Fans of The Mindy Project and Seinfeld can rejoice: Starting Wednesday, they can watch their favorite episodes, and anything else available on Hulu, without commercials.
Just one catch: It will cost $12 a month.
Hulu announced the arrival of its commercial-free package on Wednesday as a way to better compete with streaming rivals Amazon and Netflix. Of the three, Hulu had been the only service that interrupted programs with commercial breaks even for its 9 million paying subscribers on the $8 per month Hulu Plus. (Netflix added over half that number of new subscriptions in the first quarter of 2014.)
CEO Mike Hopkins acknowledged the obstacle between ads and higher membership, the New York Times reports. “You can split people into two categories: ad avoiders and ad acceptors,” he said. “There are clearly people who are just not going to buy Hulu because there are ads.” Hopkins is confident that this new option combined with new content will attract more paying customers.
Still, Netflix and Amazon remain the cheaper of the three services, with zero chance of commercials. Users just have to decide whether watching Mindy and Seinfeld without minor interruptions is worth an extra $4 per month.
H/T New York Times | Photo via LWYang/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
