You May Have to Start Paying for Hulu

Earlier this week, newly minted chief digital officer for News Corp, Jonathan Miller, told an audience at an Internet Week event that he believes Hulu.com will begin charging viewers to watch at least some of the programs currently carried free. Hulu is one of the great video resources on the web, with NBC, Fox, and Disney shows available, plus movies and a lot more. Hulu is, of course, co-owned by News Corp, the parent company of Fox, and if that network decides to bolster its ad revenue through subscription fees or one-time uses on Hulu, it can't very well shut out the other networks concerned. Daily Finance quotes Miller as saying that, even though he won't attend a Hulu meeting until next week - so he doesn't know all the specifics - paying for the service seems like an eventuality. "In my opinion the answer could be yes. I don't see why over time that shouldn't happen," confirmed Miller. "I don't think it's on the agenda for Monday [but] it seems to me that over time that could be a logical thing." Miller also hypothesizes ways to increase revenue for the on-the-ropes newspaper industry. The answer, he says, might be in charging readers subscription fees for bundles of newspapers that best suit their needs. Again, like the Hulu model, once News Corp's Wall Street Journal begins charging readers, other media companies will follow suit, and soon, you'll be paying for a lot more online than you currently do. But does a decision to make Hulu at least partially a fee-based system give a leg up to YouTube and the fledgling TV.com? YouTube still has many more users, but it doesn't have the same network quality content across the board. And what would charging for TV shows do to the recently renegotiated union contracts for groups like the Writers Guild? They now receive payment for digital content, but I'm not sure how that works with a show generating additional new revenues from that source.

Comments

[Will]

One of the things that makes this country great is that we built a system of roads without tolls every couple of miles. If you think tolls are a good idea, you should try traveling by car through Mexico.

A century later a new highway system is finding legs, the government is mostly uninvolved, and yet, it is a fee based system, with a charge charge here and a charge charge there, here a charge, there a charge everywhere a charge charge.

With wages and salaries dropping faster than the price of GM stock this is a hard sell. Then again, maybe Jon Miller is just looking at the competition (like Netflix) and saying, "Hey, they charge. Why can't we?".

[Orinn]

I plan on cutting my cable and just using Hulu, thats $60 a month they can try to recoup from me and still I would be saving money.

As much as I like free, I understand it's a business, and as such it has to make money.

[Falloutmule]

Hulu is a great service, but if they started charging I would simply go back to illegally downloading via bit torrent. I think a lot of computer savvy people would to. Greed always messes up a good thing and is never satisfied. It drives our economy and much of our lives, yet undermines us at the same time eventually destroying what it sought to prosper.

[Julian Francis]

I agree exactly, greed always messes up a good thing and is never satisfied. Businesses really need to get back to focusing on the customer, instead of cutting corners and working ways to gain major profits for their higher ups. Businesses, please go back to the modeling boards.