Waiting to Pay for Hulu? Wait a While Longer.

A public service announcement for those of you eager to start paying for Hulu: Be patient. You’re going to have to keep waiting.

Last month, the Los Angeles Times said Hulu was set to roll out a subscription service “as soon as May 24.” That’s next Monday. But people familiar with the company say there’s no way a Hulu Plus will be up and running by then.

When will the long-discussed premium service be ready? I don’t know. I’m still not entirely convinced that the joint venture–owned by News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, Disney’s (DIS) ABC and GE’s (GE) NBC–has completely settled on terms of the plan, though I think they’ve agreed on the broad strokes: $10 a month for access to a deeper catalog of broadcast shows and to the service on devices like Apple’s (AAPL) iPad. (Regular Hulu, which is on a pace to generate $200 million in advertising this year, remains free).

And even if Hulu and all of its partners are seeing eye-to-eye–not a given–getting the rights from various programming partners to sell their shows could be a slog.

The upside: Your patience will be rewarded, Hulu subscribers of the future. One person familiar with the company’s plans tells me the new service will be “revolutionary.” Popular claim these days. Let’s see if it holds up.

Speaking of patience–a great Jimmy Kimmel bit about last week’s infuriating epsiode of “Lost”: