Within days Hulu will begin sending emails to Hulu users who stream their free ad-supported content, informing them the nearly ten-year-old service will soon end but offering a free trial of their paid subscription product Hulu Plus. The homepage of hulu.com has been leading visitors towards a subscription sign-up page, rather than to their free ad-supported programming that remained behind the scenes.
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Subscribers can watch all of the company’s content for $7.99 a month with limited commercial interruptions or commercial free for $11.99 per month. This brings to an end nine years of offering its viewers ad-supported TV episodes since it was launched.
One of those companies is Yahoo, who also announced Monday they would offer access to some of Hulu’s free content through their new site, Yahoo View. This service contains ads and can stream shows from mainly ABC, NBC, and Fox alongside other clips of different shows and series.
Commented chief analyst Colin Dixon: “Hulu was originally founded on the premise of free-online-TV, so it is a big step for the company to eliminate it completely”. Now, users will have to pay a regular subscription.
Alert messages will inform consumers about the new changes over the next days, according to Hulu´s senior VP and Head of Experience, Ben Smith. Certainly, the company has been ramping up its subscription businesses for some time now by offering original show content, like “The Path” and “The Mindy Project”, which Hulu picked up after Fox cancelled the show. The new site features a “beyond the episode” section that can visually block the enhanced content that might reveal spoilers about the current video playing, and picture-in-picture so viewers can continue to watch while browsing to other content without leaving the screen.
It is interesting to note Hulu’s partnership with Yahoo for the Yahoo View channel, particularly since Yahoo is all set to be acquired by Verizon for around $4.8 billion. “To date, we’ve streamed incredible experiences across sports, finance, and news”, Yahoo Vice President and Head of Media Partnerships Phil Lynch added.
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While among the top streaming services available, Hulu lags behind rivals including Netflix and Amazon in audience.
