Confused? Of course. So was I, when I checked out Hulu’s new “Desktop” app, launched today as part of the video service’s new “Labs” collection of experimental offerings.

Basically, it’s downloadable software that makes it easier than ever to watch Hulu’s shows and clips in the same way that you’d watch TV–on your sofa, remote in hand. But Hulu wants to make sure you don’t actually think it replaces TV.

Note how the company describes it: “A lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer” that will work on Macs and PCs with “standard Windows Media Center or Apple remote controls”–but not with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Media Center machines or Apple’s (AAPL) AppleTV boxes. And it also isn’t designed to work with any other Web-to-TV software or boxes, like Vudu.

To spell this out: I’m writing this post from the “cave” that the All Things Digital team has set up for the D7 conference, and it’s full of gorgeous 22-inch and 30-inch Mac displays that are much nicer than anything that sits in my cramped Brooklyn apartment. Hulu is saying that they’d be A-OK with me watching Tina Fey and crew, via their service, on those monitors. But they don’t want me trying to get that show on an actual television.

Isn’t a screen a screen? Nope. Not to Hulu’s owners: GE’s (GE) NBC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, and soon, Disney’s ABC (ABC). To them, it’s important to make the distinction between TV programming, which generates significant ad revenue and/or cable subscription fees, and online video, which generates very little at all. That’s why NBC CEO Jeff Zucker reiterated his opposition to Boxee, the software that makes it easy to move Web video like Hulu to TV sets.

Now all he has to do is convince tech-savvy entertainment consumers to play along. Good luck!

UPDATE: Several readers have suggested to me that Hulu and its owners aren’t as dumb as they seem, and that they do indeed intend to use Desktop eventually, as a Boxee-like product of their own–that is, they will use it to let people watch Hulu on TV. If so, that means that Jeff Zucker wasn’t being honest when he declared that “right now we’re committed to Hulu being an online experience, and that’s where our vision is today, and I think that will continue.”

But for what it’s worth, whenever I’ve talked to anyone at ABC, Fox, NBC or Hulu, all of them have been consistently mindful about not trying to disrupt the existing value chain that supports the cable and broadcast TV business–“the ecosystem” is the euphemism they prefer. So I don’t find Zucker’s comments so far-fetched.

Anyone want to weigh in? If you use your real name you can sound off in the comments below. Or you can drop me a line at  peter@allthingsd.com.

The really good news for NBCU is that GE (GE) shareholders don’t care about its performance because they’re fixated on GE’s massive finance/credit problems. But GE does feel compelled to provide at least a little bit of data about NBC.

For the record, Jeff Zucker’s group saw revenues drop two percent, to $3.5 billion. Earnings came in at $391 million.

Here’s how GE summed up NBCU’s performance for shareholders this morning (click to enlarge):

For those of you in a hurry, a couple highlights: The performance of NBC’s local stations, which has been horrible since the second half of 2008, remains horrible. NBC’s cable business (USA, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.) remains strong. The company says it wrote down some $55 million on its investment in Ion Networks, which owns dozens of local broadcast stations.

And GE spent a couple of words boasting about the performance of Hulu, its joint venture with News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox–and soon, Disney’s (DIS) ABC. GE noted that Hulu is now No. 2 behind Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. Worth remembering as NBC decides exactly how much energy, resources and content it wants to direct Hulu’s way this year and beyond.

For the record, Zucker thinks that “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart was out of line when he launched a multiweek campaign against CNBC in general and Jim Cramer in particular. But Zucker had his own target during this morning Q&A: The U.S. newspaper industry.

Over and over again, Zucker explained NBC’s decisions about Web distribution, prime-time programming or any other issue by announcing that he was willing to embrace change–and that he wasn’t going to hide from it, as the newspapers have.

Sample quote, while explaining NBC’s decision to move Jay Leno to 10 p.m. and essentially concede the prime-time ratings race: “Too many media organizations, particularly print, particularly newspapers, weren’t willing to question the model.” And here’s another one, when he was talking about changing TV viewing habits among kids: If NBC doesn’t embrace change, he said, “we will become the Rocky Mountain News, and we will become the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.”

Want more? I took notes on the Q&A live during the event. To view them, click the “Play” button on the box at the bottom of this post.

NBC Universal CEO is speaking with BusinessWeek’s Ellen Pollock, who I’m sure will at least be able to get him to crack a bigger smile than the one he’s got on the mug shot above.

Zucker’s in an interesting place right now: For much of 2008, he had to defend his unit’s performance (it missed its quarterly goals twice) and insist that it was really unlikely that parent company GE (GE) would sell off NBC altogether. But now that GE’s finance arm is in disarray, NBC looks comparatively healthy.

