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.
Going immediately to questions.
well, I just got cut off from the call.
Back on, but I missed about 5 minutes.
Washington Post: Are you talking to YouTube to partner? Is this a YouTube Killer?
- Chernin: This is obviously not a YouTube Killer. There’s no stand alone site. Seriously IP protection
- Zucker: we want ubiquitous distribution. saying this is the right product for this stage of the development of the internet
- Chernin: this will be the largest advertising platform on earth.
AP: Will there be a delay between TV broadcast and online? Also asking about economics of partnership.
- Chernin: delay window will be several hours after shows air in Hawaii.
- Zucker: “we’re obviously not going to talk about economics”
Will this be the exclusive online channel for content?
- Zucker: says yes, this is the only place they’ll put their content online, and says this isn’t exclusive since they will partner with anyone.
Financial Times: Any plans to focus outside of U.S.? Do you think that this will hurt broadcast revenue?
- U.S. is focus for now. They believe this will not cannibalize broadcast revenues.
MSNBC: Says “Hi Boss” to Zucker. Asking about legal stance towards YouTube.
- Saying they continue to talk with YouTube to remove pirated content. They say this new company gives people an alternative to watching pirated content.
???: asking about the history of the partnership
- we’ve been in discussions for a long time, there have been ups and downs throughout, but News Corp and NBC remain committed throughout the process. This came together in the last week when distribution partners jumped on board.
- this is a very complex deal. There has been “unwaivering commitment” by NBC and News Corp.
WSJ: will other networks be able to come in as equity partners? mobile strategy?
- “we haven’t given it a lot of though. we are comfortable with the current arrangement but would consider other things.
- saying this is a web distribution venture, not mobile. (??)
Is American Idol going to be included?
- Chernin: no plans to include it right now.
TV Guide: Asking about pay per view movies. What will be for sale v. free?
- most movies will be available for sale. Some deep content will be free.
- Some TV content will not be free either. If on iTunes for pay, will also be for sale there. Pricing will be like MovieLink, iTunes, etc.
What will be free then?
- “most will be for free”. They were really hazy on answers here.
Marketwatch: will it take user generated content?
- yes.
[note: there are some serious red flags popping up around this service]
InternetNews: what kinds of advertising?
- “we will try to maximize the effectiveness of our ads”
- we will experiment. want to maximize our monetization. want to provide users with a great experience.
- Zucker: we are shocked at the willingness of the consumer to sit through the whole show with ads on NBC.com”
New York Post: YouTube has issues policing their own site. How will they control this?
- distribution partners have promised to protect content.
CNNMoney: Will this be fully open to user generated content? On movie side, are they looking to have movies done as downloads, streams, or what format?
- there will be user generated material, but focus is on premium content, and that’s the value proposition
- with films, looking to download to own model
[end call]
Fingers crossed.
I don’t expect much more than some graphically heavy and distracting site ignorant to stuff like embeds. with video working every now and then after a billion ads. But I hope I’m surprised!
–Zaid
What is the other meaning of ‘largest premium video network on the web”. Should we assume it is not a place like Youtube for user contributed video. So what is the time frame for opening the site to public. I hope the confrence call will answer some of the questions like this.
“this will be the largest advertising platform on earth” – awesome, I was starting to miss the constant unskippable annoyances of every other corporate video outlet.
Wow. This is great. I am glad that they won’t be acting as the network, simply as a distributor who creates the protection for the network.
Microsoft calls Jeff Zucker “boss”. God I feel sick. 5….4….3….2….1….and Deadpool.
Seriously this just comes down to execution. Do I really want to sit through online ads to see a tv show I can see at a regular time or Tivo? Does anyone seriously expect Fox, NBC, Microsoft to work together peacefully for long? Their lawyers will be working overtime on this one. They said that the money would be split between Fox and NBC but I thought Time Warner and others were getting in on this.
They better think long and hard about this one or it will blow up and they will be knocking on YouTube’s door to bail them out.
“Ubiquitous” and “Web 2.0″ were mentioned quite a bit – any mention of syndicating via MediaRSS? My guess is no…
will be interesting to see this “NewTube” competing with P2P solutions like Joost, which already signed deals with Warner Music and Viacom, if i’m not wrong.
this service will be great as soon as they hack it and you can get any episode of any show free, without ads, and on-demand. that’d be sweeeeet.
