Hulu to charge subscription fee

[Psihala]

While speaking at a recent Broadcasting & Cable summit [Chase] Carey announced his plans for Hulu: “I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value. Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10...scription-fee/

[Errata]

I would consider it if it means getting rid of commercials. But they'd better not try to have it both ways and still make subscribers watch commercials.

[chillas]

I'm sure there are some, but off-hand I cannot think of any online services that have successfully moved from free to paid.

[Johnny Slick]

You mean other than porn sites?

That site with the free older games and the Sam and Max series whose name escapes me transitioned from IIRC a full-on free system early on to a tiered system that allows some free play but has pay options for a good lot of the games. IIRC there are several MMORPGs that did/do something similar. I do think that going from free to having to pay for everything is not a good idea but that's not really the only option.

[Jay Temple]

This will severely hamper their ability to suck all our brains out.

[Elwood]

Like so many things on the Web, I watch Hulu because it is there, but I doubt I would pay for it. I have DirecTV with a DVR, but we only have one TV, so sometimes I watch shows on the bedroom computer instead. Even my Hulu viewing is pretty much confined to The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Family Guy. All of these shows are available for free streaming on their Network sites as it is. Even if they weren't, it would take about 30 seconds of effort to program the DVR.

[WildaBeast]

Originally Posted by Elwood

I have DirecTV with a DVR...

I don't have a DVR, so I use Hulu as a sort of DVR alternative -- if I miss a show when it airs normally, I watch it on Hulu. I suppose if they switched to a pay site I might just bight the bullet and get a DVR, or pay for Hulu, but not both. Or go back to using my VCR, but it's kind of a pain to use with my digital cable box as you have to make sure it's turned on and tuned to the right channel.

[TrekkerScout]

From my experience, those sites that go from all-free content to all-pay (or nearly all-pay) content die a fairly quick death. There is just too much free content available on other sites that people can and will migrate to. However, those that initiate a tiered system with both free and pay content tend to do much better. Hulu would probably do well if they maintained a free to use ad driven portion for recently released TV episodes, trailers, and low resolution videos and had a premium pay service for high resolution videos, archived content, and exclusives.

[zman977]

If they go to an all pay service I don't see it working. People will just find the content free elsewhere. I think going to an all pay site is a bad idea. Now as has been said, it could work if they do a combination but I see people vacating the site in droves if they go to an all pay site.

[diddy]

Originally Posted by TrekkerScout

From my experience, those sites that go from all-free content to all-pay (or nearly all-pay) content die a fairly quick death.

The big problem is that Hulu’s major competition is bit torrent. People are just going to get their content elsewhere if the legal route becomes inconvenient. TV is one of those things that people are used to getting “free”. While cable services are not free, you can get lots of stuff OTA for free (with commercial). This strikes me as about as good of an ideas as Murdock’s idea of putting all the stuff online behind a pay wall when they were free before. As long as there is an alternative, people will go there. News online is readily available.

Originally Posted by Johnny Slick

You mean other than porn sites?

Well there are sites that have porn for free. Of course I can’t name any here. Heaven forbid we look for porn! Right???