Hulu plans to implement paid subscriptions

Hulu Looking At $5 Monthly Subscription Fee For Older Episodes [Silicon Alley Insider]

Hulu is owned by big content companies and it looks like they're hoping to apply their highly successful dual-revenue-stream model to the online portal they've created. 

Some older content on Hulu will no longer be free for online viewers, based on a subscription plan that the long-form streaming site is reportedly working on. For $5 a month, Hulu plans to offer subscribers access to older episodes of some shows. Viewers still can watch the most recent five episodes along with the ads but the older ones will only be available to customers who pay. 

Hulu's content partners, most notably News Corporation, have been rumbling about a paid content model for several months. With other online subscription-based viewing options like Comcast's Xfinity becoming available for any broadband customer, it looks like Hulu is trying to beef-up its library to compete.

If professionally produced video content is going to thrive online, a site like Hulu is compelled to develop a business model that compensates the content creators. If this report is true, Hulu is taking the first step toward that model.  I'm not suggesting that this isn't a preview of TV viewing in the future but, at least for now, research consistently indicates that most people still prefer to kick back on their couch surf away. 

In any case, if the Internet becomes central in the distribution of high quality television, cable's high capacity digital broadband networks are designed to deliver countless crystal clear signals to whatever device your heart desires.

Comments

[JDF]

Good luck to Hulu. They'll need it. They will have to *significantly* "beef-up" the amount of their content if they expect to be able to compete with Netflix. $5 a month? Way too much compared to the value that Netflix offers.