The lingering effects of the writers’ strike are being blamed for moderate declines in the major portals’ TV video sites’ February traffic numbers, according to Nielsen Online research cited by The Hollywood Reporter. The February dips come as the NBC Universal/News Corp (NYSE: NWS). video site Hulu emerged from its 18-week beta in early March, might provide a boost for March’s traffic data. Hulu is part of News Corp. sibling MySpace TV, though Nielsen doesn’t separate out Hulu’s traffic. As for the other sites, here’s the breakdown of the top three, with a comparison of Feb. 2008 traffic to Jan. 2008:

-- AOL (NYSE: TWX) TV: Keeping in mind that it only started streaming full episodes from ABC primetime, in addition to shows from distributed by Hulu and CBS (NYSE: CBS), on Feb. 14, the Time Warner-owned site was number one with 10.5 million uniques in February. It also had the smallest decline in February of the other portals, falling 5.1 percent from January. Among the most popular shows were NBC’s 30 Rock and CBS’ Jericho, which just got the network’s axe and will air its last show Tuesday night (though it might live again - for the third time - on cable).

-- Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) TV:  Reality fare like Fox’s American Idol and The CW’s America’s Next Top Model may have helped the site attract 9.6 million uniques in February, but it didn’t prevent a 12.9 percent drop from the previous month.

-- MSN TV: Reed Price, MSN’s editor-in-chief for entertainment and video, specifically attributed the slip in traffic last month on the writers’ strike. Still, whether or not it was caused by the strike, MSN experienced the greatest loss, as traffic slid 16.3 percent to 6.8 million.

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