You might remember that I have blogged about Hulu in the past and I'm a big fan. Well, it appears that the major media companies behind Hulu (or at least News Corp, surprise surprise) have decided they need to charge for content on the service, and there will be some sort of fee model next year. This isn't something new for them -- News Corp made the same decision with the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, so it's not surprising to see them think this is going to be a great idea which will make them a ton of money.
What it's really going to mean is that people just go back to bittorrenting shows. Seriously, you want to charge for broadcast content you give out free over the air? Come on. At least with Hulu they got to show ads and generated some good will. This is a stupid move, and from the stuff I've seen with the actual Hulu people, I think they realize it -- unfortunately, they don't make the content and they don't pay the bills necessarily, so nobody cares.
What it's really going to mean is that people just go back to bittorrenting shows. Seriously, you want to charge for broadcast content you give out free over the air? Come on. At least with Hulu they got to show ads and generated some good will. This is a stupid move, and from the stuff I've seen with the actual Hulu people, I think they realize it -- unfortunately, they don't make the content and they don't pay the bills necessarily, so nobody cares.
SRSLY?
Somebody needs to tell these folks that nobody will pay for things that are trivially easy to get for free, i.e put up an antenna or go to a torrent site.