to buck against this, but on second thought (and depending on how it's implemented) maybe it wouldn't be that bad. The thing I hate about cable is that there is no "a la carte" option where I can selectively pay for the channels I actually want and not have to pay for the other 90% of the programming that comes in the packages. Depending on how they swing this, if they offer cable-based content as individual subscriptions at prices that are cumulatively less than my current cable bill, it may actually be a better option for me and allow me to cancel cable altogether.
Re:Still not available (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Why do I have to pay for four separate "shopping channels" that are nothing but end to end commercials? I hate golf, but I have to pay for the golf channel. And the Disney channel. And Lifetime. And BET. Hell, if it wasn't for Mythbusters I wouldn't even watch the Discovery channel.
If my $30/month payment was divided between the channels I do watch, I'd pay less than five bucks a month. Whay do I have to subsidize golfers and parents of little kids and housewives? Whay would a single man want FAM? I'm just glad I can program my TV to skip these channels when I surf. I wish I didn't have to pay for them!
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You really think you are paying for the shopping channels? Really?
Really?!
Re:Still not available (Score:5, Funny)
In capitalist America, shopping channels are paying for you.
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The only time i watched the shopping channel was when they were selling star trek merchandise with John de Lancie on the show. He was making fun of all the products. Unfortunately i don't think they ever had him back again. With Ala Carte would we be paid for having the shopping channel? Can we have a plan with only shopping channels and get a check in the mail each month? :D
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Well, I think if the usage fee for internet was significantly less than the flat fee, you'd also consider it. I wouldn't call that being a hypocrite.
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Four?
There are a LOT more infomercial channels than that. I used to subscribe to an 80 channel cable service. One night, around 1:30AM, I counted that over 75% of those channels were broadcasting infomercials. The cable companies are double-dipping. The infomercial businesses have to pay cable to get their ads on cable, and the consumer has to pay to watch them.
I got tired of it and dropped my cable service. I got a converter for my one analog TV and and built to HD antennas as decribed on the YouTube
Re:Still not available (Score:4, Insightful)
1)They charge for for the popular channels - So, the big channels still sub. the little ones and your bill remains the same or more.
2)They charge more for the un-popular channels to maek them worth offering. You find out that some of the channels that you like (like discovery, sci-fi, and others) are not as pupular as Lifetime and you end up paying more to get those channels and you bill remains the same or more.
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Because it doesn't cost them _anything_ to give you more channels. You would still have to pay just as much for the few channels you watch. The shopping channels actually make money for the cable company.
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I think this is the wrong way to think about cable service pricing. The marginal cost of providing you with an additional channel of cable is essentially zero. The pricing here is completely demand-driven and is about segmenting the market (price discrimination). In this, cable service tier pricing is closer to pricing different versions of Windows (Home, Business, Premium, etc, which all have the same marginal cost) than it is to bundling discrete goods.
Once you see it that way, you'll see that what you
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"Whay do I have to subsidize golfers and parents of little kids and housewives? "
I hate to break it to you, but I very much doubt you're subsidizing little kids and housewives with your television watching. More the other way around, I expect.
Re:Still not available (Score:4, Funny)
| Burma |
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You guys make me glad I'm divorced!
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Yeah, but that's a pretty big if, unless you really don't watch much TV. Especially in the long run. The networks producing the shows want to make as much money as they are now, and while they might let the pricing be low in the early days, sooner or later the margin is going to go up. Shows are $2-3 on iTunes, and you can pretty much guarante
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I'm already paying NBC Universal News Corp for access to their content in my Comcast Cable bill. Why should I have to pay for their content twice?
A la cart is an awesome and great goal, but paying for the full swath and then paying extra for a la cart on top of the combo sucks.
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they provide the entire current season.
IF
they stop showing comercials.
IF
they make every show on the network available, regardless of ratings
Then I may be interested in paying for Hulu. If not, then back to torrents for me. I already pay for cable, and I have a open source DVR [mythtv.org] that can record OTA network TV fine.
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Except don't expect Hulu to give you alacarte either. They will bundle just like cable. Get you to pay $20 a month or something. I knew this was coming from Hulu.
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Neither do they show anything here in Europe. Oh well, I would actually liked to pay for such service, as I'm already paying here for similar ones but which more like let you download .ts etc recorded from tv (just to note, legally). However I dont really want to wait to watch the shows I like, so I have to get them otherwise. I do like the easy of things however, and with gaming Steam has done great job. Same for spotify here in europe with music streaming (its actually better than you even have in usa). B
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Perhaps they could allow you to pay instead or watching the ads. The reason Hulu works only in US is because its advertisers don't want to subsidize the videos watched in another country where the person who watched it won't be able to buy the advertised product.
