Hulu.com, the online video sensation backed by General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) NBC unit and News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) moved past industry heavyweight Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) in terms of videos viewed. Hulu, barely a year old, streams a huge amount of movies, TV shows and other non-YouTube content. In other words, it isn't a "you upload it" service: all the content there is professionally produced.380 million videos were viewed on Hulu last month, outpacing Yahoo!'s 335 million -- but far behind YouTube's 5.9 billion and other services such as Fox Corp.'s MySpace website. Interestingly, Fox Corp. now has a large influence in the online video marketplace, having a hand in both Hulu and MySpace. Is Rupert Murdoch wanting to own online video? If so, he's still got a long way to go in catching YouTube.
But the reality here is that more online web surfers want legit, network-produced content -- the reason Hulu shot from nowhere to the third-largest video viewing property in such a short time. If the networks need a reason to not cry about standard television advertising revenues declining, they need to find a way to monetize Hulu.com and others. Right now, though, the 30-second commercials being played in front of almost all Hulu.com clips is not enough to displace drops in traditional network revenues. Not even close. GE, which could use some help (sitting at $12.65 from a 52-week high of over $30) can only dream about this for now.
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