Disney CEO: Hulu could charge for content | Hacker News Reader

Disney CEO: Hulu could charge for content

tech.yahoo.com

6 pointsJimEngland10 comments

Every time I start to think that old media is starting to get it, they open their mouths and prove me wrong.

What makes me angrier is that they'd still put ads in somewhere, eventually. I hate the amount of advertising that precedes a movie that I've paid to see.

Trailers are often amusing, and I like to know which movies are coming out, but the rest feels like I'm watching TV.

(I would consider trailers acceptable because they are at least appropriate to the context. Still, the number of trailers would have to be low.)

ed: clarity of wording

He cited statistics that showed how much people are willing to pay for media content: $5 an hour to watch movies, 75 cents an hour reading books, magazines, and newspapers and 25 cents for every hour of Internet use.

There's an awfully big difference between "willing to pay" and "will actually pay".

What statistics are he citing, anyway?

Is, but any chance, the cost of going to the cinema in the US somewhere around $5 per hour? Trying to transfer the willingness to pay some amount for that experience to paying the same amount for watching something on a computer screen is a nice piece of wishful thinking.

They'd have to charge more in line with pay per view (which is what iTunes does) and could probably do nicely with that. It would make cable companies mad, but hey they already are.

I'm sure he's just calculating (average media cost) / (average time spent consuming media). I'm sure he's well aware of the flaws in his argument -- that watching a movie in the theater is not the same as watching at home and that consumer pricing is highly irrational -- since his company relies on these facts to extract the maximum amount from each consumer.

None of those numbers add up.

$5/hour to watch a movie - $10 per movie. A number too low for watching in theaters or buying the DVD. A number way too high to rent a movie. A number insanely high to watch it on TV.

$.75/hour to read a book: A ~200-300 page book would take you 7-8 hours to read. So thats $6/book. Seems like way too low, compared to what people are willing to py.

$.25/hour internet use: that means an always on connection would run you $180/mo.

And they should. I know there is, no matter how small, a market that is willing to pay to not see commercials.

The quoted prices are way too high, but with an iTunes like model we could see very different shows from those supported by advertising. Or more likely cerebral shows, which were canceled in the past, would now be supported by direct buys.

$5 an hour for movies? Who pay that these days?

Everyone who pays $10 to see a 2 hour movie at the theater?

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