Disney CEO on crack for suggesting Hulu charge for access
With all due respect to people like Svetlana Gladkova over at Profy.com anyone who thinks that at this point in timeHulu should start charging for access to its content should stop what they are doing right now and give themselves a good solid facepalm. Please tell me where it makes sense for anyone to pay extra per month for what they are already paying for in their homes as the majority of people who this idea would effect already have cable television.
Cable TV with exactly the same content as what you find on Hulu with the exception of maybe a few movies that will end up there anyway on some superstation of movie channel – how is this any great improvement. It is especially dumb when you factor in the reality that in the US broadband providers are moving to having download caps against which all this streaming video would count against.
Stupidly Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger said at a conference
“There’s plenty of room for people to spend money on things they’re doing online,” Iger told a technology conference put on by Fortune magazine.
Source: Yahoo News – Disney CEO: Hulu could charge for content
Sure people are willing to pay for things on the web and yes people are easily conned into believing that maybe paying for Hulu is a good thing but that doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. I like buying stuff on the web but I can tell you this – even if making Hulu (or a part of it) a pay access service allowed for its content to be shown in Canada I still wouldn’t sign up.
I already pay an outrageous sum for cable TV and Internet access so why am I going to pay again for the same things I’ve already forked money over for – it makes no sense whatsoever. As well the idea that by making Hulu a pay service will open it up to international users – think again. Even though Svetlana might like the idea
Yet revolt or no revolt, I know one category of users (and a very broad one at that) who will only welcome the decision to let them pay for a subscription in exchange for content – if they are granted this opportunity at all. I am obviously talking about international users here. Hulu is only available to the internet users who visit the website from a US IP-address while everyone else will be able to browse the site but will not be able to watch any piece of content at all.
The fact is that it won’t happen because it isn’t something that charging users for will change the current US only service. This is because of international copyrights and broadcast laws – it has nothing to do with throwing money at it. For all we know Hulu would love nothing better that to be able to stream content to Canada or Russia but it isn’t just the US entertainment industry owners of Hulu that are the bottleneck.
For that you have top look at the individual countries. Just as Canada will not allow US television signals to cross the broader and be played on Canadian television they won’t allow video stream to cross those same borders. So we can rant all we want at Hulu and their evil overlords it doesn’t change the fact that if Hulu starts charging for access it won’t make one bit of difference outside of its borders.
