Friday, October 30, 2009

Hulu Charging For Shows? Oh noes!

There are rumblings that awesome TV show site hulu.com may have to start charging for TV shows. This has resulted in the predictable Nerdhate and rage.

But come on. I'm no happier about this that you. But. Of course they will do this, and it's hardly a terrible idea, for two reasons:

Advertising Is Not An Infinite Pool of Money From Which We Can Drink Without Limit - If the net should have taught us anything over the last few decade, it's that, "Hey, let's give things away for free and make money from adventising" only works if you're Google. Hulu is an awesome, awesome deal. It's just too beautiful to live.

People Pay For TV Shows! - Look at iTunes. People will happily give a buck for a TV show they like if it's really easy and convenient. To say that nobody will pay hulu is ludicrous. Some people will turn back to torrents. People like me, whose time has value, will just pay the dollar.

People hate to hear this, but it's true. Making TV shows is difficult and expensive. If ads don't make enough money (and I really doubt that the handful of ads hulu shows pay the bills), they will have no choice but to start charging. It's just the math of the thing.

28 comments:

  1. This is different from software piracy. People have been trained for 60 years that television is paid for with advertising. If I'm gonna pay for TV it's not gonna be little computer TV it's gonna be cable.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I guess they could try increasing levels of advertising, like making you look through a page of ads before watching the TV show. But I've always kind of felt that was a low move, so I guess charging directly is probably better. Not that I watch Hulu, ever.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Look at iTunes. People will happily give a buck for a TV show they like if it's really easy and convenient.

    It remains to be seen if they can hit the right price points and business model. I fail to believe that these TV execs get it.

    If they go subscription, they will lose to Netflix. They have not been as aggressive as Netflix on going multiplatform (still no official Hulu for X-Box). Their back library is just not as good. The primary advantage of Hulu is catching up on current series for which you missed an episode (or 3). They would have to make a lot of investment in this space to win; the start-up costs are high.

    The other alternative is pay per view. This makes some sense because, as I said, Hulu is great for catching up on current series. But if you run the numbers, it might be better for these series to be loss leaders, where you get the viewer back on track to watch it on TV. Hence you take losses now, to get gains later. Plus, with the video quality, it would really have to be a microtransaction model to be worthwhile.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would have no problem paying a small fee for hulu if a) the back catalog coverage was better and b) the current season coverage extended to the whole season.

    Hulu in its current configuration? Nope, I won't be a customer, because there's not currently enough value there for me to pay for it. If they add enough value then yeah, I might do that. Probably not as a PPV, but a subscription model would be fine.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I do not have cable, satellite or any other conventional source. All my TV comes from NetFlix, hulu and Apple TV. The only way new hulu will remain on my list of sources if it's cheaper then iTunes.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Skip: "I would have no problem paying a small fee for hulu if a) the back catalog coverage was better and b) the current season coverage extended to the whole season."

    Yeah, I can totally buy this. And I believe that if viewings of tv shows on hulu led to cold hard cash, the big boys would be clamoring to get their shows onto it. Now that the money from TV series on DVD is slowing down, it's a new cash flow source.

    The only reason (well, a big reason) they're so tight-fisted about having shows on hulu is that it's free

    - Jeff Vogel

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Vrungel: "The only way new hulu will remain on my list of sources if it's cheaper then iTunes."

    And, considering the quality, it SHOULD be cheaper than itunes. I wonder if they will actually be smart about it.

    - Jeff Vogel

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Jeff Vogel: "I wonder if they will actually be smart about it."

    They will not be smart about it. History tells us so. Good for Apple. Good for Netflix. They DO get it.

    @Jeff Vogel: "People like me, whose time has value, will just pay the dollar."

    My time has value but a free download is just delayed gratification. It costs me no time. It's a background application. I feel no need to justify the download of something that I could have recorded on my DVR.

    Excuse me while I go watch the Wire DVD that I rented from Netflix. That is worthy of payment.

    ReplyDelete
  9. iTunes' show prices don't seem too bad to me now that I have a job, but as a college student, they were prohibitively expensive. I know I wasn't alone on that. Hulu made much more sense all around, even on the filesharing front (bandwidth restrictions + sharp netops guys made that a dubious proposition even without considering legality).

    I hate to say it, but I feel they could get a lot more out of their advertising than they currently do. Whenever I do watch something, the ads are repetitive and irrelevant - the third time through the same 20-second spot does not make me want to buy your car insurance any more than the first two did! If they had users create accounts and specify their areas of interest, I think they could get much more targeted ad views. Even putting out different ads based on observed viewing habits (watches Firefly -> probably a bit geeky) could give them an edge. There's so many things they could do that TV can't - they're not restricted to static content, advertising or otherwise - but the site was a TV network initiative to begin with, and I think it's going to be a while before they start looking past TV-esque models.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I do think that TV shows (and movies too) could cut back on expenses... some might even start with actors' salaries. I know some actors do put a TON of effort into their roles and there are a select few that people will watch just for them (and that have value)...but when they get paid a million bucks per episode I wonder why they couldn't settle for half or even less. [ same goes for movies where people get paid $30 mill. ... could they do it for $15mill? how about $7 mill.?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I don't know. TV has such wide-reach, it seems like they could pay for it with advertizing. Afterall, that's how they've been paying for it for decades. A couple cents per viewer times X million viewers is a lot of money.