Hoping we’ll hear about Hulu, Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, the rival Web/cable access plans proposed by Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner (TWX) and Time Warner Cable (TWC).

I’m going to try liveblogging the event with a tool I’ve enjoyed using on other sites, from Coveritlive.com. Let me know how it works for you, either in comments below or via email.

To spell it out: Profits at NBC’s broadcast business–the NBC network along with revenue from local stations the network owns, and revenue from other stations that carry its programming–shrank from $1.4 billion in 2005 to $400 million this year.

That’s a billion dollars of profit that disappeared in three years (or a compound annual growth rate of negative 33 percent, if you like your stats served that way).

Bear in mind that GE (GE) is actually boasting here: It’s using the chart to pat itself on the back for making itself less dependent on broadcast advertising and revenue. Still, it’s always disconcerting to see a billion dollars disappear from the books, no matter how big and how well-positioned you are.

You can blame some of that loss on the fact that NBC has tumbled in the ratings and has never replaced the hits it had in the days of “Seinfeld,” and later, “Friends.”

But hits are cyclical: Wait around long enough, and you end up airing something that works. If NBC thought that hits would be enough to claw back some of that billion, CEO Jeff Zucker wouldn’t be conceding five valuable hours to Jay Leno, who costs less to air than the shows he’s replacing, but has less upside potential.

Instead, Zucker seems to be saying that broadcast TV is a big but shrinking business, and that he’s not going to fight that trend. Hard to argue with the numbers.

While it’s true that Time Warner’s (TWX) magazine unit is embattled, there are bright spots in the portfolio. Take People.com: The gossip magazine has always been one of Time’s strongest performers (good luck trying to find a discounted subscription). Now its companion Web site is, too.

The site boasts 8.6 million unique monthly visitors, per comScore (SCOR), up 36 percent in the last year, and generates a staggering 700 million page views per month–per Omniture (OMTR). Meanwhile, once-hot sites like TMZ.com (another Time Warner property) have tailed off.

Much of the credit for that goes to Mark Golin, the awesomely sharp and frumpy editor best known as the man behind Maxim magazine’s rise, way back in the late 1990s. He’s successfully broadened the site beyond just Britney/Paris/Lindsay news by adding features like a game channel, a shopping channel and the like.

One of the most successful expansions came via acquisition: When People.com bought Celebrity Baby Blog back in May, it was generating 6.9 million page views per month. Now it’s doing 30 million, Time execs say. And before my fellow journobloggers dismiss the work that the people at Celebrity Baby Blog do, ask yourself this: Did you know that Ashlee Simpson has named her kid Bronx Mowgli? Aren’t you glad you know now?

In any case, all those page views are translating into actual dollars–not digital pennies, as NBC’s Jeff Zucker would say. Time Inc. says People.com is now one of its 10 most profitable titles–that’s out of all of the company’s 174 properties, on or offline.

The company won’t attach numbers to that claim, of course. But given that Time Inc. generated $162 million in operating profit during a very lousy third quarter, you can get some sense of the property’s success. Now Time just needs many more just like it.

The New York Post’s Keith Kelly has already reported that layoffs are in motion at People, Time and Sports Illustrated over the next few days; I am told that cuts are also coming to Fortune magazine today or tomorrow. Here’s a Sports Illustrated employee’s take on the situation there:

We are all expecting the hatchet Thursday or Friday. Morale is dismal. One colleague of mine, uber golf writer John Garrity, told several of us that he’s taking the package but will continue on for a while as a special contributor. We expect two or three photo editors to go, and two or three members of the Sport’s Illustrated Latino staff (the Spanish language SI publication, which posted a net profit of approx. one million in ’07 and broke even in ’08, was inexplicably shuttered). Also photographers are rumored to be being cut to half time service and members of our copy desk have been asked to take up to a 30% pay reduction for which they will work fewer hours. Charlie Leerhsen, one of our two executive editors, told a few staff members that he was going to be leaving.”

In other layoff/shutdown news:

• I am told that Forbes (where I worked for many years), is in the final stages of planning cuts as it prepares to merge the editorial operations of its magazine and Web site units. Last month the company began integrating its business groups and laid off about three dozen people in the process.
• GE’s (GE) NBC Universal has laid off at least 30 people in its sales group, reports AdAge. The cuts are part of a previously reported mandate from NBC CEO Jeff Zucker to cut three percent of the company’s budget. The Post says another 80 people could be fired at CNBC.
• Barry Diller’s IAC (IACI) is breaking up its programming group, which includes ventures like College Humor, 236.com and Tina Brown’s DailyBeast.com. Some but not all of the sites will be closed down or sold off. PaidContent has details.

As always, I value reader input: You can reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com. If you want to be completely anonymous, you can use the blind tip box here.