Re:Still not available (Score:4, Informative)
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Ohhhhh, goooood for you. (Score:3, Funny)
I want you off the fucking comments, you prick. Don't just be sorry, think for one fucking second. What the FUCK are you DOING? Are you professional or not?
Am I going to walk around and make off-topic shit comments, in the middle of your Canadian threads? Then why the fuck are you posting your shit here? Ah da da dah, no Hulu in Canada, like this in the background. What the fuck is it with you? What don't you fucking understand?
You got any fucking idea about, hey, it's fucking distracting having somebo
Worst Source Ever (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Worst Source Ever (Score:5, Funny)
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I know I'm quoting your quote, but "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." - I'm reasonably sure the profit based on digital distribution is equal or higher than printing on paper and then distributing it. You never end up with unsold copies at the end of the day.
Re:Worst Source Ever (Score:5, Funny)
So you're confirming that we'll have to pay for hulu, even if we don't use it?
Re:Worst Source Ever (Score:4, Funny)
Great, just great. Now what am I supposed to do with all these torches and pitchforks!? Ass.
Customer Management? (Score:2, Interesting)
I suggest the "telephonegame" tag (Score:3, Interesting)
See subject.
Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Well- they don't exactly "give away their content for free forever" .
Commercials are interspersed throughout every movie and show. Also, for most shows, they only make a handful of episodes available at a time.
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
There's a slight difference here: iTunes is mostly selling songs, which people generally listen to over and over and over. Hulu shows TV shows, which people generally only watch once and rarely ever again. People have always paid for music, first on vinyl (actually on Edison cylinders before that), later on CDs, and now in downloadable digital form. But for TV, people have
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
What, you mean like broadcast television?
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Did anyone really think they were going to give away their content for free forever?
What, you mean like broadcast television?
On top of that it WASN'T free. There were advertisements which helped pay for it, and I was happy to view just to support them. You couldn't save the content to your hard drive directly from the site. I'm sure there are ways, though.
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AFAIK, all of the content on Hulu was made for original broadcast on TV. Of all the things on the torrent circuit, too, most of it was probably on TV the first time around. If you watch any professionally made video, odds are it was originally either a TV or cinema show the first time around.
TV over the airwaves/cable is 70 year old technology, and hasn't changed fundamentally at all in that time (just got higher quality and more plentiful). Its big draw back is the scheduling, being forced to wait until a
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Over-the-air TV has been giving away their content for free for at least 6 decades now, by allowing advertisers to pay for it. They're still doing that.
Lots of companies have been giving away content for free on the internet, using the same model, for over a decade now.
Now, all of a sudden, some companies want to start charging consumers directly for this content. I think they're going to have a rude wake-up call when very few people bother to subscribe. There's so much stuff available for free that I'm
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Over-the-air TV has been giving away their content for free for at least 6 decades now, by allowing advertisers to pay for it. They're still doing that. Lots of companies have been giving away content for free on the internet, using the same model, for over a decade now.
I would happily pay a subscription fee to get content without commercials. I recently canceled my sat. radio because they started playing advertisements on some channels - I pay a premium to get /away/ from the constant bombardment of ads. When someone expects me to both put up with the ads, and also pay a premium price, I walk away - there's precious little for sale that's worth the expense of having billy blanks bellowing his latest snake oil at me.
Your definition of "for free" is valid only if you
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Did anyone really think they were going to give away their content for free forever?
I see no reason why not. I give my content away for free, so do people who are actually read, like Lessig and Doctorow, whose novels are free online but yet he still manages to make the NYT best sellers list.
Oh, Murdoch... no, you shouldn't expect someone who worships money to give anything away for free. A greedhead would rather make $100 and not give anything away than make 1,000 giving it away.
"The love of money is the ro
Alt title: How to kill an extraordinary service (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they feel the need to add a subscription fee when they already show commercials....? Isn't that what drives dissatisfaction with cable?
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No, I think what drives dissatisfaction with cable is that you can only watch what is currently on.
Oh, and you're forced to watch ads.
I'd gladly pay $10/month for on-demand commercial-free access (under Linux) to any episode of every show currently offered in Hulu's library.
Throw in Dr. Who, Torchwood, and Top Gear, and I'd pay $20/month.
