The site's appearance is clean and streamlined, with viewer favorites rising to the top of the listings. Many classic television shows, such as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The A-Team," are searchable by episode description, as are scores of current programs including "Heroes," "The Simpsons," "24," "My Name Is Earl" and "Saturday Night Live."
Some shows have full seasons from the past available, and Kilar said he wanted to offer new episodes the day after they air on television and make available at least the five most recent.
"The interface is very elegant," McQuivey said. He added that the ability to share material easily would put major pressure on rivals such as Joost and on the TV networks that mainly keep Internet versions of shows at their own websites.
Launching the service in a test mode, the company will allow a limited number of people to apply for access to Hulu.com as it works out the kinks. The shows also will be available through Hulu's alliances with major Web destinations including Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, Yahoo Inc. and News Corp.'s MySpace.
"We'll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch," News Corp. President Peter Chernin said in a statement.
He and other executives are hoping to win over other big television providers during the test period.
Ad revenue will be split among the owners of the shows, the Internet distributors and Hulu.
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joseph.menn@latimes.com
