• by September 21, 2009

Jon Miller, chief digital officer of News Corp. has been possibly the only guy from a major broadcast company who has said that at some point a paid model would come to Hulu for some services. But I’ve always wondered how that would work. Consumers have the expectation now that what they see on Hulu (and other services) should be free because those services currently are. How would you coax those same consumers to learn to pay? Or would they balk?

Miller says that to him, “This is really an exercise in market segmentation” â€" that some consumers will be willing to pay, and some, frankly, wouldn’t. The key is that to convert consumers to a paid model, media companies are going to have to make sure that paid services have to offer “additional value.” Hulu Platinum, maybe? “If you don’t do that it’s taking stuff away from a consumer.”

On a separate note, Miller also punched holes in one of the over-riding philosophies of the Silicon Valley set: “If you build it, they will come” -- and figure out how to make money off it later. Miller countered that, “You have to have your product and monetization strategies match.” So, here’s a question for you: if Miller had started Twitter, would he have built in a premium subscription model from the get-go?