So when’s that Hulu Premium service that we heard about last fall going to show up?
If Disney EVP Kevin Mayer knows, he’s not telling. But for the record, he says, “no decisions have been made” about what kind of pay models and services the video site is going to use, or when they’ll roll out.
In short, the only concrete thing that the Disney (DIS) executive, speaking at the DeSilva+Phillips Dealmakers conference this morning, would allow is that the video site will indeed be asking some consumers to pay for something at some point.
That could come in the form of subscriptions, a la carte downloads, streaming rentals or all of the above, Mayer said. That would in addition to the free ad-supported stuff that Hulu is already offering. “I think we ultimately should and will have a hybrid approach,” said Mayer.
Mayer was one of the key Disney executives pushing the company to join News Corp.’s Fox (NWS) and GE’s NBC (GE) in the joint venture last year, instead of accepting a competing offer from Google (GOOG) and YouTube. YouTube, meanwhile, is still working on paid services of its own.
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