Now be prepared to pay for Hulu contents

Would you like to pay for Hulu’s videos? In near future you might have to. AOL’s new chief, Jon Miller is targeting all digital initiatives at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Within a short span of his new position, Miller  has suggested that Hulu might add or move to a paid subscription model. Currently, Hulu is unique model that relieves the users with high quality content on demand with only one advertisement per commercial break. However, Hulu’s total ad revenues is far less as compared to the traditional TV advertisements. The Hulu viewers are used to see charity ads at different slots when the company is unable to sell out its ad inventory. Millers contemplative thoughts might not be a mere speculation, as he owns a seat on Hulu’s board (the Fox television network, a unit of News Corp., is part of the Hulu joint venture).

Millers proposal seems an imitation of News Corp. subscription revenue model on the Web that has received wider success. In this model  most papers and online sources are ad -supported. News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal as been successful with its content behind the subscription or paywall based model.

Hulu has grown into one of the top five destinations for watching video in US, but is being leveled sharply. So the ultimate approach should be that if the advertisers are unwilling to pay for the content, the users should be directly charged.

The could be realized by throwing up paywalls or subscription based access controls. For instance, it can be Hulu free with your WSJ subsciption or may be $ 20 for ull season of House. These efforts can crimp in growth at a time when services like Hulu are still mysteries to large parts of American TV-watching public. All this seems like sending Hulu users in search of free content on BitTorrent trackers and such others.

From what can be made out of Miller’s musing is that he is attempting at creating ways to bunch together News Corp. content with other offerings to introduce an enticing package that people would be eager to pay. Clearly, Millers job would be to sort out the right package that would compel people to buy it. The bottomline would to provide a package of media at one price.