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WATCH ONLINE: ABC hops on Hulu

Hulu is heading toward behemoth status. The NBC/Fox-launched TV streaming site today adds the ABC corporate family to its hosted offerings. That means episodes of shows from ABC (starting with Grey's Anatomy), ABC Family, Disney Channel, SOAPnet and more, all in the familiar clean Hulu interface.

Other ABC-owned shows are being linked from their own sites for now, like The Secret Life of an American Teenager from ABC Family. Expect moves onto Hulu in coming weeks.

That leaves CBS the lone Hulu holdout among major networks, alongside its CW sibling (though Hulu does link to their CBS site streams). CBS has a pretty clean and fast interface of its own, and has been a network leader in original production for its web site (creating series like the soaps-based reality competition InTurn).

Launched in March 2008 by NBC and Fox, Hulu heightened its profile in past months with science-fictiony ads featuring Alec Baldwin and Seth MacFarlane as alien invaders taking control of Earth through online TV. The service claims more than 40,000 videos for viewing (some are clip-length), from more than 130 content partners, watched by more than 24 million users a month.

2 Comments

Emily said:

I didn't actually know that Hulu was owned by NBC and Fox, but that makes sense. I'm a bit addicted to it as we don't actually own a TV set, and am very glad to see ABC jumping aboard as the most recent version of their own player was too sophisticated for my 4-yr-old computer. I've been wondering for awhile now -- do the networks get ratings based on viewers from sites like Hulu or even their own?

July 14, 2009 1:51 PM

Diane Werts said:

You bet, online video usage gets tracked, just like TV viewing. Nielsen tallies it, as do other companies like ComScore:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/youtube-leads-video-streams-hulu-grows/
http://www.comscore.com/index.php/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/6/Americans_Viewed_a_Record_16.8_Billion_Videos_Online_in_April

July 14, 2009 2:26 PM

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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