Hulu to Charge in 2010, to Fail in 2011
Category: General
Tags: Hulu, Chase Carey, Idiot
Chase Carey is an idiot.
As COO of News Corp, the second largest
media conglomerate in the world, and as Rupert Murdoch's right hand
man, this is a terrifying realization. Carey is the man behind the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal,
Dow Jones Newswires, every Fox studio and network, MySpace, a majority
of the National Geographic Channel, Photobucket, IGN Entertainment, 45%
of Hulu, and for some reason, 15% of the Colorado Rockies baseball
team, among hundreds of other assets worldwide. Under Carey, total News Corp revenue in 2008 finished at $32.996 billion.
Idiot.
Carey's
latest announcement suggests that he is no more than a blind
puppetmaster with a vicious business strategy and a mustache to rival
Custer. While the mustache is impressive, it can't completely hide the
malicious grin of evil intent, or the fact that his social radar needs
adjusting--at the B&C OnScreen Summit on October 20, Carey
boldly stated, "It's time to start getting paid for broadcast content
online," followed by plans to make Hulu a subscription-based system.
He wants us to pay for Hulu.
Idiot.
Charging
for Hulu, a currently free service operating on ad revenue, would be
suicide. Carey isn't alone in this venture--after all, he's only been
to one Hulu board meeting since re-joining Newscorp in June--as Hulu is
jointly-owned by General Electric's NBC Universal, Disney's ABC, and of
course News Corp's Fox Entertainment. However, as rumors about a News
Corp takeover of NBC are being whispered across economist blogs
everywhere, Carey is set to have more control over Hulu than possibly
even Disney, the world's number one media conglomerate.
But
apparently, Carey isn't the bad guy. His decision to charge for Hulu is
based not in corporate greed or monopolization, but in the value of
artistic expression. As he explained to B&C, "I think a
free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content.
I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a
way where they will appreciate the value."
He's so generous.
Because after paying for basic cable or satellite, for movie channels,
DVR systems, DVD players and DVDs, box sets of favorite television
shows, and not to mention a television itself, we really didn't
appreciate what Hulu had to offer us. And here I thought entertainment, acting, and creative expression was about the people, and that an outlet for this with a wide and varied audience, accessible at any
time from any computer with internet connection, was ideal. But it appears we should not expect
such open material in a technologically globalized culture. We have
obviously been unduly greedy and unappreciative. For shame, us.
Not
only will establishing pay walls for Hulu paint Fox and News Corp as
gluttonous money-grubbers for generations to come, but it will be
completely pointless. If we know how to use Hulu, we know how to
download those shows, for free, from other sources. We use Hulu because
yes, it is legal, and because it is accessible, easy-to-use, and clean.
But it's not our only option. If Hulu was truly established as a
deterrent for piracy, charging for its use would have the complete
opposite effect--I predict a mass exodus from legality and a surge in
illegal downloads that may jump to irreversible numbers.
In
2008, Hulu generated earnings of $70 million, a number that is expected
to rise to $120 million in 2009. Obviously, this isn't enough for Carey
and co. After all, Carey is only #23 on the Forbes Executive Pay
Ranking scale with $36.86 million, right behind the CEO of Aetna. How
embarrassing.
Idiot.
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