A survey conducted by Deloitte and YouGov reveals that British TV fans are more likely to turn to a network’s site rather than YouTube or iTunes if they miss a show when it airs.

The survey said viewers’ awareness of broadcasters’ on-demand sites, such as the BBC’s U.K. iPlayer service, had overtaken that of both YouTube and iTunes at 84% compared with 76% and 64% respectively.

Deloitte’s media and telecoms partner James Bates said: “In an ironic twist to earlier expectations, broadcasters and independent producers may, in the medium-term, be those that benefit most from online television.

“Broadcasters may increasingly use online television to support their core, traditional objective of maximizing broadcast audience size and quality.”

Bates added that online video clips, distributed via TV companies’ own websites and third-party platforms, spark interest in broadcasters’ shows while catch-up services enable auds to keep up with programs they’ve missed.

This has long been evident in the United States, where networks started coming down on YouTube and other sites that were illegally hosting their programming. In a rather smart move, the major networks partnered to create Hulu, a site supported by commercials that allows viewers to watch their favorite shows on the Internet for free. It’s currently impossible to watch a full episode of an American show on YouTube and few fans want to pay the fee iTunes charges. When watching an episode for free on Hulu or the network’s webpage, the viewer only has to sit through about three minutes of commercials. I’m happy this is working out with Brtish TV fans. The networks just have to hope the writers don’t complain.

“Lost” and “SNL” are also popular online.

Lost, Saturday Night Live and Grey’s Anatomy were December’s three most popular entertainment TV programs streamed from tagged network websites and embedded network video players, according to VideoCensus data from Nielsen Online (via MarketingCharts).

In its first public release of ratings for online individual TV programs, Nielsen reported that ABC.com’s Lost had 1.4 million unique viewers in December — the most among streamed online broadcast TV network entertainment programs. NBC.com’s Saturday Night Live was a close second, with 1.1 million unique viewers, followed by ABC.com’s Grey’s Anatomy with 879,000 unique viewers in December.

The network websites included were from broadcast networks that had tagged their online offerings: ABC.com, CBS Television, CWTV.com, FOX Broadcasting, and NBC.com. The rankings exclude Hulu, which currently does not report VideoCensus data at the program level.Rankings include unique viewers who viewed a full episode, part of an episode or a program clip during the month.

“As I see it, the broad diversity of top television network entertainment programs online suggests that there is more to online viewership than a simple extension of the TV audience,” said Jon Gibs, VP of media analytics, Nielsen Online. “While the online popularity of some shows, like Grey’s Anatomy suggests that some people are using the internet to catch up on programs they usually watch on TV, the online popularity of other programs like Saturday Night Live, indicates that there is a web audience that might otherwise not watch these programs at all. These viewers are driven by a morning-after water-cooler effect.”

Nielson’s reports are incomplete until they start including numbers from Hulu as well, and we also need information about how these numbers stack up against popular online video sites.

It would have been interesting to see numbers from Novemeber and October, as “SNL” surely led the way with its political coverage.

CBS Interactive is relaunching TV.com, hoping to transform the well-named site known for its TV-related community and user-generated content into a serious video destination, paidContent has learned. The full-scale relaunch with new content partners is slated for January but the cosmetic changes will start this week with a new look and logo, according to sources familiar with the plans. TV.com is among the assets CBS (NYSE: CBS) picked up with its $1.8 billion acquisition of CNET last summer. (The other notable non-brand domains: News.com, MP3. com and Radio.com). Despite having the ultimate url and folding in some video through agreements first with CBS and then with Hulu, CNET missed multiple opportunities to grab early advantage. Now it’s playing catchup with a number of competitors, including Hulu and newest challenger Sling.com.

While it’s being talked about by content partners and others as the CBS answer to Hulu.com, that’s not quite the way I think CBS sees it. Hulu.com, launched in beta in late 2007 and for real in March 2008, is a video destination with a solid video search engine and some community elements that have yet to really take off. Launched in 2005, TV.com has been a “digital water cooler” about anything and everything having to do with TV, drawing more than 16 million unique monthly visitors and boasting info about nearly 19,000 shows. As planned, the new version would blend the two by making TV.com into a real video destination, not a place where you happen to watch video, while continuing to build on its community strengths and its depth of content about TV. CBS doesn’t want TV.com to be Hulu—it wants to move beyond Hulu.