Longer and More Commercials on Hulu?
October 15th, 2009
Is it just me or is tv getting better? Really better.
I use Hulu to catch up. But has anyone else noticed Hulu slipping in more commercials? And they’re not 10 sec anymore; they’re 1 min mood killers. And if I have to watch Brooke Shields flaunt her new lashes one more time I’m going to stop watching tv.
At least until next week.
Seriously, four commercials for 20 min? And the second one is a minute long?
One day you will break down and pay for DVR…it will ROCK your commercial-less world!
I might have to die with jealousy about Brooke Shields’ lashes. But the increased brown eye pigmentation risk freaks me out.
Emily does a great parody of this: “Grow? Are you serious?!” Man that’s good stuff.
I’d support a subscription model on Hulu’s part. I mean, they’ve got to make money. But I hate the commercials too. If I watched it consistently, I’d be happy to pay like a $5/month subscription or something to be able to log in and watch stuff commercial-free. I mean, even if they charged like $10 a year, they could make hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
We’re all too used to getting everything online for free. This is another example of a company starting with a low revenue producing model, drawing in fans, and then changing it when cash flows become unsustainable.
The problem with Carter’s idea is I don’t think people will pay even $5 bucks for it. You can still download ALL of these shows illegally, and if you start putting subscriptions up, some other service will give it for free long enough to put Hulu out… then they’ll get in the same bind, etc, etc, etc.
I personally would put up with a minute commercial on Hulu for on demand TV shows. I think it’s worth it. Nothing is free, so you can only rob Peter to pay Paul for so long before it catches up to you.
Harley I was thinking the same thing today. TV is suddenly GREAT. When did you and I become addicted to… let me count… EIGHT TV show? Yikes.
I want DVR. And a flat screen. Bad.
Hulu commercials don’t bother me one bit. It’s a nice bathroom break or I make a run for a snack. I think it’s great.
Great point, Jeff. Not necessarily about the illegal downloads, because while that will always exist, I maintain that people WILL pay for stuff they value. But I have to agree that the minute Hulu (or Facebook, or whoever) switches to a subscription, someone else will jump in and undercut them. Sigh. It’s almost like everyone has to agree to operate that way, or it won’t work. Facebook’s the same — I’d happily pay a small fee to keep the ads away. They have 300 MILLION subscribers. If they charged 10 bucks a year, and that scared off 2/3′s of their users, they’d STILL make a BILLION dollars annually.