Remember that quote from former NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker about analog dollars and digital pennies? It was early 2008 and he was commenting in The New York Times about the top monetization priority for the TV industry as it transitioned to online video.

“Our challenge with all these ventures is to effectively monetize them so that we do not end up trading analog dollars for digital pennies,” said Zucker, referring to various online video initiatives, including Hulu, of which NBC Universal is a partner.

A couple of years later, two things are different: First, Zucker was ousted from NBC following Comcast’s plans to acquire the network and second, Zucker has changed his tune somewhat.

“I’ve since revised that quote, and I think we’re now up to digital dimes,” Zucker told an audience at the Wharton School on September 29, 2010—just five days after his dismissal.

But regardless of whether he’s talking dimes or pennies, Zucker hasn’t changed his overall assessment of the online video economic model. “Hulu and Netflix are pretty much destroying our business model and if we don’t figure this out, there’s not going to be any content to watch anymore. The equation still won’t work,” he said, gravely.

Zucker offered a familiar litany of reasons for his pessimism—the fragmentation of the viewing audience, competition from cable channels, the difficulty in getting high CPMs for content on broadcast TV, and the industry’s fundamental lack of “a business model that will cover its costs.”

I can’t argue with Zucker that those are big challenges. But the real crux of the issue was something he revealed in response to a suggestion from the audience that NBC Universal reduce actors’ salaries or other personnel costs.

“There’s a lot of mansions in Hollywood built on preserving the old system,” said Zucker. “We make billions and billions … each year from the old models that are still in place, [such as] distributing USA and SyFy and CNBC through Comcast and Time Warner Cable. It’s expensive to produce the kind of content that we do and to collect the kind of news and information we do. If we forgo all of that because of these new technologies, we’ll be out of business right away.”

Zucker’s comments confirm what many of us have thought all along, but few (at least in the industry) have been willing to admit: That the monetization struggles of the burgeoning online video industry have less to do with a lack of economic viability than with a dogged determination by the old guard to protect its own interests—from their big mansions to their sweet content deals.

The “old system” Zucker is referring is not just the TV network he worked for, but the entire ecosystem of actors, writers, producers, content owners, broadcasters, cable channels, cable and satellite systems, and of course the two parties that ultimately fund the whole enterprise: consumers and advertisers.

At least in the short term, the shift to digital video will disrupt that ecosystem. The viewing audience will migrate toward online and mobile platforms, of which some will be fee-based and some ad-supported. For marketers, neither option is as attractive as the status quo. Paid content models effectively take advertising out of the equation, while ad-supported venues will take a long time to reach the kind of scale that broadcast and cable channels offer.

As I noted in a recent column in AdAge: “It will be years before TV and home movie viewing shift en masse from cable and broadcast to purely internet-based offerings. Until TV networks and movie studios start seeing dollar signs, they’re not likely to make a critical mass of content available to digital video providers.”

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Comcast has spent much of the past two years maneuvering against Hulu. In January 2008, the cable giant pre-empted Hulu’s long-rumored debut by launching its own free, ad-supported online TV venture, Fancast. This year, Comcast and Time Warner partnered for a service they call TV Everywhere, which essentially means free online video content for current subscribers to either company’s cable package.

Now comes news of Comcast’s imminent purchase of 51% of NBC Universal, which is a 30% stakeholder in Hulu. This begs the question: What impact will the Comcast-NBCU deal have on Hulu?

Some bloggers have theorized that Comcast will try to kill Hulu. Read my lips: it won’t happen.

Comcast knows a good brand when it sees one, and Hulu has carved out a comfortable space as the go-to destination for online TV content (much as YouTube has dominated the user-generated video space pretty much since its inception). According to comScore, Hulu ranked second among US online video properties by videos viewed in October. The site was also in the top 10 as ranked by unique viewers. Not bad for a relatively new site. Fancast, by contrast, doesn’t show up on any credible lists of top video destinations.

It’s in Comcast’s best interest to nurture and shape the Hulu brand rather than abandon it and push a nonstarter (Fancast) in people’s faces.

It should also be noted that Comcast will have only a minority stake in Hulu. The other partners in the venture–News Corp. and Disney–will flex their muscle in any decision over what happens to the site. GE, which will still own 49% of NBC, won’t be muzzled, either.

That said, it’s likely that Comcast will nudge Hulu further in the direction it is already leaning: toward a paid-video experiment that will likely involve a portion of the content on the site.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch has been a strong proponent of paid models for his other online properties (notably the Wall Street Journal), and he and other Hulu principals have made noise about tinkering with transactional monetization on the popular video site. Having Comcast whisper over his shoulder will only embolden Murdoch to pull the trigger on this plan.

Look for 2010 to be the year when Hulu and YouTube start charging for some of the content they’ve been offering for free. Apple, too, is rumored to be shopping a TV subscription service that would carry premium content for $30 per month to the consumer.

How will consumers react to these experiments? Unless it’s ultra-premium content (live broadcasts of top-rated shows or feature films) consumers are likely to revolt against any plan that charges them for something they have been getting for free.

Update: Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and COO Steve Burke briefly discussed what the deal will mean for Hulu after the sale was officially announced this morning. From The Wall Street Journal:

“We see, with more distributors and more technologies, what consumers want. We want to be part of delivering to them,” Mr. Roberts said. “The reality is consumers want electronic distribution. Some of it, they want it for free. Some of it, they want it in subscription, and some of it, they want it pay-per-view.”

He said there are no plans to alter Hulu’s free model. “That is certainly not in the cards,” he said when an analyst asked if a “Hulu Premium” is a possibility.

Mr. Burke called Hulu and TV Everywhere — Comcast and Time Warner’s online-video initiative — complementary products, with broadcast TV shows appearing on Hulu and premium cable programs on TV Everywhere.

“Right now, NBC Universal is distributing a lot of their broadcast content on Hulu, and they have been quite careful not to put too much of their paid-for-cable content out for free over the Internet. We think both those strategies are smart and appropriate — not that they asked us,” he said. “I think right now, the way NBC Universal are managing those two ways of distributing are very similar to the way we would want to do it when the two companies come together.”

There you have it. Now let’s see if it turns out to be true.