Hulu is the new “YouTube2″ from media giants NewsCorp and NBC Universal. It will be the online home of quality TV content such as 24, The Office and The Simpsons. Apart from “where do they get that name?”, the online world is asking the question, will Hulu take off?

A quick look at today’s ‘most popular’ on YouTube tells us that both user generated and ‘corporate’ generated TV content are happy bedfellows. Corporate content runs through many of the most popular clips, though in virtually all cases it has been reduced to snippets or rearranged as a video montage.

As well as being cuts, these popular clips have another tricky characteristic for the likes of NewsCorp and NBC Universal: they are short, often just a few minutes long. This is because YouTube uploaders know what YouTube viewers want. When people use YouTube they are in a particular mindset; they are looking for immediate results; that moment when… Viewers are often not interested in the ten minutes before or the ten minutes after the key moment.

In my view, watching TV programmes is something altogether different. TV programmes are longer and made to make us relax. Plots are skilfully built and delivered in a linear fashion to keep us riveted to the screen. We must sit until the end of the programme to get the reveal. These programmes are designed to distract us over time. That’s why time flies when we watch good television.

It is true that convenience could be the blue touchpaper of Hulu’s success. YouTube has trained us to expect something different; something more convenient. It has shown us that we can get the content we want when we want it. It has given us the freedom to schedule for ourselves in the same way we have scheduled non-broadcast media for decades. This training from YouTube is a great asset for Hulu.

So can Hulu work? I think the answer to this is platform driven. YouTube is currently a PC based web application. Can the mindset that seeks online convenience be distracted by the same thing for 30 minutes or more? Is the PC or laptop the right platform to engage at this level? I’m not so sure. But in the medium term, if IPTV takes off and the Internet makes it onto the 28″ screen, then Hulu could be a phenomenal success.