Hulu saves TV

Let's face it, even snobs like some television programs. We all do. The boob tube has something for everybody.

What's made TV awful to watch is not the programming per se as much as it is the packaging of the content. Those relentless commercial interruptions with inane, insipid and often inappropriate messages that pay for it all. Television executives' strategies have made it increasingly impossible to sit through even good television because the constant shilling for this or that product breaks up stories artificially, ruining plot and character development all in the name of promoting new ED drugs or something.

Sad thing is, TV people know it. Increasingly we're being offered programs "with limited commercial interruption" in hopes that audiences will hang around to watch. Only by accelerating that trend can television defend its turf against Hulu.

Hulu is how modern TV should be. Endless choice, watched on-demand and "with limited commercial interruption." Not no commercials. Just a few.

Most viewers appreciate the value of good commercials, both in terms of entertainment and information. The people who run Hulu know this. So they only include two or three breaks during a program. Better still, there's only one commercial at a time and it comes with a decrementing counter so you can see when the program starts back up. The longest ad I've seen takes 30 seconds.

I'm guessing the ads cost much less than, say, the $750,000 or so it costs for a 30-second spot on "American Idol," but at least I watch Hulu ads, even ones reprised from television seem better. Maybe because I'm paying attention, unlike when I screen the same thing on TV.

Hulu has saved TV for me. I can once again watch it. I thank Hulu for cluing me in to some contemporary tweeks and watercooler remarks about characters in "The Office," "House" and other programs I wouldn't otherwise have sat through.

And I haven't been the only one who has turned on Hulu while leaving my Sony Trinitron turned off. According to comScore, the site grew the number of videos watched by 45% last month and Hulu visitors watch those videos for longer than on other sites. The NBC-Fox-owned Hulu is now the number 4 site in online videos watched.

The problem for Hulu, of course, is that the lion's share of its high-definition, high quality content comes from television. If everyone wises up and shifts to watching programs on Hulu, television will wither and die (faster than it already is). Then what will Hulu watchers watch?