Hulu is off to a strong start according to BusinessWeek. Viewers are comfortable with long duration content, the limited commercials and 4,000 hours of content posted to date. While not making a lot of money yet, the service is doing far better than early critics predicted.

The joint project between FOX/News Corp and NBC/Universal to provide online TV content is now attracting millions of viewers with its well crafted PC and Mac interface.

hulu.com

One big gamble was limiting commercials to just a few minutes per hour -- or at the start of the show. Broadcast TV has up to 16 minutes of commercials per hour. The other gamble was whether viewers aged 18-44 would be comfortable with long-form video online on their computer, an idea criticized early by YouTube apologists. They are.

In addition, viewers can vote on whether they like the commercials, and the system can tailor itself to the viewer’s interests. That information, with personal identity held private, is then passed on to advertisers. In addition, Hulu struck early agreements with portals like AOL, Comcast, MSN and Yahoo!. Hulu is expected to exceed 100 million viewers for the second month in a row.

CEO Jason Kilar hasn’t said that Hulu is yet making money, but it’s "well ahead of plan," he said. With a solid PC and Mac interface, limited commercials, and viewers seeing only the ads they like, Hulu is off to a great start. The challenge now is to make money.