Online Video Site Hulu Announces Huge Expected Revenue For 2010
Company Plans Expansion Of Hulu Plus Subscription Service
Last week online video website Hulu announced that the company expects to earn over $240 million in revenue in 2010, more than double its earnings from the previous year. Looking to position the website as a sort of online perpetual primetime for television advertising, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar spoke at a technology conference in San Francisco, touting Hulu’s improved financial situation. Not long ago, studios like NBC Universal and Walt Disney Co. expressed dissatisfaction with the advertising revenue Hulu was pulling in from its digital video transfers of their programming. Because Hulu’s online programming is free, all of the company’s revenue relied on advertising.
In an effort to add to its revenue and expand its business model, Hulu launched a subscription service called Hulu Plus, offering subscribers more content and more viewing flexibility for $9.99 per month. It is unclear how much this service has contributed to Hulu’s financial gains, especially since subscribership of Hulu Plus remains very low compared to services like cable television and Netflix. However, Hulu Plus will soon be following in Netflix’s footsteps, moving its streaming content away from computers and into living rooms via set top boxes like the Roku XDS, and (rumor has it) videogame consoles such as the Sony Playstation 3. Once viewers have the option of viewing Hulu’s digital video transfers in high quality on their HDTV’s, the popularlity of the Hulu Plus service is bound to grow. The idea is that with a device like a Roku player bringing Netflix content and Hulu Plus content into the living room, viewers will cancel their expensive cable TV plans and pull all their entertainment content from web-based sources.
As a company, Hulu continues to look for ways to grow, and is even considering a public stock offering. Hulu plans a large expansion of Hulu plus to portable devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. If owners of the Apple iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch could access all of their favorite television content wherever they went, Hulu would probably see a wide adoption of the service fairly quickly. To learn more about Hulu or the Hulu Plus subscription service, or if you simply want to watch a free digital video transfer of your favorite TV show, check out www.hulu.com.
“Watch Your Favorites. Anytime. For Free.” This is certainly an appealing idea, but for the millions of users who regularly enjoy Hulu, a popular online site for watching television programming, the concept of watching TV shows online for free may be about to change. Until now, Hulu has streamed a digital video transfer of recent episodes of popular TV shows such ABC’s Lost, NBC’s Saturday Night Live, and Fox’s hit musical comedy Glee. At any given time, the five most recent episodes of each program are available for instant streaming on the website, for free. But as soon as May 24th, 2010, Hulu will begin testing a new subscription service, in which viewers who wish to access a more comprehensive selection than Hulu’s free offering can do so for a monthly fee of $9.95. Under the new proposal, Hulu would continue offering recent episodes of popular shows for free, but archived episodes and other premium content would be available only to paying subscribers.
