Will Hulu be a hit?

I’VE been so busy today that it’s a good thing Erwin Oliva reminded me that Hulu, the ambitious online video site which is a joint venture between network giants NBC Universal and News Corp., is now open for private beta testing. So if you haven’t received an invite yet, go to the site and sign up.

It’s interesting to see how this will all play out as the TV networks attempt to chart their own online destiny, and how this will affect the future of sites such as YouTube. NBC pulled out its clips from YouTube and closed down its YouTube promotional channel prior in preparation for the launch of Hulu.

Here’s an excerpt from today’s post on the Hulu blog.

Today marks the first day of Beta testing for the Hulu service.

We’ve been hard at work on a service that offers a great selection of television shows, clips, feature films and more that you can enjoy for free and on-demand. At Hulu, you’ll find current hit shows like The Office, Prison Break, The Simpsons, Heroes, and many more. You’ll also find a large number of classic television series, including Arrested Development, Miami Vice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The A-Team. We’re also going into beta with an initial selection of feature films that includes Conan the Barbarian, Sideways and The Blues Brothers.

Starting today, we are sending out invitations which will allow users to access the private beta at Hulu.com. If you haven’t signed up, you can do so by visiting Hulu.com. As well, this week we’ll start serving Hulu’s content lineup to our distribution partner websites, which include AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo.

And here’s an excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article on the initial feedback:

Hulu will syndicate its shows to four of the Web’s most popular destinations, plus allow viewers to embed streaming clips or entire shows on their blogs. A “Heroes” fan-blog, for instance, could wax poetic about the hidden message in a certain scene, then let people watch that scene and respond with their thoughts.

“No one in the industry has taken that step,” said analyst James McQuivey of Forrester Research, who saw a demonstration last week. “I doubted they had the political will.”

Announced with much fanfare but few specifics in March, Hulu was given poor odds of succeeding by analysts and industry executives. They said traditional media companies were reacting defensively to the popularity of user-generated and pirated video content on Google Inc.’s YouTube. And they doubted the giants would unshackle their best TV shows.

But Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar, an Amazon.com veteran, said the start-up was striving to combine premium video material with a user experience that’s both first-rate and free.

Frankly, I think YouTube has reason to be scared. If NBC and News Corp. really deliver on what they’re promising and have learned to embrace the Web, then that’s a whole lot of great free content (heck, it’s “Heroes”! Even if so far I’m not as in love with the second season as I was with the first) that would be denied to YouTube. Let’s face it: people go to YouTube not just because of the user-generated video, but because of the clips uploaded from TV shows and other copyrighted material.

The only question is whether Hulu will truly reflect the spirit of Web 2.0, and, in effect, out-YouTube YouTube.

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