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Virginian - Pilot

By SCOTT COLLINS

By Scott Collins

Los Angeles Times

HOLLYWOOD

In a very short time, Hulu.com has rocketed from nothing to being one of the top video destinations on the Internet.

We've all heard the years of trade-show claptrap about television- Web "convergence," but Hulu has come as close as possible to turning your computer into a TV without actually sending a tech to monkey around with the hardware and wiring.

Maybe more important, it's also shaping up as a key proving ground in the ongoing philosophical debate about what people want from Web-based entertainment.

How do you Hulu? You don't have to pay anything, download a special player or even register your name or e-mail address. The site, which went up in mid-March, is free; in exchange for watching relatively brief ads, you get access to complete high-resolution episodes of top TV series such as "24" and "30 Rock," as well as impressively cataloged clips from "Saturday Night Live" and other shows. (The movie roster is somewhat less formidable, unless you consider "The Payaso Comedy Slam" or "Snake Eater" the apex of cinematic art.)

You could spend hours rolling around in there, as I did over a few days recently, and just scratch the surface.

"We haven't hit our three-month anniversary yet, and we already have about 700 titles," Jason Kilar, Hulu's chief executive, told me last week.

Earlier this month Hulu began showing complete episodes of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report." The deal is important because of the corporate relationships involved. Hulu joins the forces of NBC Universal and News Corp., parent of Fox Broadcasting and other networks. Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, a rival company that hasn't always been friendly toward outside Web sites that want to use its content.

The message seems clear: Viewers want online video, and studios have decided they'd better give it to them, traditional corporate strategy be damned.

Bobby Tulsiani, an analyst at Jupiter Research, told me that he thinks Hulu is "a great first start" at developing Internet sites designed for what Web folks call "premium content" - that is, full- length, professionally produced TV shows and movies. What's still unknown, he added, is just how big the market is for this stuff.

Hulu delivered 63 million total streams during April, its first full month of operation, making it the No. 10 online video- streaming site, according to Nielsen Online, an audience-research company. (Yes, that's still a long way from No. 1 YouTube, Google's clip-sharing site, which logged a mind-boggling 4 billion streams.)

Yet for people who care about TV programming, Hulu represents more than just another way to catch favorite episodes.

The issue boils down to this: Will low-cost original programming, a la "lonelygirl15" or those grainy, amateur YouTube clips, continue to dominate online video? Or will the little guys get crowded out in a new, heavily commercialized era led by expensive, slickly produced studio shows that premiered on broadcast or cable?

A lot of money - and maybe the future of TV programming itself - is riding on the answer. After all, studios almost certainly face more years of viewer erosion on the traditional networks. Their economics might cease to work at all unless they find other ways to recapture those lost viewers. Given how much time people spend with their computers and wireless devices, the Web is going to be a key battleground.

Does all this mean that pretty soon we'll be ditching our flat screens and watching "The Office" only on laptops?

Well, perhaps some of us will. But don't worry about that costly 36-inch electronic rectangle chewing up wall space in your living room.

"The television set has a very healthy future," Kilar said. "I absolutely never see that going away."

what is it?

Hulu.com is free. In exchange for watching relatively brief ads, you get access to complete, high-resolution episodes of top TV series.

Originally published by BY SCOTT COLLINS.

(c) 2008 Virginian - Pilot. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.