Desperate Housewives

In television's latest quest to discourage viewers from skipping ads, actors from NBC and ABC shows are appearing in character in commercials to interact with products in parallel story lines.

This new kind of commercial further blurs the line between program and advertisement and comes as traditional product placements within shows, an early response to fast-forwarding, have become common.

A series of spots that debuted this week weaves Palm Inc.'s Pre phone more deeply into the story line of two prime-time dramas.

More than two months after the online video service Hulu first announced a relationship with ABC-TV and said it would begin featuring content from the network, it has made its first shows available.

Six shows from season five of Grey's Anatomy have been added on Hulu.com and another 35 Web sites that offer the service. Two shows are from the season opener, two from the middle of the season, and the two shows leading up to the finale.

The Walt Disney Company on Thursday announced what many analysts have been predicting: It's buying a stake in online video-content aggregator Hulu.

Through a subsidiary of ABC Enterprises, Disney will join NBC Universal, News Corp., and Providence Equity Partners as a joint-venture partner and equity owner of Hulu. Disney is taking a 30 percent stake in the quasi-YouTube competitor.

ABC has a new Webcast deal, this time with Internet television service Veoh. Under the arrangement, full-length episodes of Desperate Housewives, Lost and Ugly Betty will be available on Veoh's Web site. The deal is only the second time ABC has licensed content to an independent vendor.

Other networks, notably NBC, have moved much more aggressively into the strange new land in which networks produce content for broadcast, then license other sites to replay it. NBC and Fox joined forces last year to create Hulu.com, a portal for the networks' content.