Hulu Already Working On The Technical Requirements For Subscription Service

On Tuesday, News Corps. chairman Rupert Murdoch and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference, indicated that one day, Hulu may indeed have a subscription based service. While Murdoch was quoted as saying "no decisions have been made yet," sources I have spoken to have confirmed for me that Hulu is already beta testing a subscription based video service internally and is working out all of the technical details for the offering.

While it does not sound like the service will coming to the market anytime this year, the fact that Hulu is already working on the technical requirements and in particular, hard at work on how the authentication piece of a subscription based service would work, is a promising sign.

From what I'm being told, Hulu has a very clear plan for the offering from a technical standpoint, but still is not completely sure how to roll it out product wise or what exactly the business terms will be. While the technical piece of such an offering would have some complexity to it, the real challenging piece of the offering would be the business terms with content owners.

Since most companies are always testing new things internally, I'm not surprised Hulu's already working on this and while it's not a sign that a subscription based service is coming out anytime soon, it does show us that Hulu is a lot further along with the idea than they may say.

As of Thursday night, Hulu had not yet responded to my requests for them to comment on this subject.

Comments

[Gudge]

Dear Hulu. Please go through with this plan. I'd pay $$ to get a hulu box attached to my tv. Or, better yet, Hulu on my xbox360. I would definitely cancel cable and pay for that.

[greg]

if hulu chgs i wont come back to watch. i dont have cables and or tv i see eveything on the net. if it going to cost me ill buy a tv and put up a antena

[Phil Leigh]

Too many content providers are expecting to get paid via subscriptions or other consumer charges. Examples include, newspapers, Internet Radio, and now Hulu. In short, Internet users love the information highway, but its madness to think that they will pay a toll every five miles.

Hulu would be better advised to develop "authentication" about the ads that *are* watched. Google AdWords has already demonstrated that sponsors will pay handsomely for ads that consumers actually click on. Similarly, Hulu could collect premium fees from sponsors by charging them only when ads are actually watched.

[Jeff Paul Scam]

It does not sound like the service will coming to the market anytime this year, the fact that Hulu is already working on the technical requirements

[Jason Anderson]

Sorry friends, ad-based can only go so far. And if you're careful to make your subscription-based content exclusive to your playground, you set the price of admission.

If Mad Men and other top shows were only available in one place online, a subscription wall would provide instant monetization to counter the cannibalization of other revenue streams.