What a joke. They will seriously screw this up. Why would I ever pay additional for content when I can get everything I need from my high def TiVo without commercials. I’d rather skip the latest episode of Southpark than pay for it. Not to mention that there will be plenty of great free video content available to consume if I’m on my MacBook and away from home.
I’m more interested in the creative stuff being done over at places like Vimeo anyways for sure over paying money to watch something that I can just tell my TiVo to record and skip the commercials.
I use YouTube periodically now, mostly I get to it through digg’s video page. Videos that you have to pay $1.99 for will not get dugg. Free stuff will get dugg and free stuff will always be on the internet it just may be pirated is all.
Sounds like Duke Nukem Forever meets pets.com to me.
Am I the only one that’s still not really sure what the hell is this service going to be like?
“Some TV content will not be free either.”
I doubt people are going to start paying for content on this new network if they can get it for free from other places such as YouTube.
What’s that thing where I can watch tv shows and not pay $1.99 per episode…….what is it called…what is it called…what is it called…oh yeah, tv.
Apple has proven that people will pay for TV shows.
Sounds like they have their priorities in the wrong place. What end user will care if the IP of NewsCorp or NBC is protected? None I know. If the priority is not on the user then customers will bounce off of this so fast even Alexa won’t give them a rank.
BTW — Nice job getting the raw data out to the world as fast as you could. You are typically a lazy reporter who sleeps the days away but this time something worked. Please keep it up.
I ad more confidence before this press conference –
– umm … biggest ever! (They do have the money)
– But Like I said for the first time this morn –
– If they do In-video ads they will fail, People sit and watch T.v. and are too lazy to change the channel – People on computers are used to interaction and will click off a site before the ad even begins; and never come back – its proven – ask nielson … NNGroup.com
– they dont have the tech – people that is why they are basically ‘out sourcing’ the distribution
- your going to have, a page with a popular video – embedded with Google Ads all around – heh
..
– This will make the advertising pendulum swing way right, and it will swing back – bringing advertising cost down everywhere .. and crashing the market
wait, is it 1999 again?
seriously, these corporate twats don’t get it and never will. just die already willya?
Let’s give them the startup test:
Explain your company in two sentences on the back of a napkin.
….ten hours later, tons of dead trees, new jersey diners are without napkins, and we still have no clue what it does.
-JLB
Why hold a conference call with press and you don’t even have your media messages worked out. The need to fire their PR team. They should know why now that the Internet is instant and so our our commentaries and that us bloggers will destroy whatever they say in an instant.
So they basically are going to recreate iTunes and offer up ’some stuff for free” and everything else you will pay for. Same shit different brand name. I agree with #8 I’ll just wait for the hackers to grab hold of it and download the shows i want to see for free and so on and so on.
And I agree with #14 that Apple has proven the model but that’s Apple and not NBCFOXatina.
Why not partner with Joost instead? They don’t even know what they want to do (licensed content vs user generated; advertisments vs pay per view, Youtube competitor… maybe), let alone how they’re going to do it
They never said that the pay stuff will be downloadable like on iTunes. They just said that some of the stuff won’t be free. I can totally see them charging $1.99 for a movie that you watch on a PC and it has a reduced number of ads.
I want to give them the benefit of the doubt but I doubt their egos and the technology can match the hype.
Oh…missed that last part. I guess they are going after iTunes for some strange reason seeing as how NBC already has content there. Interesting…stupid…but interesting.
yep, this blows.
next…
Meanwhile down in little old New Zealand TVNZ launched http://tvnzondemand.co.nz. A mix of trailers, catchup TV and archive footage. As a first step in internet distribution it is pretty nice.
This is the start of decentralized communities. The huge benefit of You-Tube as the aggregator of user-generated content alongside fun clips of Family Guy and South Park is going to come to a quick end (and by quick I mean 2-3 year).
It’s clear from this phone call that this isn’t something that NBC or NewsCorp really thought. It seems more to me that this is an emotional (read shareholder) response to missing out on the space that Apple is controlling through iTunes and that services like Joost and BitTorrent Ent are moving into. The shareholders must fill like the train is moving and they better get on now or miss out.
And historically, you wouldn’t be wrong in that assessment. Except that you have to put more into this than just coming out and saying “We’re going to partner up and create our own online presence for video content”. By the time that they made this call they should have already had in place the team that was going to create and run the joint venture. In other words, not only should they have the executives in place who will be accountable to NewsCorp and NBC (and future partners), but also the team that will be responsible for actually building the technology that they will be using to distribute content online.