I also might be persuaded to watch commercials if you did it on something that wasn't as dog-slow as flash (video tag anyone?) Hell, throw in Linux codec licensing as part
real headline should be... (Score:5, Funny)
real headline should be "Hulu expects viewership to drop off significantly."
Not Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Smart (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactamundo. I download a lot of TV shows, and recently, I'd taken to watching available programming on Hulu. No skin off my back to go back to Bittorrent.
Just like a drug dealer (Score:2, Insightful)
Get them hooked with freebies - then hit them in the wallet.
Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine, but it's either subscription or ads. You don't get to do both.
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Which is one of the reasons I now run MythTV.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I did, by not subscribing. Over-the-air works just fine for me, and has far better HD quality to boot.
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Not true.
It's MUCH more complicated than that.
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Why not? Why shouldn't ads subsidize some of the content so that subscription fees are manageable?
It doesn't have to be an either/or situation.
Why not offer ad-free content to "gold" subscribers, limited ads to "silver" subscribers, and normal ad levels to "brown" (free) subscribers.
Then everybody wins, since it's the choice of the subscriber.
I know that the magazine-subscription model is very different, largely due to the cost of prod
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If you were dealing with people who believed in and celebrated choice, they wouldn't be trying so hard to make Hulu just like TV. Instead, they'd show us the availability and selection that modern information technology can offer. They'd also make an effort to prove that a legitimate site can offer compelling reasons to appreciate their content that you won't find on BitTorrent.
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It'll change when somebody offers something better. Fiber service is helping in some areas... competition is a wonderful thing. If only people didn't use their video content provider as their ISP, I think competition would be even better. Nothing like the cable cos (and the telcos who offer fiber) limiting internet volume to keep people from downloading their video content.
There are a lot of IFs, such as:
...IF regulatory hurdles to video content d
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Fine, but it's either subscription or ads. You don't get to do both.
Why not? It worked for the newspaper industry for hundreds of years. The newspapers that still produce content instead of reprinting AP articles (like the WSJ, etc) will continue to do this for a long time. Shouting "nuh-uh, one or the other" with no justification is petty whinging.
If they start charging, however, they will need ensure that customers can easily watch shows using a couch, remote, and TV, since that is still a popular way t
Newscorp (Score:2)
They own pretty much everything, don't they?
Can't use it... (Score:4, Informative)
Many of us outside the US can't use Hulu anyway; so it doesn't matter ;-)
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Nice while it lasted (Score:4, Interesting)
Reason for free? (Score:2)
He went on to say that he doesn't 'see why over time that shouldn't happen.'
To keep their users? *shrug*
Sometimes I think the ad model works better here. There are so many other free sources for video these days, especially online-based. :-p
So what? The internet will do... (Score:2)
-k
I'd welcome it...but (Score:3, Interesting)
Also if the subscription meant the option to watch a full series without commercial interruption that would be great too.
I have to admit the only reason I downloaded a few Stargate episodes was because I didn't have a TV set I could watch it on. If instead I had the option to pay a minimal monthly fee and pick and choose the shows I wanted to watch with the plus of seeing the show the day it aired, I would have had zero desire to download anything. As it was, a few times I downloaded something, there were no sound or special effects added in, and many times I opted to just buy the video off iTunes, due to the quality of the content. A subscription fee on the range of $10-$15 month would be nice. Anything more, good luck with that Hulu, I'd rather just buy DVDs and episodes of iTunes.
Buh Bah (Score:2)
Hulu, nice knowin' ya...
Bastards (Score:4, Interesting)
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I, however, would rather pay than have even more commercials. They should really offer a choice as long as they don't expect both a pay and commercials. I would pay a monthly fee or maybe per episode subscription (as long as I can re-watch it) if I could remove the commercials and thus support a good service.
I had always wondered if the revenue from online adverts is much lower than that from TV commercials? I hope th
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My friend just bought a digital TV. I wrote a letter to a local weekly about it in response to their story about a local PBS station being dropped from basic cable and put on digital-only.
Digital backslide [illinoistimes.com]
A friend who uses an indoor antenna bought a digital TV, and now only has four stations, two in analog, one of which is a Catholic religion station, and two in digital.
I fear this will happen to cable subscribers too after the loss of Channel 8 [see "Channel 8 goes blank for some WSEC viewers," by Amanda R
Bye Hulu! (Score:3, Funny)
Too bad. You spent all that money on TV and movie ads about evil alien plots to get eyes on your site, just to screw it all up.
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Actually, if it means that I get to watch what I want, when I want, in HD or SD, and without ads, I'll gladly pay a subscription fee to Hulu. That's damn better than cable.
