Now that Hulu is pulling an astonishing 42 million viewers per month, its unanticipated success is spooking its creators at NBC and Fox, who are presumably more accustomed to seeing their ideas burst hilariously into flames. The L.A. Times reports this morning that the streaming-video site is causing a rift between its makers and the cable and satellite companies, like Time Warner Cable and DirecTV, who'd like exclusivity in return for the millions they're paying TV networks to broadcast their shows.

Though there's little evidence of people canceling their cable in favor of watching on the Internet (one would guess this would be more popular if cable and Internet weren't bundled by providers), networks are being forced to pull shows like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Psych from the site. Hulu has also disabled Boxee, a service allowing users to stream shows to their televisions, and there's even talk of making people prove that they're paying cable customers before they watch. Oh well; we suppose Hulu was a little too practical for its own good. And there's always BitTorrent!

Hulu's tug of war with TV [LAT]