    Last year, there was an article about the Simpsons voice-talent negotiating $400,000 per episode (that's per-person). That's based off of Ad revenue. I mean, I know that they had a lot of viewers, but wow.

    I don't know why Hulu would be much different than ad-based TV, unless bandwidth costs are eating up a good chunk of their Ad-revenue. My only guess for why they would switch to a pay-model is that they figure they can make more money. (Oh, and I had read recently that Hulu isn't switching to a pay-model for most of their shows. It would only do that in special cases.)

    > "I do think that TV shows (and movies too) could cut back on expenses... some might even start with actor's salaries..."

    If they could cut back on actor's salaries, they would. The producers know that every dollar they don't pay to actors is an extra dollar they get to keep. The "problem" is that when a TV show or a movie makes a lot of money, and an actor brings something to the movie that increases sales (say, by 20%), then that actor is in a really good position to negotiate a big chunk of the money - otherwise they'll walk. I mean, we could say the same thing about sports - we want lower prices on sports tickets, and we can start with cutting athlete's pay. But, given the market, why would any creator who can earn $2 million per basketball game voluntarily decide to cut ticket prices and ask athletes to take a pay-cut? Because it's what we want them to do? People aren't going to do "what we want them to do" simply because we want it. It's all about the market and how badly people want things. Heck, they might want us to pay $10 for each hour of TV that we watch, but we'd all walk. We aren't going to do what they want us to do anymore than they're going to do what we want them to do.

    You might call them greedy for getting as much as they can from us, but they could call us greedy when we want our TV for free / based on advertisements. It all depends on which side the fence you're on.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I see no downside to charging for television shows. It will to some extent drive them away from television and perhaps on to wonderful shareware games such as Avernum, Geneforge, etc. :) Besides, everything is charged for, why not TV? Music yes, but TV no? TV is vastly more expensive to make than music. I really see no downside.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks for sharing. It was very interesting and meaningful.
    Social Search| Clone Script|

    ReplyDelete
  14. Your future depends on your dreams. So go to sleep LOTRO Gold, take a look at what you do each day and ask yourself "why am I doing this?"Lord Of The Rings Gold, successful in each endeavor Lotro Gold.

    To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world 4story Luna.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Discover how 1,000's of people like YOU are making a LIVING by staying home and are fulfilling their dreams TODAY.
    CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT

    ReplyDelete
  16. QUANTUM BINARY SIGNALS

    Professional trading signals sent to your cell phone daily.

    Follow our trades today and earn up to 270% daily.

    ReplyDelete
  17. game friv 4 is new flash games which are expected to be the best Friv 4 games to play. You can find all game Friv 4 school free in Friv 2018 and Friv 4 School .Friv 2018 is one of the number one websites that offers thousands of exciting games around the world with high quality. Here, you can search for games in any category. We guarantee that your satisfaction is our pleasure.

    tủ nấu cơm
    máy làm Ðá

    ReplyDelete

  18. Free slots and free slots online games selected by professional! Find the best payout casino, free bonus online casino and best real money slots games!

    ReplyDelete
  19. I’m impressed, I must say. Really rarely do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on the head. Your idea is outstanding; the issue is something that not enough people are speaking intelligently about. I am very happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something relating to this.

    Website
    Information
    Click Here

    ReplyDelete
  20. The website is looking bit flashy and it catches the visitors eyes. Design is pretty simple and a good user friendly interfacejogos friv gratis 2019
    Jogos 2019
    jogos friv
    jogos io net

    ReplyDelete

  21. Fast cash offer for you today at just 2% interest rate, both long and short term cash of all amounts and currencies, no collateral required. We give out from a minimum range of $2000 to a maximum of $20 million.We are certified and your privacy is 100% safe with us Apply now for your instant approval and transfer approval process takes just 3 hours. contact us now
    I'll advise you can contact us via email at
    Contact Us At : abdullahibrahimlender@gmail.com
    whatspp Number +918929490461
    Mr Abdullah Ibrahim

    ReplyDelete
  22. An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on this. And he in fact bought me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading more on this topic. If possible, as you become expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is highly helpful for me. Big thumb up for this blog post!

    Information
    Click Here
    Visit Web

    ReplyDelete
  23. Thanks for sharing this marvelous post. I m very pleased to read this article. ติดต่อ 123

    ReplyDelete