Hulu's striking features

By Tom Tapp

Why strike?

NBC U and NewsCorp gave the WGA a very good reason earlier this week when they launched Hulu.com, their joint online video play.

A key reason writers are up in arms is they want a greater share of revenue from DVD sales as well as from the burgeoning online video market. Until now, the online market has been dominated by sites like YouTube that operate in a legal gray area. Because of that, there was really no money on the table

But with the launch of Hulu, NBC and NewsCorp have built an engine to monetize content online by putting entire episodes of shows such as "The Family Guy," "Buffy" and "Heroes" on the site with commercials. It also features films like "The Breakfast Club" with commercials.

Possibly most important in driving views (and revenue) is that all this content can now be embeded in other sites.

Press reaction was mostly positive when Hulu beta-launched earlier this week. But the public, including the WGA leadership, has not been given a look at the potential strike starter. Until now.

While Hulu remains locked to uninvited guests, the web intelligentsia has found a backdoor in.

NewTeeVee.com:

Just change the number at the end of this URL to any value between 1 and 1801:

http://www.hulu.com/embed/100

For instance:

http://www.hulu.com/embed/1500 brings up an SNL sketch featuring Alec Baldwin as Tony Bennett (always funny).

http://www.hulu.com/embed/700 is an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (dig that theme song).

And http://www.hulu.com/embed/1209 is an episode of Arrested Development.

Given that the glitch is fundamental to the site's url naming system, it will likely be hard to fix.

So while strike discussions continue, I invite all WGA members to take a trip through Hulu.

For starters, here's "The Breakfast Club," in its entirety: