The Video Startup That May Never Launch

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1. Joe Ropkins
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 12:29 am

   I’ve been wondering for a while why TV networks never thought of forming a conglomerate and operating their own online distribution service…. seems like this is my answer. I’m interested in their business and revenue-generation models. Unfortunately, we probably won’t receive much comment on this from the horse’s mouth until things are official. Do keep us posted on any developments though.

2. michal frackowiak
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 12:32 am

   One thing would be really great and in fact this is what the market lacks today: Paid, high-quality video content from tv networks.

   Sorry, but watching anything on Youtube is a nightmare due to the low quality. There are many viewers that would be able to pay (e.g. $1/episode or show) to watch their favorite series in HD. Well, unfortunately High Definition is somehow too demanding (bandwidth) for the live streaming but it is possible to stream tv-like quality easily now.

   This would somehow overlap with the BitTorrent Inc. target, but this is good. It would be really, really nice to be able to pay as little as $1 to watch the newest Lost episode, especially if you live outside US or Canada.

   cheers - michal

3. Joe Ropkins
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 12:48 am

   I don’t have any market statistics, but I’m confident that most of YouTube’s audience are amateurs, many of whom couldn’t care much about quality. A free business model supported by advertisements should be the way forward. Perhaps a second business model offering paid content could be in place to serve the professional market. Eitherway, we need to understand the primary reasons for the demand of such a service:- zero-cost, mobility and flexibility. There’s a reason why people will want to watch videos online instead of their TV screens — because online content and literally be viewed anywhere, anytime, and by anyone. As long as content distributors can ensure the existence of these attributes, there will be demand for the service, regardless of quality. Introducing a fee would cut off a large share of the market, which could have otherwise been pacified with content sponsored by advertisements.

4. Fashion Industry Ceo
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 1:14 am

   the whole basis of youtube is user controlled environment and FREE content…there is a reason YouTube has risen to prominence.

5. An Israeli
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 1:23 am

   A major israeli newspaper suggests that microsoft is the buyer of metacafe. Balmer said microsoft recently acquired 3 israeli companies, the media knows only of 2. this leads to microsoft buying metacafe

6. You can't copy YouTube
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 1:57 am

   Some big media execs are privately tearing their hairs out wondering why they keep hearing stories about teenagers and grandmas spending 3, 4 hours a day on YouTube. They can’t understand it because they think “normal” people ought to drool over the smooth glamor produced by the so-called “pros”.

   Allow me to explain this mystery to the suits. Where else can you see a 9-second clip of a F-16 fighter jet crash-lands on an aircraft carrier? Or a 7-second clip of a tiger charging an elephant? Remember, the clip showing Senator George Allen’s famous racial slur at an Indian-American was initially rejected by all big media outlets because they were too afraid to be “impartial”.

   Future historians will write that YouTube played a role in bringing down a corrupt Republican Congress, among other things. The political significance alone will elevate YouTube above the wannabes. Rest assured that there will be more “macaca” tapes to come; today a politician knows that his fate is one YouTube clip away from being ruined, and that is a good thing in my book.

7. Victor
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 2:22 am

   One good name, I would suggest they call this new video site is veetube.
   This certainly matches up with youtube.

8. Rajeev Vashisht
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 3:36 am

   Competition is inevitable in capitalist economies. No body can enjoy monopoly profits for long periods of time except I think Apple did with I-Pod for 5 years.

   http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

9. Jon
   

   December 8th, 2006 at 5:50 am

   I wonder if this woulddramatically impact YouTube’s home made and viral appeal. It would be interesting to see.

10. George
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 5:54 am

    is it true Metacafe also has a mobile client? i couldn’t find it on their web site

11. Say No to Crack
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 6:02 am

    Even if it launches, I think it would fail. I believe most people would rather watch full length TV shows on their TV. Online viewers want the freedom to watch hundreds of videos quickly, sift through the mess, and then skip over the ads and junk shows.

    The TV studios would never allow a fast forward button on the player, or they would always show a required 10-20 second sponsor clip at the beginning of each show. This kills the value for most viewers. If you’re going to decide whether or not to watch the show after the first few seconds, why would you ever wait 20 seconds to even begin?

