Bercovici quotes Jonathan Miller, the chief digital officer of News Corp. which co-owns Hulu in addition to running Fox Television/News and the Wall Street Journal. Miller says:
I think what works for consumers most likely -- and this has to be tested, frankly -- is bundles. I think you have to figure out what are the right bundles that people buy and what's contained in that bundle.So the co-owner of Hulu and the digital manager of WSJ likes bundles. What kind of future could his vision hold for consumers? I could see Hulu charging for, say, an NBC bundle, or perhaps a "Pick-three-shows" bundle. Or the Wall Street Journal could charge for a Finance bundle where you wouldn't necessarily have to pay for the entire paper, but you could have access to all the subcriber information under the Finance tab. More broadly, Miller sees operations like Kindle creating media bundles by packaging New York subscription publications together for a single "saver" price.
If you're going to start charging for something that consumers are used to considering free, packages are a great way to start. They connote savings and you see your money purchasing a diversity of goods, which eases the psychological queasiness of paying for something where you weren't aware it had a price. After all, television used to be free and now we have cable packages.
Hulu works because it's free. Charging will kill it.
I am 100% Hulu's demographic. I don't have cable, but I do have high speed. I have my big screen wired up to my TV and we watch shows streamed off of Hulu and Netuflix instant more than we do off of broadcast. I will also admit that I download shows using file-sharing and watch them. So Hulu is competing with three other things for its mechanism:
1)Filesharing (piracy) which may go by the wayside as prosecution becomes more vigorous. Or maybe not.
2)TiVo and DVRs. I don't know how much they charge, but if you have premium cable and a TiVo, you don't need Hulu nearly as much.
3)Netflix. Both delivery and instant. I tend to 'discover' old series and watch the whole series at a go. Usually after they were canceled. Because they were too smart. *Sighs*
But I also just don't watch much TV. I read. I play computer games. If Hulu prices themselves out of the market, I'll do something else. Hulu would need to keep their costs low. I could easily see myself subscribe for a month in April or something and watching all of the most recent season at once. A lot would depend on their price structure. Also, they can't line up more advertisers? It would be nice NOT to see the same ad four times in a row.
Argh. Wired up to my computer.
I think this post is misleading. I clicked through to the article, and Miller is talking about bundles in terms of newspapers -- bundling regional newspapers together and maybe throwing in a Kindle, for instance.
Now, he might apply that same reasoning to Hulu or he might not, but he wasn't talking about Hulu in that quote.
And here I was all set to rant about how much consumers *hate* expensive bundles in cable and satellite service, too.
Hey Jen, thanks for writing. Miller wasn't talking about bundles as a specific plan for Hulu, you're right. That's because he doesn't have a specific plan for charging for Hulu yet. So I guess I was trying to gaze into the crystal ball and think: OK, what would a bundle-o-phile do with Hulu?
Hulu already has commercials, now they want to charge as well?