• by Wayne Friedman , July 17, 2015

A report in The Wall Street Journal suggests Hulu will offer a $12 to $14-a-month option to access advertising-fee content. Hulu has been a service mostly of TV series. The new service could launch as early as this fall.

Hulu already offers a $7.99-a-month service -- Hulu Plus -- which supplies limited advertising and full access to complete TV series. The original free Hulu service offered limited access to TV series episodes and more advertising in TV shows.

Hulu is much smaller than Netflix -- 9 million subscribers versus the 65 million global customers for Netflix. At the end of 2014, Hulu said it had 6 million paying customers. Hulu is co-owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Walt Disney and 21st Century Fox.

In 2014, estimates are Hulu pulled in $550 million in revenue -- with Netflix tallying $5.5 billion and Amazon Prime Video $1.5 billion.

In 2011, Hulu’s partners strongly considered selling off the service, but then decided to keep it.