TV Future – real?
I shouldn’t have been such a smartypants in the last post- a few minutes ago on TechCrunch: I’ve just joined the “NewTube” media call with NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker and News Corp. COO Peter Chernin. Notes to follow. Chernin is kicking things off. It took him about 2 minutes to say “Web 2.0″ for…
I shouldn’t have been such a smartypants in the last post- a few minutes ago on TechCrunch:
I’ve just joined the “NewTube” media call with NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker and News Corp. COO Peter Chernin. Notes to follow.
Chernin is kicking things off. It took him about 2 minutes to say “Web 2.0″ for the first time. Saying this will be the largest premium video network on the web. Extending offer to other distribution partners, wants to work with everyone.
Zucker is now on. Talking about importance of “significant IP protection” as a primary goal. Second – this provides an excellent opportunity for advertisers, who want to be associated with premium video. Five charter advertisers already yesterday (Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco, Esurance, Intel and General Motors). Two more today (Royal Carribean is one).
Revenue will be split between News Corp and NBC, with a portion going to distribution partner.
Some background:
The rumors of a joint venture to counter the perceived Google-YouTube threat, dubbed “Clown Co.” by Google executives, are now confirmed, although the name of the new company is not yet available. In a press release
, Peter Chernin (COO News Corp.) and Jeff Zucker (CEO NBC Universal) are announcing “launch the largest Internet video distribution network ever assembled with the most sought-after content from television and film.” Content from at least a dozen TV networks and two major film studios is promised. Initial distribution partners include AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo.
So Viacom have jumped in with Joost, News and NBC are partnering, Google/YouTube is calling ’em all CLOWN CO – what fun! Makes Kim Williams calling Channel 7 and Channel 10 “boneheads” at ASTRA look positively civilized! 🙂
But methinks that NewTube is probably not hosted at NewTube.com (see picture above).
Oh and I probably shouldn’t link to this site… Peekvid. BitTorrent’s all your fave TV shows and movies anyone? Peekvid does not contain any content on its site, but is merely an index of available links on the Internet. Peekvid is committed to an industry solution that will provide a mechanism to compensate artists that create the work you enjoy watching. Peekvid would like to be part of the long term solution.
This is just (really) big mainstream media moving into yet another distribution channel to distribute their mainstream content.
It’s to be expected.
But what’s exciting are the opportunities for independent content providers, from movie-makers to the dad who always videos the games his son’s under 10s football team, to distribute their content (and revenue share) in a no-fuss straight-forward manner.
As with all things web, it’s going to be about discovery rather than delivery and this is where mainstream has the massive advantage.
Do you think that mainstream has the advantage on discovery? I can never find anything on YouTube unless someone sends me the direct link. The search doesn’t work. How do you discover your videos? Mine come to me as links from time-wastrels and are referenced in blogs and podcasts. I don’t think I’ve bothered with a mainstream sites Top 100 or similar in forever.
I’m just not sure that aggregated mass media portals are the way forward. I personally become frustrated with YouTube – I can’t download and mashup easily for one. Most of the videos I view are in small social networks. YouTube hosts them sometimes, or there may be many hosts, but I hear about them through tiny communities. Not so much a pebble creating a wave that becomes tidal but a million pebbles creating a million small waves. Still gonna get drenched. 🙂
The mega portals size will be their downfall, agreed, but the problem will be for the specialised and localised aggregators to get their message out there.
No question that they’ll provide a better experience for the average punter (especially if they combine all forms of content) but how does the average punter become aware?
Not by the offline channels because they are all owned by the same companies that own the mega-portals.
By pebbles, I agree, and often the ripples can become very effective (your Jason.tv story a good example) but only if they can survive the mega-portals lobbing the odd boulder into the pond.
Don’t get me wrong – there is potentially a revolution in “tv” coming (already here?) and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
The only thing that tempers my enthusiasm is that a similar revolution was supposed to have hit music and all that’s happened, to a large extent, is that iTunes has replaced the record shop 🙁
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Movies Directories are full of deadlinlks, i prefer http://www.vidjay.com/ (vidjay.com)