Is it worth paying for? (Score:2)
I haven't really used Hulu much, but from what I saw, it's not really worth paying for.
I predict (Score:2)
OK, now people, DO NOT PAY and it will pass... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Cable? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You get to pay a monthly fee for X channels, when you only watch Y channels. And it's almost universally the case that X >> Y. It would be quite a bit cheaper if you only had to pay for what you actually watched. Wait, you want to time-shift, too? That's extra. Forgot to record something on your DVR? Tough luck. Maybe it'll be on again soo
I'll pay for Hulu if... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll gladly pay for a service like Hulu if I can watch it from outside the US. No silly "this video isn't available in your region". Just show the damn thing and take my money. Preferably, there's a choice between a small fee per episode or a subcription model.
But I expect they won't do that. So in effect, they don't want my money, they like to trouble me online and would rather see me download tv series.
I wouldn't pay for streaming... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
So much for pudding... (Score:2)
I guess they're not getting enough resale value from those brains they're slurping.
Already ahead (Score:2)
I've already stopped watching them and have stopped using them as demos in my shop. No more recommendations.
I already pay for cable (Score:2)
which has the same shows. Why would I pay for this too? I use hulu every now and then. Usually when comcrap's service (which I'm paying for) craps out (the SA HD DVR is a piece of flaming shit). It's nice for when on the road too. But, really, I'm already paying for that content, so why would I pay for it again? I'm sure the cable companies don't want to pay for this... but aren't they already, and that's why they charge us?
Here are the conditions under which I will agree t (Score:3, Interesting)
Here are the conditions under which I will agree to pay my money for Hulu:
1. No ads in the paid content. AT ALL. Not now, not ever.
2. Cheap, a-la carte subscriptions for individual shows. If I only need a few shows from Discovery, Nickelodeon and Food Network, I should be able to sign-up for only those shows.
3. Compatibility with an inexpensive hardware device of some sort (Apple TV, Xbox or PS3 will do).
4. Content is served in _at least_ 720p with high encoding quality.
These conditions are not negotiable. If all four are fulfilled, I, for one, will welcome our money charging overlords.
I would pay if... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Sounds great (Score:3, Interesting)
This sounds pretty good, pretty smart. So long as there are no commercials on the site or in the videos, I would gladly pay a fair amount for a TV show. Say, maybe ten cents per episode, or a dollar for a whole season.
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Then I see myself watching Hulu less and less
Really? If having paying customers allows them to post a better range of content, I'm all for it, especially if there is little to no advertising in the paid content.
My biggest frustration with Hulu today is that they don't have the full archive of shows that I'd like to watch. Since I don't want to start a new show in the middle, I have to find the earlier episodes elsewhere or wait for the DVD. I'd gladly pay, say, $15/month if it meant access to the whole archive of every show they have.
The long-term
Re:Over time (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Then I see myself watching Hulu less and less
Really? If having paying customers allows them to post a better range of content, I'm all for it, especially if there is little to no advertising in the paid content.
After all, cable, which only has paying customers, has been so good about having little to no advertising, even for the "premium" channels that cost even more to get.
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Source: the late great John Lee Hooker, House Rent Blues (covered by George Thorogood several decades later)
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And how many Slashdotters actually subscribe?
Slashdot isn't exactly a huge money-making venture anyway, and to my knowledge doesn't have many employees, nor any public shareholders to satisfy with ever-increasing growth. Between the ads and the few subscribers, it probably doesn't take much for Slashdot to keep going. This is a little different from Hulu, which is owned by FOX, a large publicly-owned corporation.
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yes, but slashdot's non-subscribers still get all of slashdot. They still see all the stories, and can comment on all the stories, still get journals, etc. I had a subscription for a while, and money's a bit tight right now but maybe I'd resubscribe if money were looser. But it wouldn't be to see stories before they're posted, or for the "subscriber bonus" (I already have a karma bonus). It would be because I like slashdot and want to support it.
My journals are and have always been free, but I've had people
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I sense a different, though great, disturbance in the Force. I sense millions of voices crying out in laughter, as they turn back to piracy.
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I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly driven back to piracy.
iTunes is doing just fine with all of its for-pay content available via piracy. Netflix does fine with its subscription model.
The only thing they need to do is make hulu-for-pay easier/faster/more reliable than piracy. They have, for the most part, already accomplished that. As long as they don't break that simplicity with the fee structure, they are going to do just fi
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I think you'll find (rather quickly) that the whole point of having ads and the whole point of charging for content are one and the same.
($)