As cable becomes more and more expensive (and includes more channels that people ignore) and Internet-based television becomes faster and more accessible, it’s seems as no surprise that people are gravitating towards watching their shows on the Internet or through streaming-series-providers like Netflix. Hulu, however, is far surpassing other avenues for Web-based viewing.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, the U.S. online audience watched 19.4 billion minutes of video, which was twice as much as how much viewers watched on the websites of the five major TV networks combined.  Viewers only watched 9.7 billion minutes of online video from the websites of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the CW combined.

And while Hulu is still dominating viewership, the individual network sites are growing faster – they grew 82% in terms of time spent watching video online, compared to 17% growth for Hulu. In other words, more content became available, and thus, watched, on the network web sites.

And while Hulu is a great distribution channel than individual sites (users can find all of “their shows” in one easy-to-navigate place), the major networks tend to not want to lose their audiences to Hulo – and that tension leads to attempts by Hulu to move to a subscription model and constant negotiations with the networks. Still, Hulu isn’t likely to budge for a while, as shown by Viacom’s latest move, in which they gave Hulu back the permission to stream Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report and The Daily show.

Tags: hulu, abc, nbc, cbs, fox, the cw
Categories: Stuff