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Hulu Offers “Ad-Free” Subscription Service…That Isn’t Completely Ad-Free

These words...do not mean what you think they mean.

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Oh, Hulu. When will you get it right?

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Hulu now offers the option for completely commercial-free viewing…if you’re willing to pay a little more. Their new, ad-free plan costs $11.99/month. If you don’t want that, you can suffer through “limited commercials” for the same price you’re paying now.

Except that those commercials really aren’t “limited” are they? I mean, compared to what? When I hear “limited commercials,” I’m thinking one at the top, and maybe one in the middle. Not 4-5 commercial breaks. For that, I might as well be watching broadcast television.

Except that “ad-free” isn’t even completely ad-free. According to Deadline Hollywood:

A few shows on the ad-free service — including New Girl, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder, Grey’s Anatomy, and Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. — will have a 15-second pre-roll ad and a 30-second post roll. Hulu also offers a sampling of ad-supported shows for free to PCs and a subset of the mobile devices served by the paid services.

So…it’s ad-free…except for the ad at the beginning. And at the end. Do you not know what words mean, Hulu?

The bad news is that “ad-free” Hulu is now more expensive than Netflix. However, it still has the advantage of getting a lot of shows first and more currently than Netflix does. So, to me, it’s still worth having both services to compliment each other. However, I’m not springing four more dollars a month for their service until they figure out what the word “free” means.

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Author
Teresa Jusino
Teresa Jusino (she/her) is a native New Yorker and a proud Puerto Rican, Jewish, bisexual woman with ADHD. She's been writing professionally since 2010 and was a former TMS assistant editor from 2015-18. Now, she's back as a contributing writer. When not writing about pop culture, she's writing screenplays and is the creator of your future favorite genre show. Teresa lives in L.A. with her brilliant wife. Her other great loves include: Star Trek, The Last of Us, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, and her Level 5 android Paladin named Lal.

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