What tips us off to how far they are with their intentions is the fact that they didn’t talk about anything in definites:
1) When will the service be launching?
2) What will be pricing structure?
3) What will be the free versus paid content?
4) Will the service be cross-platform, meaning will it operate equally on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux?
5) If they are beginning with a Windows-only platform, how long will they offer cross-platform accessibility?
6) What will they be using to insure that content not become pirated?
It seems to me that that not only is this not well thought or planned, but that it’s definitely far off from actual implementation. I highly doubt that we will see anything launch before the end of the year.
this has failure written all over it. just wait until other media companies NOT “in on this deal” start sending this company cease and desist letters for pirated content not belonging to News Corp and NBC. that will be interesting. Best chance of this working is through Myspace… which reminds me. Do you see all the pirated content on myspace? pirated music, pirated videos. Fire up those $500 dollar/hr lawyers. they will have a field day with this one…
That’s my comment above. I’m curious as to why my name isn’t showing up next to my comment. Would someone mind checking into that for me?
“Marketwatch: will it take user generated content? – yes.”
Are they going to pay us for our content? Will they protect the IP of our submitted videos with the same pitbull tenacity they use to protect their own?
If I submit a video that proves to be as or more popular than the native canned content will I be offered a lucrative content development contract?
Props to “Kelli” 5….4….3….2….1….and Deadpool
Zucker said: (Zucker: we are shocked at the willingness of the consumer to sit through the whole show with ads on NBC.com)
I watch Trump every Monday morning, but I have to tell you ABC has the best video on the web platform so far, CBS is 2nd best, NBC is third. Very often NBC is slow downloading the video.
Zucker, if you make your site faster, people will watch more.
Michael,
I like this format for the post. I think it’s quite appropriate to break this sort of news in this “notes” format – it seems more authentic somehow then a full blown blog post that’s been proofread and spell checked.
Anyway, nice insights, keep up the good reporting.
I think this move shows how desperate NBC is. They lost ground to ABC and are currently 4th behind CBS, Fox and ABC. Fox is doing this because they are privately seething since they lost YouTube. I am just surprised that they are taking aim at Google/YouTube yet they can post the videos on MySpace and be surrounded by Google Ads.
YouTube has the format people want and the popularity. The media companies want control and more money. If and when this fails, YouTube will reap the benefits and have the upper hand in negotiations.
Seriously, should we start a Deapool Pool? This is supposed to launch in the summer, so I say the site will be officially called a failure (by that I mean either NBC or Fox pulls out of the agreement) by February 08. My bet is on NBC though, Fox is too stubborn.
This is great for us since we only watch “TV” shows online. One question… Zucker says, “we are shocked at the willingness of the consumer to sit through the whole show with ads on NBC.com”
Does he not realize users like us hit the mute button and use Alt-tab to switch to Firefox to check email during commercials?
(Perhaps overinflated viewer surveys about their willingness to watch adds also contributed to his perception.)
Prediction: Sites will find a way to disable mute and switching to another application during commercials.
I don’t understand. In response to the question about whether this was a YouTube killer, Chernin says “This is obviously not a YouTube Killer. There’s no stand alone site. ”
Yet many news sources are reporting this joint venture will create a “video portal site” for distributing their content.
I understand their intention to distribute content through a network of players, probably something akin to a widget, but is this or is this not going to be its own website?
This is nothing. It’s a conference call. It’s executives shaking hands. They have no answers, they have no product, they have NOTHING!
It will be late. It will be unusable. It will be a failure. They will have to buy someone else.
I can’t hardly wait for Google TV like apple TV or Microsoft TV. Now, you can watch someone famous on screen.
mike,
what do you mean you’ve joined the Newtube media call?
do you have a vested interest stake in any way, shape, or form?
Am I the only one that finds it interesting that Google is paying News Corp $900 million to run ads on MySpace and now News Corp is returning the favor by going after Google’s shiny new $1.6 billion toy?
@ SEO.Mash:
No you are not! Here is a list of reasons why this company will fail miserably on its rear end:
1. business men don’t know anything about computers, or even monetary value of a website.. what that really means (think web 1.0)
2. they will have no mindshare and there will be grassroots rebellion against this service. they should of payed their cto more monies.
3. this is laughable even with the kingmakers and owners of the successful websites we visit today. why? because they know just how risky the web business is. LOOK at GOOGLE, for example. look at their revenue, where is it coming from?
4. tech stocks are funny, i have a feeling that they’ll be more cyclical faster than most.
unless of course, youtube and myspace starts linking each other.
