TV.com Just Might Be a Contender

Ars Technica reports: A month after launching a major site redesign,
TV.com announced on Monday new content partnerships with studios like
Sony Pictures Television, MGM, PBS, and Endemol USA. The move adds more
than 1,000 new TV episodes from shows like Californication and Dead Like Me to TV.com's established community, making it a more powerful force to reckon with for the likes of Hulu and even YouTube.

TV.com's catalog now tops out at around 38,000 videos from over 19,000 shows, ranging from current, popular series like Dexter and Brotherhood to classics like Bewitched, The Addams Family, and even Ken's old favorite, T.J. Hooker.
"With the layering of this content, TV.com continues its mission to be
a place for entertainment, information and community," Senior Vice
President and General Manager of CBS Interactive Entertainment and
Lifestyle Anthony Soohoo said in a press release.

Indeed, TV.com's established community is what gives it a leg up on new
challengers to the throne, such as Hulu, the NBC and FOX joint venture
which Ars Technica dubbed 2008's best piracy-reduction program.

Before CBS redesigned TV.com, it enjoyed 16 million monthly unique visitors who stopped by to check TV schedules, post in forums, read industry news, and participate in polls. In contrast, Hulu saw 24 million uniques last October. But after launching a cleaner, more mature site design last month that introduced full-length content while maintaining a high emphasis on community, TV.com says it saw an 18 percent increase in unique visitor traffic and a 17 percent increase in time spent on the site.

The new design takes an unapologetic page (or three) from Hulu's design book, but features things like a shoutbox on the front page, polls and ratings for each episode, and a wealth of information and trivia about each show and its stars.

"It's not enough today to just rebroadcast television shows online," Soohoo continues in the press release, firing a shot across the bows of Hulu and the many competitors in the mainstream online video space. "People go online for the community interaction and no one is better at building thriving online communities around content than TV.com."

It is a bit early to tell, but Soohoo may have a point. If everyone from TV.com, to Hulu, and even Sling.com are drawing from virtually the same catalog of mainstream content, the battle for eyeballs will be fought with weapons like great forums and content integration. TV.com already had an established community with lots of extra information and media to keep visitors engaged. With CBS actively bulking up TV.com's content catalog, it is likely to turn into a serious player in a rapidly evolving market.

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