Hulu’s New Message to Customers: Pace Yourselves

Hulu wants you to just say no to binge watching entire seasons of some of its shows.

If you don’t have the willpower to do that, don’t worry: Hulu will “help” you by releasing one episode a week of its original series, like “The Mindy Project,” “11/22/63” and “The Way,” so viewers have no choice but to wait it out.

Hulu announced its plans to move away from the Netflix model of releasing entire seasons of shows at one time at a recent Television Critics Association press tour, IGN reports.

“With all of our new originals, we will release episodes weekly,” explained Craig Erwich, Hulu’s head of content, at the press tour. “We want to give viewers the opportunity to discover their favorite shows every week. Like you, we value the shared experience and the joy of the water cooler that is television. This will also allow us to get the shows out to our audiences faster without waiting until full series completion.”

Of course, once the entire season of a Hulu original show is completed and released, you can binge watch it to your heart’s content – or until your eyes are too bleary.

It will be interesting to see what Hulu viewers think of this new approach. I love being able to watch several episodes of a show at once. In fact, even with cable, I typically DVR a few episodes of a show before I start watching it.

According to Consumerist, Amazon tried a similar launch approach to its original content but “that model has quickly fallen by the wayside in favor of putting it all out there at once.”

“Difficult People,” “Casual,” “The Hotwives of Las Vegas,” “The Awesomes” and “Rocketjump: The Show” will be included in Hulu’s once-a-week episode releases.

“The Mindy Project” was canceled by Fox in May and picked up by Hulu.

What do you think of Hulu’s plans to deliver one episode a week of its original programming? Share your comments below or on our Facebook page.