Xbox Live Told Me Paying for Hulu is Kind of 'Okay.'

Video streaming service/website http://www.hulu.com/ might evolve into a free and subscription-based hybrid next year. Chase Carey, Deputy Chairman at News Corp, one part of the media consortium that owns Hulu (other members include Walt Disney, General Electric, and NBC Universal), wills it. And he’s willing it hard. At theOnScreen Media Summit, the man, oblivious to the past  80 profitable years of ad-supported broadcast television, said “I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content.” Demonstrating an intense love for the Hulu community, the man added “I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value…” The comment’s sure to get those forum rats riled up, but is he right? Does the typical Hulu user undervalue the provided content? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility either. Media accessibility’s doing crazy things with our expectations.

But nevermind the aforementioned somewhat ignorant and insulting comments. Here’s the most interesting thing he said at the summit:

” …Hulu concurs with (the notion) that it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”

Don’t believe the hundreds of articles and message board commenters ravenously proclaiming the end of our beloved Hulu. Don’t believe respected financial sites like the Motley Fool, either. In an article on the site titled “How Hulu Plans to Wreck Itself,” writer Anders Bylund outlined the service’s inevitable failure if it adopted a subscription model – basing his reasoning in Hulu completely eliminating its free model.  Anders implies this would cause a mass exodus of users due to the loss of “a no-brainer way to watch shows they (users) can’t or otherwise get.”

Anders is shortsighted. 

Read the rest of the article at IPR's Multimedia Blog.