Hulu is digging deeper into the indie film world with plans to launch a section on the Internet vid provider's home base dedicated to documentary pics.

The move comes after Hulu programmers were impressed by the success the streaming vid platform has had in had in  recent months with feature-length docus including "The Life and Times of Harvey Milk," the Bush-centric "Crawford" and "Hoop  Dreams."

As of this (Thursday) morning, about 100 docu pics will be added to Hulu's archive, including Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me"; and recent film fest faves "Kicking It," about a soccer competish for homeless people in South Africa; "Confessions of a Super Hero," about the costumed denizens of Hollywood Boulevard; and "DIG!," about the love-hate relationship between members of alterna-rock bands Brian Jonestown Massacre and Dandy Warhols. Hulu's trove of docu fare will also include a range of TV productions.

Hulu execs say they've been pleasantly surprised to see the viewership stats for docus climb as they've added more intriguing titles. Docs like "Crawford" and "Harvey Milk" have also generated a huge amount of chatter in Hulu's comments section. A Q&A with "Crawford" helmer David Modigliani also generated heavy traffic for Hulu, indicating that there's a clear opportunity for Hulu to serve as a forum for docu lovers to interact with filmmakers, according to Andy Forssell, senior veep of content acquisition and distribution.

"'Crawford'woke us up to an opportunity we have to highlight films that offer great content but don't always have the marketing budgets to make that connection with the audience," Forssell said. "We can play a great part in making those connections and offering filmmakers reach in a very cost-effective way."

The hits just keep on coming for "Lost."

ABC drama appears to lead the TV-on-Internet herd by a wide margin, drawing 2.5 million unique viewers in the month of February, according to the latest numbers from Nielsen Online. Those 2.5 million viewers initiated some 48 million streams of "Lost" episodes, clips and made-for-Web content a la the ultra-fun audio and video podcasts that showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse grace us with once a week (or thereabouts).

As much as I love writing "'Lost' is No. 1'," there's an important caveat to these numbers. Nielsen Online's monthly survey does not include numbers from Hulu, the NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture. Hulu is on a tear these days, as readers of today's Daily Variety know from this page 1 story on Hulu climbing to No. 2 among online video providers behind only YouTube (which remains the equivalent of Wal-Mart, Microsoft, McDonalds and Toyota combined when it comes to online vid).

ABC.com ranks No. 6 among Internet vid providers for February with 187.1 million streams, up 14.5% from January. Hulu, on the back of its big marketing push, spiked 33% to 309 million streams. The average Hulu viewer spent 176.9 minutes watching its vid, compared to 104.8 minutes for ABC.com

So with that understanding, here's the rest of the top five online TV shows per Nielsen's report. They're mostly ABC shows, but that would likely change if only Hulu would cough up some show-specific numbers. Nielsen's report does include the individual websites of Hulu partners NBC and Fox, so there is some representation of their shows.

"Grey's Anatomy" -- 18.7 million streams/1.3 million unique viewers

"The Bachelor" -- 15.1 million streams/962,000 unique viewers

"The Office" -- 15 million streams

"Heroes" -- 11.7 million streams

So much for the utopian vision of ubiquitous of program syndication via Internet.

CBS Corp. and Hulu, the joint Internet vid venture of NBC Universal and News Corp., are scrapping over their Internet vid ambitions.

Hulu on Tuesday yanked all of its video off of CBS' TV.com site, saying in a statement that it was "exercising" its contractual rights to pull its vid.

CNET, TV.com's parent company, was recruited as one of Hulu's charter distribution partners when the venture was formed in 2007. But that was before CBS Corp. bought CNET last year.

CBS has a different interpretation of CNET's contract with Hulu, which undoubtedly involved some form of ad revenue sharing.

"CBS Interactive is well within its rights to stream Hulu video content on TV.com under its agreement with Hulu. We are evaluating our next steps at this time," CBS said in a statement.

Hulu's move comes on the heels of CBS' recent push to beef up TV.com beyond being a fan-centric site (clips, interviews, episode guides, etc.) to offering streaming vid of full-length episodes. Having access to Hulu's menu of NBC- and Fox-produced shows certainly didn't hurt that effort.

On the other hand, CBS has never licensed any of the content it controls (CBS, CW, Showtime) to Hulu, so maybe the Hulu folks thought "Hey, fair's fair" and "why are we helping to build up a competitor?" And yet the whole premise behind Hulu was to get the shows distribbed via the company's proprietary player as far and wide on the Internet as possible -- syndication 2.0.

As of Thursday evening, TV.com still had links to a number of NBC series up on its "full episode" menu. But anyone hoping to watch an episode of, say, NBC's "Life" or FX's "Damages" is abruptly cut off with a black screen and a terse "video unavailable" message.

The Internet may be blazing new trails for program distribution, but it appears that old habits die hard when longtime old-media competitors are at the controls.

Here’s a news flash: “Lost” is a hit online. But so is CW’s “Privileged.”

