As Hulu Picks Up Steam, Disney (DIS) Climbs On Board (GOOG)(NWS)(GE)

Hulu, the large premium video site owned by GE’s (GE) NBC Universal, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners, is growing faster than most analysts expected. According to comScore, Hulu had more than 380 million videos viewed last month, putting it behind only Google’s (GOOG) YouTube property and News Corp (NWS). Based on all online videos viewed in the US in March,” Hulu accounted for 2.6 percent of videos viewed, but 4.9 percent of all minutes spent watching online video. ” The site’s content, mostly from TV and films, have long run times.

The success of Hulu has not been lost on Disney (DIS) which has not put any content on the site, up until now. According to The Wall Street Journal, “As part of the agreement, Disney will invest capital and marketing dollars in a similar amount to NBC Universal and News Corp., which ponied up a combined $100 million to start the venture in 2007.”

Having the additional Disney content should give Hulu a large advantage over YouTube which still runs mostly low-quality, user-created video. Several analysts believe that YouTube loses money because of its significant costs for storing and transmitting its content. YouTube carries very little advertising to offset those costs, which has made it a headache for parent Google.

Douglas A. McIntyre