    I’m not sure why the studios are so against their content being rebroadcast on YouTube and Google. Take NBC’s The Office. It has a huge following, and many people post short 30-90 second clips on YouTube, create fan videos, etc. But this has created a HUGE tv audience. 5 years ago, I don’t think The Office could have ever made it. I heard about via YouTube, and now watch the full episodes every week.

    The studios should be pursuing those who post the full episodes online, but allow clips since they really just build support and interest (as CBS has found).

12. Pran
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 6:16 am

    The networks coming together to form a Youtube clone makes a lot of sense. Whether they can all agree to pull this off is quite another issue. On the other hand I find it highly unlikely that Google might not be able strike at least a few deals with some networks. perhaps this is a good time for Yahoo, MS or Apple to step in and lead the way in partnership with some networks?

13. David
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 6:29 am

    Won’t happen. You know Why? Bureaucracy and old-machine thinking. Those big networks are used to competing and this is no different. And try to get something done in those large corporations. To much red tape, if I was Google/YouTube I wouldn’t even fathom it.

    Maybe just a scare tactic into getting Google to give them more money?

14. Adrian Keys
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 6:53 am

    Sounds like a case of fighting over the marbles before the gas has even begun.

    Also cant say I am too impressed with their approach…why not just launch the business and face the competition…instead of scheming to undo tehm…just terrible!!

    http://www.revafinancial.squarespace.com

15. Stan
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 7:09 am

    Wonder how a few media giants can collude to form an exclusive site for their content without the Justice Department’s antitrust division having something to say about it.

16. CJAM
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 7:40 am

    Whatever happened to Viddler - any idea?

17. FK OFF WANG & Alaska Miller
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 7:46 am

    @8 - tell us where you sourced that, where Hurley said that and then I’ll believe it. You an absolute FK WIT and have already posted this shit - so in response i’ll repost what I put on the ZILLOW post.

    NOTE TO MIKE - BLOCK sivasankaran - hes a FUCKHEAD

    Personally, I think what you have written is full of shit for a few reasons.
    1) Because I have read about 30 articles where it specifically states that all of the youtube.com founders busted their asses working to pull it together and “6 hours each week for 2 months” means a whopping 48 hours was spent creating Youtube - and that is ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT.
    2) If you even knew how to program 1) would be the planning that went into it not the programming so your apparent “article” is full of shit there.
    3) A Google Search for some of the article showed nothing………except this same article posted by you in other places.
    4) Stop the bullshit and leave the blokes that created youtube, got rich of youtube and now are still successful - be successful.

    Have a cry somewhere else fk face.

    Also - FK OFF WANG and stop spamming

18. Alaska Miller
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 7:50 am

    lol

19. Hugh
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 7:52 am

    Similar thing happened in the airline industry - after European airlines figured that Travelocity, Expedia & co. So they created Opodo, which was struggling for a while, but now they seem to be doing ok with a reasonable market share (lower than the rest though).

    So studios might want to do the same, at least they will get part of the action without being blackmailed by their online-distributors in the future. Remember, it is not important for them to beat YouTube, but to their own dog out there, to enforce that the other players are more collaborative with you…

20. Dave
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 8:06 am

    @ Say No To Crack

    I think it is weird that you heard about The Office on YouTube. Most people that watch The Office did not hear about it on YouTube.

    YouTube currently dominates the online video market - but I do not think they dominate in the same way Google dominates search and Ebay dominates online auctions. I think there is definately room for a disruption - and the copyright holders are in a pretty good position to challenge.

    Can you imagine a “watch this…and everything else…and upload your own at blah.com” commercial running on just about every major network - all day, every day.

    It would require a very clean and fast interface - with non-intrusive ads…and this is the one area that they will/would probably screw up.

21. John Furrier
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 8:27 am

    There will be many new entrants in the video space that never make it. My company PodTech.net (www.PodTech.net) has been playing with video for sometime and our advertisers look at PodTech as the YouTube for corporate.

    My prediction is that the definition of media company now includes corporations who need their new YouTube (like a Ch 9 that Scoble did at Microsoft). Ther was a story last week from ad age that talked about how P&G and Unilever have over 9 million uniques a month. In the new net model they are media companies now. Hint of things to come from PodTech.

