Hulu touts about TV anytime, anywhere. But hooking your TV to the Net? Crazy talk!

Funny pages: Hulu offers web video, but doesn't encourage Net TV. Image: Hulu

I had an epiphany early last year when I visited Hulu for an article David Kirkpatrick and I were writing about the unexpectedly successful young venture.

Watching TV shows on Hulu was such a pleasant experience with Hulu that the company should encourage users to connect their PCs to televisions. Technologically it's not a difficult thing to do, but it's not terribly convenient. A PC needs to be near the TV, the remote-control experience isn't good, and so on. I remember Hulu executives smiling kindly at my suggestion but not offering much in the way of feedback.

With hindsight, I see how naive I was. More

On NBC's Press: Here (airing 8/23), Fortune's Jon Fortt, TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy and host Scott McGrew chat with SAP executive board member John Schwarz. For all four video segments online now, check out video on the Press: Here website. (SAP) (IBM) (ORCL) (CRM) (MSFT)

Alec Baldwin promotes Hulu in traditional TV spots.

The Web video shakeout has begun. Hulu, a venture of NBC, ABC, and Fox, is growing nicely, aided in part by a slick marketing campaign using, of all things, television ads starring Alec Baldwin. But a slew of smaller sites are starting to reformulate their strategies in the hope of surviving.

Joost, which was started by the founders of Skype Technologies, recently announced it would reinvent itself as a wholesale technology provider for media companies to publish video. The New York City–based outfit was launched amid great expectations in 2006 with $45 million in funding.

Video-sharing site Veoh may also be in trouble. High-profile backers, including ex-Disney (DIS) CEO Michael Eisner and Goldman Sachs (GS), have sunk $99 million into the New York–based site since its 2005 launch. In addition to the usual startups costs, Veoh has been hobbled by an expensive court battle with Vivendi's Universal Music Group over alleged copyright violations.

Back to main story: Google (still) loves YouTube

The departure of outsized NBC chief Ben Silverman is the third time that the producer will team up with IAC’s Diller.

By Richard Siklos, Editor at large

Silverman, shown at Fortune Brainstorm Tech, days before leaving NBC. Photo: Robin Twomey

Ben Silverman’s  departure from NBC this morning comes as no huge surprise: he was an out-of-the-box choice to head programming at major broadcast network and his two-year-plus tenure was marked by lots of attention on Silverman’s outsized persona but little yet in terms of new prime time hits for the long-struggling Peacock Network. (For more on Silverman see our story, The Player.)

It also makes perfect sense that Silverman’s exit  involves the creation of a new and as yet unnamed production company in partnership with IAC Interactive Corp., (IACI) the Internet company led by mogul Barry Diller. This will actually be the third time that Silverman and Diller have teamed up to produce ventures aimed at melding conventional TV advertising, programming and Web—and both other times yielded the men handsome returns.

“Barry stirs the pot and he sees the future,” Silverman said in an interview today.  More

Two developments in the wake of NBC Universal's (GE) weekend exit from Apple's (AAPL) iTunes store:

Ruport Murdoch's Twentieth Century Fox (NWS) is reported to be "actively negotiating" with Apple to put new releases and catalog titles on iTunes beginning in early 2008. According to Rich Greenfield at Pali Research (link; activation required) several things have changed to break the deadlock, including growing levels of movie piracy and new flexibility on Apple's part in terms of pricing. Greenfield's casual speculation that Apple might be willing to charge $15 per movie download has triggered some interesting analysis (see AppleInsider and Ars Technica's Infinite Loop) but should probably not be treated as gospel.

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker placed his company's digital strategy last on his list of priorities in a luncheon speech at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference on Monday. Repeating an earlier claim that NBCU's deal with Apple was worth "only $15 million" in profit, he added: "That’s nothing to sneeze at, every dollar matters. But it wasn’t the game changer for us that it was for Apple." He pointed to NBC's video offerings on Amazon and NBC Direct and singled out for praise hulu.com, its joint effort with News Corp.:

We're in the beta test with Hulu and we have 60,000 users, seven major advertisers. The online press wanted to kill it, but it's doing well. Advertisers tell us they want a safe environment. That's what this is about. They don't want a cat on a skateboard, but they do want The Simpsons or a film they like. (see Paid Content's report here)

No more ad-free episodes of The Office, 30 Rock, Scrubs or Friday Night Lights for $1.99 each.

