TV moving online: From 'Starsky & Hutch' to 'Lost'

The Boston Globe reports:

Jessica Torrez-Riley, a 20-year-old Northeastern University student, never thought of herself as a big television viewer - until she discovered how much TV she could watch without a TV. There were the episodes of "Lost" that she could catch the next day on ABC.com. And the old episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" that she watches on Hulu.com, a new streaming-video site, launched by Fox and NBC, that puts at her fingertips a remarkable bounty of programming.


"In high school, I would watch TV at night but I never really was invested in a show because I couldn't be consistent with it," she said. "I never really got invested in TV shows until I got my first laptop."

Now, if she chooses, she can get invested in far more than the current Fox and NBC fare that makes up much of Hulu's online library, which opened to the public this month. There are also Woody Woodpecker cartoons, clips from the 1990s sketch show "In Living Color," and 37 episodes of "Starsky & Hutch." They're all available for free, supported by unskippable ads - as are dozens of movies, from "The Big Lebowski" to "Sideways." And in a nod to the tech-savvy users that make up Hulu's early audience, an entire Hulu show can be embedded in a blog.

Towards the alacarte world.