22. Raj
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 8:58 am

    John,

    PodTech is not the “YouTube for corporate.” That’s quite laughable actually. Here are some suggestions:

    1. Flash encoding — 200MB+ files that need to be fetched from your servers is so 1997 (not even 1999).

    2. Make paid placement very clear in the title itself. You’re more like the “PayPerPost of corporate” than anything else at the moment since original content is not clearly distinguishable from advertising.

23. Sergio
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 9:27 am

    I think that I’m really missing the logic here. Why don’t the individual networks make content available on their own websites?! I mean, the other day, I missed an episode of ‘Heros’ and I had to go to the iTunes store to buy it because I could not buy it from NBC. I really, really wanted to buy it from NBC, but they just did not give me the opportunity.

    Networks have a couple of advantages over the YouTubes. First, they can control the quality of the content that they put up for viewing or downloading. Second, they can easily make money by charging for high-quality downloads. Third, they can drive more traffic to their websites and thereby expose users to other offerings and cross promote. Forth, they can make it easy for users to find the content that they want. Let’s not underestimate the incredible power of a good user experience. It is nearly impossible to find a full-length episode on YouTube; one has to wade through hundreds of twenty-second outtakes before finding the full episode.

    This seems like a no-brainer! Am I mad or are the execs that run these media companies completely and utterly doltish? (Actually, I’m probably over-simplifying things.)

24. Beatbox
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 9:32 am

    Sergio, you can watch the full episode for free:

    http://www.nbc.com/Video/rewin.....roes.shtml

    Right from NBC’s site. You must have not looked very hard…

25. Ed
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 10:04 am

    Steve Rubel had an interesting post on the future of TV:

    http://www.micropersuasion.com....._will.html

    I totally agree with him, especially with his paragraph on “Peer Created Content.”

    BTW, can something be done about “sivasankaran’ (comment #8). He/She posted the same “comment” under the Metcafe posting yesterday.

26. Allen Sligar
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 10:11 am

    I think theres a serious misunderstanding by the networks about how and why YouTube appeals. This is not to say that a corporate sponsored video service wont work, but it will only work within a certain framework to wit:

    Where a corporate video site WILL work:

    1. If you have a household brand name and are currently horizontally and vertically positioned in the market place.

    2. If you allow for user created content on your channel (mashups)

    3. If you allow commentary, and and empower the community, the community is the best regulator of behaviors.

    4. Your content dosnt suck or your target audiance dosnt think it sucks

    Where is WONT work

    1. Where the content provider is not horizontally and vertically positioned in the market place

    2. Where the branded content channel maintains a tight fisted control over the channel, and does not allow user generated content.

    3. Where no commentary is allowed

    4. Where the content sucks

    Examples (where it will work)

    Disney.

    They own the production, distrobution, branding and movie, DVD, retail channels already.

    This is a slam dunk for them, who dosnt want to see clips of thier favorite Disney movies (and sneak previews of the soon to be released!). Further they could allow either fan based content, or indie animation content on thier site (*hint* this is also a good way to find fresh talent */end hint*)

    A DisneyDirect (see I just gave them a name for it) could be cross branded, relavent and pertinent for a newer generation. It would cross significant demographic boundaries.

    And thier content dosnt suck. This is an example of where what would otherwise be advertising appears as content…..

    Example: (where it wont work)

    ABC, CBS, NBC

    I get the feeling thir orporate culture views audiances with distain, like passive lemmings and consumers of content happy with 20 minutes per hour of advertising (in Britian statistically its 6.75 minutes per hour).

    They wont allow user generated content, and surely wont allow for a community to grow up around thier channel. I wont even get into the current quality of content on major network TV, its so horridly bad, how many more stupidly premised reality shows can you guys come up with? (I know there are some Network lurkers around here).

    In short major Network’s should save thier money and invest it in building a new web based brand for themselves. Until they can grock the following three principles they should avoid a network based web video service:

    1. The audiance you seek (youtube) is in the main, not the audiance thats watching TV, they already “get” thier content elsewhere. You want to redirect them back to TV by making TV BETTER not more of the same.

    2. User generated content is king, the demographic below 40 is not the passive audiance of lemmings happily consuming 20 minutes per hour of advertising, its the creative audiance, thats tolerates advertising (the less of it the better) to get to interact with its community.

    3. Community, understand what it is, dont not confuse this with your “community of viewers” understand, REALLY understand what a internet based community is, there are books out there if you bother to read them youll go farther than relying on what you already know.

