The Hulu project developed by NBC and Fox as an alternative to iTunes will fail, according to Don Reisinger in his C|Net Blog. Neither company knows what viewers want, they have a legacy of giving them what they do not want, and Hulu, a diversion to put pressure on Apple, built with little Internet experience will end up frustrating the few viewers who use it.

Mr. Reisinger noted that not only has NBC not renewed its contract with Apple, but it declared that it has pulled all its content off YouTube and will place it all on Hulu ... when it finally goes live.

"There is no chance Hulu will ever become a success," Mr. Reisinger wrote. "And the reason is quite simple: it is being produced by two companies that have no idea what consumers want and are utterly unaware of how the Internet works."

Mr. Reissinger gave Hulu one year and explained in detail the sequence of events that will lead to its demise.

First, NBC is overly enamored with the quality of its shows and believes that people will flock to Hulu. Next, they’ve underestimated the effect of pulling content from YouTube, the most popular video sharing site on the planet. Next, the NBC executives will load Hulu up with commercials. Finally, frustrated viewers will give up on getting through a show amidst all the ads.

Mr. Reisinger doubted that NBC is fully committed to Hulu and saw the venture as a method to put political pressure on Apple. In the end, it will fail its viewers. "So why do I think this will happen? The answer is quite simple: NBC and News Corp. have a proven track record of doing the things we don’t want them to do. Even worse, this is nothing more than a business ploy to put some pressure on Apple and YouTube and try to capitalize on all of that ’unhealthy pirating’ they despise so much."

The result, he predicted, will be a miserable failure that will shake NBC’s and News Corp’s confidence in doing business on the Internet.

"Give it a year, all NBC programming will be back on iTunes and YouTube," he concluded.