Will Korean DramaFever Show Hulu the Way?

NewTeeVee has a profile of the recently launched Hulu-esque site, DramaFever, that specializing in bringing Korean TV shows to US and Canadian viewers.

Korean shows have proven extremely popular on video-sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion so it was a smart move by the Koreans to come up with a way to better-serve their growing viewership.  It sounds like they are going for innovation and quality service over suing their biggest fans.  Some of the features included in DramaFever are English subtitles and high-quality picture.

While similar to Hulu, there is a big difference:

DramaFever is pushing a free-to-subscription service (aka “freemium,” or try before you buy) that could well serve as an example for sites like Hulu. The site will offer a couple episodes of each show for free, ad-supported embeddable streaming, a la Hulu today, but it will also offer full seasons of all its shows sans advertising for a fee of $5-7 per month. Movies and concerts will cost an additional fee.    LINK

While it would be nice to believe that Hulu will remain forever free and completely ad-supported it is much more likely that Hulu will attempt to milk viewers directly.  Let’s hope Hulu understands that charging means offering more, not just putting up a paywall.  Done properly, Hulu could succeed in creating a teired system that could compete with piracy but done poorly and the only result will be an erosion in any ground that had been made in the previous couple of years.