    Until they can undertand those three things or rengineer thier networks to be relavent to a younger demogrpahic they’ll remain “old” media…..and continue incrementally losing market share.

27. Allen Sligar
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 10:17 am

    PS: Sorry for the bad spelling, no spell check and no esspresso in the AM makes for bad posting.

    PSS: The 6.75 minutes per hour for Britian was a stat recalled from a article I read awhile back the exact range was around 6-9 minutes)

    PSSS: Michael, Fox likely dropped oput because well they already have a branded channel to distribute its called ……Myspace

28. Beatbox
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 10:29 am

    Allen, maybe you should be writing your own blog.

29. Preppypunk
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 11:47 am

    It’s like a meeting with the heads of the Five Families.

30. Akio Morita
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 12:17 pm

    I think Brightcove might be a better acquisition target…they have a killer infrastructure, lots of agreements, a way to protect and generate revenue, and control subscriptions, etc.

    They have been building an IPTV system for nearly two years now…shold be nice and mature.

31. manys
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 12:18 pm

    So let me see if I remember this right…didn’t the major labels say they were going to create an online marketplace to compete with the iTunes store? And how many of those Yahoo portal-killers from 1998 are still around or even memorable?

    Every independent innovation gets an announcement by its segment’s BigBiz players that they will be able to use their weight to make something better, never acknowledging the fact (?) that it’s their weight that prevented them from doing it in the first place. You think there haven’t been tech-savvy employees at the networks wanting to make a YouTube for 10 years, only to have their ideas get shunted into the roundbin at some low level?

    This is just old-money feeling sorry for itself being torpid.

32. Charlie
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 3:18 pm

    This would be a great idea if there was much left worth watching on network television.

33. Faisal
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 5:17 pm

    # Preppypunk

    December 8th, 2006 at 11:47 am

    It’s like a meeting with the heads of the Five Families.

    ……

    Except there was no Godfather or boss of the bosses , to force an agreement.

34. Hiptrigger
    

    December 8th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

    Wall Street Journal Dec 9: “Media Titans Again Discuss Site to Rival YouTube”
    (quoted since it is via subscription)
    ———-
    Four major media companies, including News Corp.’s Fox, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. and General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal, are in talks about creating a video Web site to compete with Google Inc.’s YouTube, according to people close to the situation.

    The companies, owners of most of the major TV networks, envision a jointly owned site that would be the primary Web source for video content from their networks, allowing them to cash in on fast-growing Web video advertising. They also have discussed building a Web video player that could play video clips from across the Web. A deal to create a competitor remains far off, however.

    Walt Disney Co., owner of ABC, isn’t participating in the talks, because it wants to rely on the strength of its own brands, according to a person close to the discussions. ABC and the networks participating in the talks already offer some of their programming on their own Web sites.

    The talks are driven by media companies’ belief that the fast-growing YouTube has built a huge business off their video content. Although many of the videos on YouTube are homemade videos uploaded by users, some of its most popular clips are pirated copies of television shows. YouTube was acquired by Google for nearly $1.8 billion in stock last month.

    Some of the media companies have been discussing creating a YouTube competitor since the beginning of the year. Fox, CBS, NBC and Viacom, for instance, discussed a proposal from News Corp. that video content be hosted on Fox’s MySpace Web site, a popular social-networking site. But CBS, NBC and Viacom weren’t willing to put their content on a News Corp.-owned outlet. The current talks, which were revived by NBC this fall, are not contingent on using MySpace, according to a person close to the situation.

    The latest round of talks could still founder. All the media companies are weighing attractive offers from Google to pay them licensing fees for their videos to play on YouTube. Google has offered to pay fees of as much as $140 million over three years to Fox, according to a person with knowledge of the offer. So far, NBC and CBS have struck deals to air some content on YouTube. NBC has said it was in talks with YouTube about reaching another unspecified content deal.

    News Corp., Viacom and NBC previously held discussions about filing a joint lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement. YouTube contends that it hasn’t run afoul of copyright laws, because it immediately removes clips when copyright holders such as the networks complain about their inclusion on the site.

35. David Mackey
    

    December 9th, 2006 at 9:36 pm

    I just wish they would hurry up and put the materials on the web. There is a good bit already, but not as much as I’d like.