Is TV.com Sneaking Up on Hulu?

Written by Ryan Lawler

Thursday, June 4. 2009 at 03:00 PM EDT Post a comment

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While growth slows down at Hulu LLC , CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS)'s recently relaunched online video portal seems to be picking up steam.

TV.com, which CBS acquired as part of last year's acquisition of CNET Networks, was relaunched in January as an online video portal to compete with YouTube, Hulu, and other video destination sites.

According to comScore data released by CBS Interactive, the site posted year-over-year increases of more than 1,000 percent for unique viewers, a 1,930 percent increase in video streams, and a 9,180 percent increase in minutes spent on the site. But since the TV.com of a year ago wasn't a video-centric site, it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison.

More relevant to a discussion of TV.com's growth are the 20 percent increase in unique viewers, the 40 percent increase in minutes spent on the site, and the 17 percent increase in total streams that were viewed between March and April.

Increased viewership at TV.com is one reason why CBS Interactive has snuck into the top five Web video properties, as measured by unique viewers. With 37,063 uniques during April, CBS Interactive finds itself behind Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) (107.9 million unique viewers), Fox Interactive Media (58.8 million uniques), Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) (45.4 million uniques), and Hulu (40.1 million uniques).

But the picture looks even better when one considers the number of minutes each site delivers. With 20.4 minutes minutes per viewer, TV.com's user engagement lags behind only YouTube (161 minutes per viewer) and Hulu (61 minutes per viewer) in comScore's top 10 video properties.

CBS Interactive's growth comes despite Hulu content being pulled from TV.com earlier this year. The growth also comes despite -- or perhaps as a result of -- the company's decision to remain in control of its video content.

With Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS)'s decision to join Fox Broadcasting Co. and NBC Universal as a partner on Hulu, CBS will remain the lone broadcast company to not have its video distributed through the site.