Aha! ABC has finally debuted on web TV outlet Hulu, loading on some episodes of ratty old Grey's Anatomy. Eventually we'll get other delightful ABC fare like Ugly Betty, the newly-acquired Scrubs, and Desperate Housewives. [Variety]

Now that he's in a huge summer movie and is a bigtime movie star, The Hangover star Zach Galifianakis just isn't sure what to do with himself. Should he do Todd Phillips' funnily-named Man-Witch, or Todd Phillips' blandly-named Due Date? Or what about Say Uncle (in which, we're guessing, he stars as something of a modern-day, more Dadaist Uncle Buck)? Look, as long as "Between Two Ferns" comes back here and there, we'll be happy. [THR]

Hmm... Rita Wilson, the wife of struggling actor Tom Hanks, will executive produce a developing HBO series based on Jeffrey Eugenides' beautiful novel Middlesex. So it'll be, what, a hermaphrodite coming-of-age story set in 60s and 70s era Detroit? We would probably watch that. Playwright Donald Margulies is involved as well. Hmmmmm. [Variety]

Everyone put in your earplugs, the screeching is about to begin. Current trash-talking comedy lady Kathy Griffin will soon be roasting old-timey trash-talking comedy lady Joan Rivers for that dreadful and needlessly profane Comedy Central Roast series. So much yelling and boob jokery. [THR]

Oh, good. Some guy named Jeremy Garelick (some sort of dairy heir, perhaps?), who did an uncredited rewrite on The Hangover, is writing a "funny" movie script based on that already funny without even trying series Baywatch. Because, you know, our minds have become lazy and fattened and it's too much work to infer the joke from the original, completely ridiculous Baywatch. No, we need it fed to us in comestible comedy format. With lots of boob jokery. Though, oh what the hell, it could be funny anyway. [Variety]

The set for Jay Leno's new 10pm daily talker will be made large enough to accommodate a car, as Jay might drive one of his precious automobiles on stage at the top of the show. But will it be made large enough to accommodate his chin?? (See! It's not that hard to write Jay Leno-style jokes!) [THR]

Virginia Madsen has joined the cast of that indie Kevin Spacey comedy The Father of Invention. She'll play his bitchy ex-wife. Slow and steady, Ginny. Slow and steady. [Variety]

MARKETING STRATEGY 1: Blackmail you into viewing its hour-long adver-show on Hulu:

Those Hulu users who watch the "Bing-a-thon" will receive a reward: the ability to watch TV shows or movies on hulu.com without commercial interruptions. (Yes, you have to watch a commercial to avoid watching other commercials.)

MARKETING STRATEGY 2: Have product snickered at by television's least funny late night host:

For instance, the segments on "Late Show" will present Mr. Fallon as a quiz master, asking contestants to use bing.com to search for answers to questions in categories like travel, health and shopping.
" ‘Bing' sounds like a Jimmy Fallon word," Mr. Silverman said, laughing.

Here's another Jimmy Fallon word: Shut Up. Google it.
[NYT]

Reports Bercovici:

Speaking last night at an Internet Week event sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter, Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s newly-installed chief digital officer, said he envisions a future where at least some of the TV shows and movies on Hulu, the premium video site co-owned by News Corp. (NWS), NBC Universal and Disney (DIS), are available only to subscribers.

Bercovici also quoted Miller as saying that the issue could come up as soon as Monday at a Hulu board meeting, though it's not not on the agenda at present. He also closed by saying, "I don't see why over time that shouldn't happen."

Oh well, we suppose that moderately web savvy people will be forced to find ways to illegally circumvent paying for Hulu's content on the internet, just like they always do with everything else they don't feel like paying for.

Soon, You'll Have to Pay For Hulu [Daily Finance]

Plus ABC Family! So, phew, you can finally catch up on Greek. (No, really, you should.)

This also makes CBS the only major network to not host any content on the site, because they have a deal with TV.com and old people are bewildered by the internet anyway.

Hulu still comes in third in video site viewership, behind MySpace and YouTube, but in quality, it's so totally the best. And we're not even shilling! We actually enjoy it and use it. Go figure.

[TheWrap]

The search giant is doing its best to stanch large bandwidth losses at its video site ($470 million says Credit Suisse, though Google disputes that). It is thinking about charging for some videos, CEO Eric Schmidt told the New York Times, while the Wall Street Journal reports the company is exploring a deal to offer some videos exclusively to Time Warner cable subscribers.

The two networks are fighting over who gets a deal for ABC shows. The Journal reports Hulu, which now carries NBC and Fox, is the likely winner.

In the meantime, YouTube is offering TV shows like Married with Children and movies like Carrie here, thanks to new deals with studios like Lions Gate, MGM and Sony.

Also in the meantime, pretty much everyone will continue watching Hulu, with its clean interface, crisp-looking video and viewer-friendly commercial options. And the News Corp.-NBC Universal joint venture will continue to have the best shot at turning a profit where the supposed Web geniuses at Google have failed.

Apparently Viacom and Time Warner Cable have been negotiating over fees for months, and haven't been able to reach a deal. Viacom said it wants an increase of somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 cents per month, per subscriber across all channels, including Nickelodeon, VH1 and MTV. That's pretty bold given the state of the economy, and given that Viacom this year moved more of its content onto the internet, where it can be watched for free, arguably undermining cable subscriptions.

