Thursday, March 22, 2007
NBC, Newscorp launch YouTube rival with AOL, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo
NBC Universal and News Corp today announced plans to launch a video-sharing site with thousands of hours of content from about a dozen television networks and two film studios. The site will launch this summer. Here's the press release: Link, here's The Hollywood Reporter story: Link, here's the AP report: Link.
Update: Dylan Tweney has an analysis piece for Wired News. Snip:
My take: News Corp. and NBC are going to have a tough time posing a credible challenge. They've got to build a new site, develop an easily brandable embedded video player (one which accomodates the copy protection and advertising requirements of every distributor, by the way), fill it with content, and launch it -- all within a few months. Does anyone think that a rushed, top-down, corporate-driven project like this will pose a serious threat to YouTube? (...)Link. During that press call, Chernin blurbed: "This will be the largest advertising platform on earth."A phone press conference with Jeff Zucker, President & CEO of NBC Universal, and Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp., provides some additional information. Video will be copy protected, no question about that: "IP protection … is critically important to both companies," Chernin says.
However, users will be able to share video and even mash up videos, Chernin says. When I post videos (mashed up or not) on my own site, they'll appear with the new company's player, and with advertising from the joint ad network.
The new joint venture, which has yet to be given a name, aims to distribute its video content as widely as possible, subject to copy protections. In fact, Chernin says they had discussions with Google CEO Eric Schmidt this morning about the possibility of syndicating video content to YouTube.
Update 2: NYT coverage here.
posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:31:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
