Look out, TV is moving online

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: another video aggregating site, which has yet to catch fire.

Over the last 18 months, Comcast Interactive Media created its own video player, Fancast.com, released to the public in January. It features network shows and movies, points users toward TV listings, and will soon allow them to programme their DVRs directly from the site.

Hulu entered the crowded field relatively recently. It was founded in March 2007 as a joint venture between NBC and Fox — which own major stakes in the site, along with the company’s employees and an equity firm that invested $100 million. In July, Hulu hired CEO Jason Kilar, an Amazon.com veteran who, according to company spokeswoman Christina Lee, preached an “absolute maniacal focus on the user experience.”

For Hulu, that meant ease of navigation. As developers built the site, Lee said, Kilar insisted Hulu had to pass his ‘Mom Test’: His mother should be able to figure it out on her own in 15 seconds. Before it was ready for test-use, she said, Kilar e-mailed his mother access with no further explanation. Before long, she had called him to say she was enjoying watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Hulu has expanded its library to include offerings from MGM, Sony, Lionsgate, Warner Brothers, the NBA, and the NHL. There are video clips from the Onion News Network and straight-to-the-web series such as Prom Queen. What isn’t there is the user-generated content that made YouTube a sensation. Hulu will remain a site for professional shows, professionally produced, Lee said.

“We want to stand for something and we want to stand for premium content,” she said.

McQuivey said YouTube really isn’t Hulu’s competition. “YouTube really fills that social need we have to have a shared story as a country, and shared jokes and shared inspiration,” he said.

Hulu, he said, fills our national need for TV. (He predicts the site will be used much more often for TV than for movies.)

Right now, Hulu isn’t giving out numbers, but Lee said its use has exceeded expectations. So has its depth: Each week, Lee said, more than 80% of the site’s video library is viewed. Which means that right now, somewhere, someone is probably glued to a desktop computer, watching WKRP in Cincinnati.