But Time Warner is still jacking up rates in some areas, despite the economy. And Viacom overlord Redstone holds company stock as collateral for personal loans he is desperately trying to renegotiate. Staring down the longest advertising decline since the Great Depression, he's got to be eager to wrangle (for Viacom) whatever revenue increases he can get his hands on.

As Nikki Finke points out, these sorts of disputes are usually resolved within hours of cable systems yanking the channels. They should be especially eager to do so this year: The longer channels stay off cable boxes, the longer subscribers have to find their favorite shows online. The Daily Show is on Hulu now, after all.

UPDATE: Viacom is taking off the gloves with awesome/evil ads like the one up top, involving "SpongeBob Squarepants," and a similar one involving a crying "Dora the Explorer." The Wall Street Journal writes, "While programmers and operators often battle fiercely over contract renewals, Viacom's campaign is notable in its willingness to pull children into the debate."

ComScore, a Web-traffic measurement firm, reports that visitors to Hulu.com dropped 11 percent from October to November, when it only drew 4.8 million viewers. NBC.com dropped by half, from 14.1 million to 7.2 million. Which only makes sense, says Peter Kafka at MediaMemo, since NBC.com and Hulu were the two places where people could see legal copies of Tina Fey's Palin impressions for Saturday Night Live.

Look, I realize Palin has gone back to Juneau to sort through all the clothing the Republican National Committee bought for her. But new media badly needs some star power. Can't we give her her own YouTube channel or something?

Sure, the site features high-quality video and full-length episodes, a big improvement over the situation just a couple of years ago, when the networks seemed to be ignoring the Web. And as Stelter notes, there are way fewer commercials — about a quarter as much time given over to ads, judging from The Office and Family Guy.

Hulu, which is owned by NBC and Fox, says it's keeping advertising brief on purpose. But you just know the network suits will eventually add more and more advertisements , which — key point — you won't be able to fast-forward through. Hopefully you won't have ditched your DVR by then!

In the meantime: Did you know Hulu added full-length Daily Show episodes? That's right: One more reason to let your guard down. A sample:

Networks have been experimenting with early releases online for some time now as a way to counteract modern viewing habits such as skipping past all the network promos with a TiVo. But just a couple of weeks ago, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker was telling us all that by not airing Olympic events live or letting viewers watch them online, the network was creating "excitement" via "word of mouth" by withholding the opening ceremonies. Then again, the opening ceremonies in Beijing were actually interesting. The third-place network is correctly guessing that there's no way anybody is going to be eagerly anticipating the new season of Knight Rider — which is going to need all the help it can get.

As Silicon Alley Insider discovered, some 14 of the site's top 20 most popular movie clips are basically soft-core porn (well, maybe not that Reno 911! clip). The reigning champ? That would the scene "Topless Pillow Fight" from legendary party flick Animal House. There's a (obviously NSFW) clip below, but be prepared to sit through a couple of ads, because that's how NBC and Fox make their money. REVOLUTIONARY!

[Silicon Alley Insider]

The stated budget for the series of twelve episodes is $3 million, and the magazine, along with production partner IMG, will guarantee 83.4 million video views on social network Bebo alone — which works out to $35 per thousand, plus whatever Vogue takes off the top. The show will also be distributed on Hulu and Veoh, and on Vogue's online video outlet Vogue.tv, so any views over and above the Bebo number brings the CPM, or cost per thousand views, down for Express.

As one fashionista friend remarked, you wouldn't think Vogue would even let Express advertise in the magazine. Trendy knockoff retailer H&M would seem the better fit. But then I'll be getting enough product placement from the new season of Project Runway.

But the online percentage of that upfront spend has been slow to rise over the few years since YouTube was still being incubated at Sequoia, and remains in the single digits while the advertising industry is bracing for a downturn. At a certain point, VCs will come to their senses and stop subsidizing the bandwidth that makes these sites possible, while cable and network sites and startups like Hulu, with the copyright permissions and the content that sponsors love, will continue to outpace any revenue garnered from user-generated content — which one study estimates will account for only 4 percent of the industry's already paltry online video revenues.

While YouTube has hosted videos over ten minutes in the past, notably including feature film Four Eyed Monsters, in-house Google videos and Charles Trippy's longest YouTube video ever stunt, and early content partners have had the freedom to push the envelope from time to time. But now it's official, and it's certainly in the hopes of garnering better content, running more ads and pumping up "engagement" metrics like average time on site.

YouTube has become the poster child for the old saying "we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume." YouTube is broken. The reason is Hulu. Hulu posts clips on YouTube. Those clips cost Hulu nothing, generate traffic to its Hulu site on which it sells out. Two areas that Hulu is stomping Youtube: 1. Revenue Per Video 2. Revenue Per User. Hulu has the right to sell advertising in around every video on its site. YouTube has that right for only [a] small percentage of videos because YouTube hides behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. By next year, Hulu will have more total revenues than YouTube. The more traffic Hulu generates, the more money it makes. The more traffic YouTube generates, the more money it loses. Maybe they think they will make it up with even more volume?

(Photo by eschipul)