I was reading an article the other day somewhere on ComingSoon.net that the head honcho of Hulu (y'know, the commercially-sponsored website that allows you to stream television shows - a joint venture by NBC Universal and Fox Entertainment Group, later joined by ABC, Wikipedia tells me), Jonathan Miller, forsees a charge for watching these shows in the future. Dude, seriously? You know you're only going to lose your audience, right? You're joking if you think broke college students are going to pay? What rock are you hiding under? Generate your revenue through something else, like advertising. Yeah, those commercials are annoying (especially when they are repeated over and over and over again, maybe you can switch it up a little?) but do you think I'm going to stop watching because of a 30-second commercial on how Dove leaves your skin feeling silky smooth? No, I'm not. I'm assuming that the website is generating sufficient George Washington's since it's still online and more and more groups are joining. Stop being so greedy, man. And yeah, I may have illegally watched 17 or so episodes of "Arrested Development" but guess what? I'm going to pony up some money to go watch the movie when it's released! You win some, you lose some, you give some, you take some.
Edited to add:
It is estimated that "last year Hulu took in $65 million in U.S. ad revenue and cleared $12 million in gross profit, while YouTube generated $114 million in U.S. revenue but had no gross profit. This year Amel estimates Hulu's revenue will grow to $175 million in the U.S." - Newsweek, February 2009
Conclusion: you're making a very, very bad mistake if you start charging users on Hulu. ChannelWeb makes a good point - Hulu is still too young to start charging. Sure, it's generating revenue, but it probably needs to establish a healthier and consistent fanbase before it even thinks about charging (hint: bring in more content!!).
-Johnny
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