Would you pay for Hulu?

That's the question a lot of people are asking themselves this week, as Hulu subscription rumors began flying all over the internet. It seems that Hulu isn't really an "evil plot to destroy the world" after all, but just another multimedia company trying to make money off of us. Who knew? Still, for those of us who have started to rely on Hulu for our viewing needs, it could signal the end of the free ride.

Hulu has done an impressive job of building up a large user base and partnering with several key content providers (NBC, ABC and Fox) over the past year or so. They have a lot of mainstream TV shows on their platform, both from the major networks and the smaller cable networks. I've used it a bunch of times to catch up on shows that I'm casually following (I DVR my serious shows). Some of my friends have even gotten rid of their cable subscriptions entirely because most of the shows they would watch on cable are now available for free on Hulu.

So how much would you be willing to pay for Hulu? There haven't been any real numbers thrown around yet, so it's hard to get a feel for what the Hulu executives are thinking. There has been mention of this pay model only applying to certain programming, so it sounds like it will be a pay-per-view model, and not a general subscription model. If that's the case, will they follow an iTunes model, and charge something like $0.99 for each show? You'd be able to watch the show for a couple of days after paying for it, and potentially be able to watch it on more than one computer.

If they went with this pay-per-view model for only the latest and hottest TV shows, I think it could work out. In theory, people would be willing to pay a premium charge to gain access to the latest episode of their favorite shows. Still, I don't think casual viewers would be willing to pay this cost, and it could turn off a lot of potential viewers from an aspiring show.

We'll see how Hulu plays this out. I'm tempted to close out this post by saying something about the "best things in life being free", but I won't. Instead, I'll close it out by saying something about "if it's seems too good to be true, then it probably is". I think we all knew Hulu was too good to be true, and that one day it would start charging for its content. It seems like that day is coming soon, whether we like it or not.