LOLZ
but you know.. they do have a lot of money — so who knows!
this just might be the one YouTube killer!!
Hi,
Because of the net-crowds inherent dogma about IP protection and big media, a few things seem to be getting missed.
Here are some of my observations:
Their thinking for the future
This is about ubiquitous distribution, something America still has a problem with, free(r) from the considerations of infrastructure.
A richer seam of their content available to more people.
Google’s network of adsense hosters is where they’re probably thinking of in terms of places to find that content. If they become such a mass aggregator, and allow self-publishing/UGC, then why would people need to visit youtube or Brighcove, Akimbo, etc.
And if they have the most “reached” content, then people will be going here anyway for the best version of that legal content, and then staying.
Another, major thing that’s being missed is that if this full legal quality official site/service is available, then it become a lot more easier to force the copyright violators off the radar of the masses.
All the free hype that’s been given over to Youtube over the last year+, how often is that going to get credited/mentioned once this launches.
I still think they could let un-pragmetism and ego get in the way of success, but they might just pull it off, Fox gets to sock youtube and have the myspace eco-system grow, NBCU gets primary access to Myspace and everyone else. It’s also going to be the longest tail in the industry
They’ll come up with the techniques to minimise hacking, probably why they’ll have close-knit hosting partners.
Much of the technolgy and platforms are already available off-the-shelf, so they could well launch early enough. (unlikely.)
Blue-Chip content, Wide (neutral) distribution, Quality Image…
Two questions:
Will this stuff be available for download, keep, or will it always be stream-controlled, so what about ipods and pmp’s? (traditional d/l? )
will this content be on the landing pages of the distribution partners, or will they be available from wider services like geocities, what about things like xbox-live, and AIM.
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
“…saying this is a web distribution venture, not mobile. (??)…”
This is an indicator that truly successful new media will not originate from people like this. Their lack of imagination is tied to devices as a platform and not the internet itself.
Have they really learnt nothing from watching the birth of Google, YouTube, MySpace etc? They can’t help behaving like sharks in an ecosystem where whales and plankton do best.
Late to the debate because I’m in a different time zone (Paris right now) but we’ve been busy getting our own show – filmcommunity – on the road.
Here’s my trois cents worth. I have this image of Peter Chernin (c.1995) at a Fox staff get-together. As I recall, everyone was watching a big screen presentation and he arrived by busting right-out through the screen in a Bus (anyone remember Keanu Reeves in Speed, one of Fox’s big hits at the time).
For such a quiet, smooth operator, Chernin has a sense of the dramatic and a way of getting media attention, plus a good sense of humour (AND he’s a Democrat). Murdoch ‘lite’, he aint.
“NewTube” will do well. It may not be what any of you want to see but there are plenty of people out there who don’t know what they want and so NewTube will tell them what they want to see and deliver it. With Chernin involved the new venture is in good hands. Sorry I haven’t mentioned you, Mr Zucker . “Hi boss NOT”, as Borat (Fox distrib’s character might say).
By comparison, on an infinitesimal scale last week we ‘launched’ filmcommunity, so quietly that to begin with no-one will notice but that’s deliberate. It suits us and our resources. We’re so quiet and in relative stealth, we’re practically invisible. In the ecosystem we’re probably not even in the category Debby Davies calls plankton’. But I may as well give you some details :
• http://www.filmcommunity.com
A Social Media Network for Film
• http://www.filmcommunity.org
A Wiki for Film
Two entities running in parallel – not your average or recommended business model – but definitely Web 2.00. The Dot.Com evolving out of Marc Andreeson’s NING network / the Dot.Org being one of the first of Jimmie Wales’ Openservings. This combo will probably get me laughed-off of TechCrunch forum but for those of us with neither rich ‘friends & family’ nor guardian ‘angels’, its a viable alternative. Seems to me it could be the new low-cost start-up model. Heard of ‘New2.00′ anyone?.
Garth Hall
ceo & founder of filmcommunity
Sorry Debbie for mis-spelling your name.
Here are some name recommendations:
Basicity
Boolah
Boomsoft
Ceoy
Cuube
Groovea
Mooland
Quube
Rivalsoft
Stemmata
Viralsoft
Yocket
Back again briefly:
Bearing in mind ‘Old” Media’s search for the internet’s Holy Grail do you think Murdoch et al would go for something like :
http://www.finditfir.st
Full disclosure (we own the domain)
i like this