Please, stay on topic.

Your mailbox?

You think they haven't considered the bigger picture? Really? This whole notion that everyone is hollywood is stupid is pretty silly. They make some moves that turn out to be bad, but that doesn't necessarily mean the alternative would have fared any better.

Maybe it's you who don't see the bigger picture? I mean I'm assuming you aren't an Hulu bigwig, so how can you know how profitable Hulu is compared to how profitable they feel it should be to continue to be worth their while? You don't. Neither do I. I'm just going to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Look, I think it should stay free. If nothing else, if it breaks even, it gives their shows continued exposure and such. But if they did decide to start charging, and the charging made sense, that wouldn't be the worse thing in the world. Hell, it would probably make the service better.

Fixed.

Economics 101: Hulu is a luxury that has many alternatives/substitutes. If the owners/partners raised the price, or simply go from not charging anything to start charging people for the product, people are going to turn to the nearest substitute and replace it. As simple as that. What makes Hulu attractive right now is the price: free. Hulu still makes money with ads that are triggered by site visits. Maybe is not as profitable as they would want, but they are running a very high risk of losing the current clientele if they start charging for viewing since there are many alternatives to get the exact same product either for free or with a better convenience.

Studios have proven time and time again that they don't look at the long term scenarios or the big picture. They are always thinking what the believe will make most money in the short term and usually, they are wrong.

People like Hulu because it's free, no question, but if a service is good enough some people will pay. You're obviously a huge wrestling fan, so lets look at things in those terms. There are tons of dirt sheets out there for free online, along with a lot of free podcasts and such. Yet, I pay $5.95 to be a member of pwtorch's website. Why? The product is good enough to warrant being paid for. There are tons of alternatives to that, but it is worth it to me, and quite a few others, to pay for the content that site provides. Maybe that's Econ 102?

I'm not saying your totally wrong. There is a very good chance you'll end up being right. I just think you're oversimplifying things is all.

Hulu was so 2008 anyway.

I've got a good mind to ring Hulu's doorbell and run.

I have no problem if they charge for some premium content, as long as they keep the free content found on other websites free as well.

I'd pay. But I've yet to see a pay model for video content that screams "good value" to me.

How else would everyone like them to make money?

Look, here's the problem in a nutshell.

Old model: throw up a broadcast tower and reach a huge audience for essentially free.

New model: Send video to each individual person that asks for it. This is not essentially free. This is essentially very expensive.

Keep in mind MOST shows shown on HULU are free on the network websites as well. This includes FX, USA, CW, Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS. Hulu has only been a place for convenience since all the shows are on one place.

Count me in as someone who would pay a reasonable fee as well. Not per episode certainly but a monthly fee. As someone who hasn't paid for cable tv in years, Hulu has been very nice. Its either Hulu, network websites, or that other questionable method.

Also these are essentially second run. These companies got their viewers from the networks. This is like a nice bonus.

If charging for content means the library gets expanded, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Right now, I can watch the five most recent episodes of a TV show on hulu, but anything older than that is not available.

If the five most recent episodes were still free, but only premium users could access older episodes, would that be a bad thing?

Actually that sounds very reasonable. That would still keep people around that just use it to catch the random episode they may have missed, but charge for the people that solely use the service as their own netflix/cable provider.

All this talk makes me wish PlayOn or TVersity worked on the Mac(non-Intel). I'd love to go back and watch the first 7 episodes of Glee that I missed.

There are ways to catch up. We just can't talk about them here

Goodbye, Hulu. We hardly knew ye.

This begs the question, if everybody posted here are all saying they wouldn't pay a penny for shows available for free then who the fuck are paying for these webispodes on Itune? Clearly there got to be a pretty good market else it would have folded long ago, but it's still going strong!!

You know, how does someone "want to fight piracy" by wanting to charge for content? Newsflash: these shows are free on tv. And the cable ones can be found for free online if you look in the right places. Hulu isn't going to do any better charging a premium on even cable shows. Many people will go elsewhere.

To SuperJim88 -

I think the iTunes market and hulu market are pretty different. People who are buying shows on iTunes keep that episode and nowadays can get them on their ipod and watch them on the go AND get it in a nice HD for the house. With hulu you can't put it on the ipod (that I know of) and the market is not for those wanting to keep their shows, just to view them. And to me, hulu's quality can often be disappointing. I hardly ever use it for tv anymore.

Just my .02

I'd put the over/under for this personally at $5 a month or $50 for a year. At that price (and with what I would assume would be some expanded availability of content), I could justify paying. Of course, that's dependent on what my cable company does with pricing on its bandwidth (they're trying the 5GB a month that seems so popular at the moment).

Bye bye Hulu, you were fun while you lasted.

My main reason for Hulu is I have no DVR.

Hulu appears to be retracting their statement a little bit from the story in my OP.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_...7ec2213e0a054b

Off topic a bit but does anyone here have an actual Hulu account? Is there any advantage to having one?