Hulu, the would-be one-stop website for professional video content, has, in its short life, captured significant eyeballs in the U.S.

And while some Canadian broadcasters gird for the possibility of the service coming north, Rogers Cable is in development on a similar offering of its own.

Launching a year ago, Hulu is a free service that, on its own website and on partner sites, allows users to stream full episodes of popular TV shows, feature films and professionally produced video clips from more than 130 media companies. Featured content includes eps of The Office and Family Guy, Saturday Night Live highlights, older movies and plenty of new trailers.

The odd Canadian title also pops up, such as the flick Wilby Wonderful – likely due to the presence of Hollywood darling Ellen Page – while science-themed drama ReGenesis is among its most-streamed series.

What is most extraordinary about Hulu is that it is a joint venture between NBC Universal and Fox parent News Corporation – competitors on the big and small screens – along with Providence Equity Partners, which ponied up US$100 million.

The initial idea behind Hulu, which is independently operated, was ostensibly to combat online piracy, not to mention the runaway success of Google’s YouTube. (Prior to Hulu’s launch, NBC announced it would no longer supply YouTube with clips.)

When the service was first announced in 2007, it was widely derided as a lame attempt by big media to hop on the digital bandwagon, but with a quality library of more than 1,150 titles and a pretty good video player (test it at www.hulu.com/hulu-tv-ads), Hulu has been a winner. As of last fall, it had rocketed to sixth-most-popular online video brand in the U.S., and in the month of January recorded 250 million streams and 24.4 million unique viewers, according to comScore.

Hulu says the majority of its audience is in the key 18-49 demo, evenly split between men and women. It generates revenue through banners and video ads – placed in the natural ad breaks in the case of TV shows, but taking up only 25% of traditional TV’s ad time.

It might seem surprising that NBC and Fox would willingly undermine the popularity of their own respective websites, which stream the same content, but the notion of one site featuring videos from several of the top studios has caught on with users.

But don’t bother looking for content on Hulu if you live north of the 49th, because all you will get is a message that, in the carefully geo-blocked world of digital rights, it’s only available in the U.S. [Ed: unless you’re an average 13-year-old, who knows how to bounce an IP address…]

Nonetheless, Hulu is talking up its international rollout. Canadian broadcasters have had discussions with Hulu and take seriously its possible arrival here. One broadcast executive, who requested anonymity, said that he would gladly work with Hulu’s Canadian rollout if his company stood to benefit in a major way. Whatever exclusive content Canadian casters could bring to the equation would help them profit from Hulu’s entry.

But others question just how keen Hulu is for our home and native land. The ad market here has yet to embrace the online platform to the extent it has in other countries. According to a recent report from Ofcom, the regulator of the U.K. communications industries, 10% of sponsors’ ad spends in Canada go to the Internet, compared to 19% in the U.K. and 17% in Sweden, making territories such as those more attractive targets.

So not only is the Canadian ad pie small, but, in the current configuration, that pie would have to be divided several ways to include Canadian broadcasters such as CTVglobemedia and Canwest that have negotiated hard for the digital rights for their U.S. programming. Of course, NBC and Fox could just cut them out of the online space, but it is doubtful they would do anything to alienate the Canuck partners that pay such steep prices to air their shows.

With Hulu currently absent in Canada, there has been a dangling opportunity for a homegrown one-stop video destination. And sure enough, Rogers has announced that it is developing such a service for its subscribers. The Rogers Cable Broadband Video Service would, in theory, replicate the distributor’s TV offering online, allowing Rogers Cable customers to access on their computers the same programming they already pay to watch on TV.

‘Our portal will provide online, on-demand versions of all the programming we can obtain from our broadcast partners,’ said David Purdy, VP and GM, television services at Rogers Cable, at the recent CRTC hearing on broadcasting in new media.

And while such a portal would make an attractive add-on for Rogers subscribers, it would still be threatened by the availability of Hulu, which is ad-driven and free to all. Hulu would also be problematic to BDUs in that some customers, if satisfied enough with the content and picture quality they could get on Hulu or a comparable site, might even be inclined to cancel their cable or satellite service.

Another roadblock to Rogers’ portal is the same crowded digital rights situation regarding U.S. shows. It would be far easier to sort out the rights for domestic content, and while Canadian shows would benefit from being on Rogers’ site, the absence of top U.S. shows would limit the public’s enthusiasm for such a service.

Alan Sawyer, principal at Two Solitudes Consulting, believes that no matter how it all plays out, now is not the time. The CRTC just wrapped its new media hearing, and its decisions won’t be released for months. Under the commission’s 1999 New Media Exemption Order, there have been no foreign ownership or Canadian content rules regarding ventures such as Hulu, but that, and a lot more, could change.

‘I’d be cautious about investing in any significant capital expenditure or infrastructure or content licensing deals, particularly if it involves foreign content or foreign ownership. These could be undermined by changes in regulatory policy,’ Sawyer says. ‘We just really don’t know what’s going to come out of the commission.’