As promised, NBC (GE) removed all its content and that of its affiliates from the iTunes Store over the weekend after its contract with Apple (AAPL) expired.

That means no shows on iTunes from Bravo, mun2, NBC, NBC News, CNBC, NBC Sports, Sci Fi, Sleuth, Telemundo or USA Network. (Some shows aired on NBC but produced by other Hollywood studios such as Viacom, Disney or 20th Century Fox are still available.)

NBC has put some of that content on NBC Direct, an ad-supported download service that runs only on Windows machines; a Mac version is due next year. Its shows will also be available on hulu.com, a joint venture with News Corp. Both services are still in beta.

NBC had been Apple's single largest partner for digital video, with more than 1,500 hours of programming representing either 30% or 40% of iTunes video content, depending which side you believe. Talks to renew the contract reached an impasse last August. NBC wanted to be able to charge more than $1.99 for its most popular shows. Apple insisted on a flat per-show rate and claimed that the network wanted to raise prices to as much as $4.99 per episode. (See Apple to NBC: Drop Dead.)

In a recent interview, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker insisted its demands were "modest" and complained that Steve Jobs was undervaluing video content in order to sell more iPods.

“We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side,” he said, according to Variety.

For a simple comedy sketch, the Saturday Night Live takeoff on the new "black backdrop" Apple (AAPL) iPhone ads carries an awful lot of corporate baggage.

The bit aired Nov. 3 and the video was posted the next day on YouTube — and enthusiastically linked to by TechCrunch.

It's funny enough, with a clever set-up for the "pinch it" gesture. But by Sunday afternoon, NBC Universal (GE) had scrubbed the free version off YouTube, a site that many broadcasters see as a threat to their business model.

If you want to see the SNL sketch today, you either have to go to hulu.com, NBC and News Corp.'s (NWS) invitation-only (while in beta) answer to Apple's iTunes Music Store, or visit the official SNL page on NBC's corporate site. Either way, you must sit through a 15-second TV-style commercial before you get to the clip — a chilling vision of what the Internet would look like if it had been invented by the folks who run broadcast television.

If that weren't enough, the SNL team — inadvertently or not — added what Gizmodo and Cult of Mac see as one more dig at Steve Jobs, with whom NBC has been feuding these many month. If you look closely, you'll notice that the iPhone used in the sketch has a little blue Installer icon on its face, a sure sign that the device was "jailbroken," or hacked, to add unauthorized programs — despite Apple's admonitions to the contrary.

NBC, of course, has bigger things to worry about right now. The Writers Guild called a strike at midnight and promised to set up picket lines in front of 30 Rock this morning, which means that unless the suits plan to write the sketches, SNL will be in reruns for the duration.

For Fake Steve Jobs' screed on the absurdity of the Hollywood labor situation, see his Secret Diary here.

It's been two months since Apple (AAPL) and NBC Universal (GE) broke up over video pricing on iTunes, but the wounds don't seem to have healed — at least for Jeff Zucker.

Variety reports today that NBC's CEO let loose on Apple in a breakfast interview with The New Yorker's Ken Auletta at Syracuse University. Zucker claims that NBC — Apple's single largest video partner — made only $15 million in iTunes sales in the past year. That's about 1/3 of what outsiders had estimated and far less than the entertainment giant is used to pulling in from hit properties like The Office and 30 Rock.

"We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side," he said, according to Variety.

But in describing the negotiations that led to an impasse in August, Zucker repeated claims that Apple has already contradicted, specifically:

• that NBC Universal represented 40% of Apple's iTunes video content (Apple claimed in a press release it was only 30%)
• that its demands were modest: to raise the price of one show — any show — from $1.99 per episode to $2.99 (Apple claimed NBC wanted to hike the per-episode cost to $4.99)

Zucker also suggested that NBC was asking for something Steve Jobs is unlikely to give any media partner: a cut of his iPod sales.

"Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money," Zucker said. "They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing." (link)

NBC's iTunes contract with Apple expires in December and from the tenor of Zucker's remarks, renewal doesn't seem likely. “We know that Apple has destroyed the music business – in terms of pricing – and if we don’t take control, they’ll do the same thing on the video side,” he told the breakfast audience, according to FT.com.

NBC and News Corp., meanwhile, are set to launch Hulu.com, their bid to offer studio-produced video on the Web that's supported, like broadcast TV, with advertising. Hulu is handing out beta subscriptions here, if you want to give it a try.

See What iTunes Looks Like Without NBC and Apple to NBC: Drop Dead