For the first time, Nielsen Online has released rankings for online streaming of episodes and clips.
“Lost” tops the chart for the month of December with 1.4 million unique viewers, followed by NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” with 1.1 million.

By the yardstick of the total time viewers spent with a show online, the surprise leader in December was CW’s “Privileged.” The rating-challenged dramedy drew only 29,000 unique viewers, but those that did tune in stuck around for an average of 214.6 minutes.

There’s a big caveat to these rankings, however, in that they don’t include shows streamed via Hulu because Hulu won’t breakout its numbers to Nielsen (at least if I'm reading Nielsen-ese right. A Nielsen Online rep would only say that Hulu is "not available in our syndication service.")

Nielsen’s survey includes the websites of Hulu partners NBC and Fox, as well as ABC, CBS and CW. But by all accounts, Hulu's vid streaming traffic has outpaced that of the Peacock and Fox nets' individual websites. The survey captures clips that are embedded on other websites and blogs, as long as the streams come from the network's proprietary player (but not Hulu's player).

This just in from Dr. Horrible's lab: By popular demand, and a hell of a response from the crowd at Comic- Con, "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" will be offered via web streaming on Hulu for the next four months.

It's a slight departure from the Dr. Horrible world domination plan articulated by mastermind Joss Whedon a few weeks ago. When the first installment of the Internet musical monster was unleashed July 15, the notion was that it would only be available for free for a six days via the www.drhorrible.com site, and then taken down to build demand for a DVD release. (A guestimate on the traffic numbers for its July 15-20 stint is about 1 million views.)

But an extended engagement on Hulu seemed in keeping with the D.I.Y spirit of the supervillain tuner, which Whedon funded out of his pocket just to see what he and his brothers Zack and Jed and Jed's fiance, Maurissa Tancharoen, would come up with if left to their own devices. With the help of stars Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day.

"Dr. Horrible" will remain available on iTunes as a paid download, for those who just have to own it. Meanwhile, Joss' reps are taking meetings with homevid distribs who want a piece of the DVD action, which Joss has promised will include a second musical dubbed "Commentary!," as well as a proper (well...) commentary track.

To herald the Hulu deal, Joss posted a blog entry on Hulu.com calling the NBC Universal-News Corp. joint Internet vid venture "the premier site for people who like joy and life and children and America."

Wonder why the Internet seems to be moving slower and slower these days? Maybe it's because of all the  18-34-year-olds out there hogging all the bandwidth.

Internet ratings provider has comScore let loose some eye-opening stats about Internet vid consumption. For starters, comScore estimates that U.S. consumers watched 11 billion Internet vids in April, running an average of 2.8 minutes a pop. The average Web surfer watched 228 minutes of video online during the month, with 18-34-year-olds being the heaviest-viewing demo at an average of 287 minutes. More than 70% of U.S. online users watched some online vid during the month. YouTube alone accounted for 4.1 billion, or 38%, of those 11 billion vids viewed, which breaks down to 49.8 vids for each of its 82.1 million viewers. MySpace ranked No. 2 with 481 million vids served up to 46 million viewers...

... The Disney Channel may help pull some of those people away from their computer screens next month with the smallscreen debut of its 3-D theatrical sensation "Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds" concert pic. Mouse House will hand out free 3-D glasses at Wal-Mart Stores (while supplies last, which probably won't be long) starting July 5 in preparation for the pic's July 26 premiere on Disney Channel. There's also a brand-new "Hannah Montana" seg set to bow July 20 to whip up more enthusiasm for the concert pic. I'm thinking the "Best of Both Worlds" telecast is gonna be huge for Disney Channel -- maybe not "High School Musical 2" 17 million-plus viewers big, but I wouldn't be surprised if it comes close. Ask anyone who's done a blog post on "Hannah Montana" -- it's the gift that keeps on giving, traffic-wise....

POSTED BY MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

News Corp. and NBC Universal on Wednesday unveiled the official name to their new online video joint venture: Hulu. Hulu?

Apparently the branding companies that specialize in company names are simply picking up a Hawaiian language dictionary these days. (How do I get a piece of that action, by the way? For a few hundred grand, I give any of you permission to swipe a name off the list of songs we've played on Hawaiian Eye.)

After all, Wikipedia comes from the Hawaiian phrase "wiki wiki," or "fast." The search engine Mahalo takes its name after the word for "thank you." Internet tech company Akamai means "smart" in Hawaiian. The list goes on.

Now, there's "hulu," which means "feather, quill, plumage" in Hawaiian, according to the "Hawaiian Dictionary" by Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbert (above). The secondary definition is actually rather nice: "esteemed, choice, precious."

Of course, I have no idea whether the folks behind Hulu -- until now only known as "NewCo" -- were thinking Hawaiian. (It was the first thing that came to my mind -- several hula halaus around the globe have the word "Hulu" in their name.) On the site, CEO Jason Kilar explained his choice this way:

Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we're building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world's premier content when, where and how you want it.

Now, Hulu ever expands overseas, it may run into some unfortunate translation problems, particularly in Indonesia -- according to this list found at Websters Online Dictionary: (Lots more after the jump)