If content is the new king, is Getty signing Crane.tv the new deal?

With all this recent talk of acquisitions and content strategies, it’s clear that content is coming back. Dare I even say… Content is King? (Shudder… no, let’s not go there). Suffice it to say that content production is turning into a big deal with the likes of Demand Media commanding strong interest in their IPO.

Meanwhile, the old content companies are producing video, but not nearly at the rate of knots of the young upstarts. And a case in point today is Crane.tv, a premium online video magazine for contemporary culture, which has figured out how to produce lots of video aimed at a high-end audience. Today it has signed a deal to provide content to Getty Images video entertainment library. Getty Images, a leading creator and distributor of still imagery, footage and multi-media, works in over 100 countries.

Now normally Crane.tv produces the kind of thing you might see on a Vogue site. The trouble is high-end luxury Conde Naste titles are languishing with a few videos a month, while Crane.tv punches them out at a fast pace every week. Crane.tv is producing high end content aimed at international globe-trotting style slaves who want all this design, fashion, lifestyle and travel content, but let’s not hold that against them.

Crane.tv founder Constantin has an ad-funded and branded entertainment model and is gunning for that very top slot in premium advertising. It’s syndicatiing it content to the (now AOL-owned) Huffington Post, New York Times Style Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar UK and International Herald Tribune. A Crane.tv app for Nokia contains video City Guides and has 100,000 users to date. An iPad app is on the way.

Here’s an interview I did with Bjerke recently: