In a not totally-unexpected move, Hulu is ending the free tier of its service. That leaves only the $7.99 tier with limited commercials and the $11.99 one with no ads.
The company says that as it’s continued to enhance its standard paid service with original shows and exclusives, it’s been forced to limit the free tier into something that “no longer aligned with the Hulu experience or content strategy.”
Basically, Hulu wants to be more like Netflix or Amazon Prime with their wide gamut of high quality original content, instead of the place you have to to go to because it’s the only place that one random TV show you watch is available.
That said, not all hope is lost for those of us without room for yet another subscription charge on our bank accounts; Hulu is moving some of its free stuff to the new Yahoo View website. That includes the five most recent episodes of shows from ABC, NBC and Fox 8 days after their premiere, some clips, and full seasons of some anime and Korean dramas.
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You can basically still find much of the stuff you could watch for free before, it’s just on a different site. They might as well just call it Yahulu.
Still, the move is probably because Hulu wants its main page to be associated with premium content. Here’s to hoping the company steps its game up on original shows if it wants more people to actually pay up.
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