This is the usual “news by PR release” – but, I’ll try to leave most of the crap in the linked article where you can graze if you feel like it.
News Corp. and NBC Universal said on Thursday they will launch a free online video site this summer, featuring full-length movies and television shows in a challenge to Google Inc.’s YouTube.
While NBC and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. compete fiercely for television and movie audiences globally, their partnership shows the risks executives are willing to take to regain control over content as more consumers look to YouTube, or Apple Inc.’s iTunes, for entertainment.
The two companies also enlisted three of Google’s largest rivals — Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL — as distributors of the entertainment on their Web sites.
While free to viewers, the site will be paid for by advertising and has already signed on marketers Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco Systems and General Motors.
Ready for this?
The venture includes a new Internet media player, which will be embedded on partner sites and carry branding of both, they said. The site apparently will not have a component for uploading home-made videos.
I guess NBC couldn’t buy something successful the way News Corp bought MySpace, so —
NBC said separately that it will introduce social networking and video sharing functions to NBC.com.
Feature length movies and TV shows without charge – and hopefully, less than obnoxious advertising, just might be a worthwhile addition to what’s easily available.
I’ll check my cynicism at least until I see the finished product.
Oy Vey!
One major problem with their plans: the glorious thing that people like about YouTube is the LACK of advertising. If I want advertising, there are already plenty of sites with that.
Look, BIG MEDIA, WE DO NOT WANT ADVERTISING!!!! Got that? Your ads fall on deaf ears these days. We already know what we like, and we don’t need you to remind us. We drink Coke, we eat Doritos and all that healthy stuff.
QUERY: has anybody here seen an ad for a car, or some food item, or a cleaning product, or ANYTHING that they actually went and bought at the store, BECAUSE of the ad?
The other problem, again I’ll say it, is these companies that produce entertainment get paid over and over and over and over and over and over for the same thing. They do a finite amount of work and investment, then reap the rewards for decades. There’s something inherently wrong with this part of capitalism. I’m not still getting paid for work I did in 2002 or 1992 or 1982. WTF?
So, let me get this straight. 1. It’s a coalition of companies. 2. It will be run by a set of people whose primary skills are producing Big Brother sequels and counting their options.3. they’re going to compete with a company whose primary skill is losing money. 4. These are the people who want you to smile and say “three bags full” to DRM.
Got it.
3 – You forgot about a bigtime media company owned by a bigtime war industry company starting a community. Well, I’m certainly excited.
“…their partnership shows the risks executives are willing to take to regain control over content as more consumers look to YouTube, or Apple Inc.’s iTunes, for entertainment.”
Amusing how Apple gets lumped into this mess with YouTube. Not that Apple has the copyright owners’ permissions, and not that these owners are getting their fair cut…
Ignorance in the media is rampant.
2, QUERY: has anybody here seen an ad for a car, or some food item, or a cleaning product, or ANYTHING that they actually went and bought at the store, BECAUSE of the ad?
Well, I did see an advert by the Whippet twins and I….
Ooops.
another thing “they” don’t get is, they might own the “images” that get uplinked to sites like youtube, yes, but its the users that give the images a context. most of the time someone uplinks to say “look how stupid this is.. or how cool this is…” a good example is the “1984 apple ad” used to give a new context to the democratic race. the internet was about communication, it is now about communication and will continue be about communication and “they” want to control that communication.
Did I buy something because I saw an ad? Yup. Remember the Taco Bell chihuahua dolls? My wife and I bought some of those (I still have one sitting over my computer, guarding against evil spirits and Republicans). Eventually the company fired the ad agency that made those memorable ads because people like us didn’t also buy any tacos or burritos. It upset the brass, I read somewhere. I always suspected the real reason was that they didn’t want their ground-meat products to be symbolized by, you know. Dogs.
If they were smart they would strike deals with YouTube and enjoy the small trickle of revenue. Now they’ll be investing money on servers and technology that people could very well ignore.
And for the record, there are no new embedded media players. They’re all Flash. If they really wanted to be innovative they’d design a flash player that understood chapters and could play full TV shows with commercials in a TiVo-esque fashion. (It loads in about real time, and you can fast-forward until it runs to live.) Watch online free, download MPEG without commercials for $2. Who wouldn’t try it?
I for one don’t mind advertisements. I hate the volume of tv commercials. I JUST DON’T ENJOY COMMERCIALS SCREAMING AT ME!
And besides, when is youtube going to bump up the quality a tad?
I suppose I’m some sort of heretic but these video sites seem to be a fad and “flavor of the month”.
I went, I watched, I thought it was stupid, I left and I won’t go back. Surely there are lots of others like me?
What is it that is worth all these millions of $s? It’s like the dot com bubble.
Heh – the Google guys have a name for it, I just read. Since NBC/etc. haven’t named the service yet, Google’s calling it Clown Co.
Tech Crunch ran the Clown Co. story at http://tinyurl.com/yt2ypa topped by a fine logo they got at Flickr – http://tinyurl.com/2pbeks
Oh, I’ll admit that the commercial for my latest car factored into my decision, although it was more the reports that my wife got about it from her coworkers that were renting it. (Hyundai Sonata for the curious)
But the main problem with what they will do is that they will want to control the content to the point that nobody will want to watch it (from there) anyway. Be it ads, or making you register and fill out all sorts of personal data (that will be amazingly false!), it’s certainly not going to be as easy as embedding a YouTube video in a comment/page/whatever.
#2 QUERY: has anybody here seen an ad for a car, or some food item, or a cleaning product, or ANYTHING that they actually went and bought at the store, BECAUSE of the ad?
Yes…. Almost all of us. And you probably have too.
I recall a conversation I was privvy to between a guy at a bar and a guy at a bar who developed advertising for a living. It’s anecdotal, thus it doesn’t prove anything, but it’s fun to relate.
Guy #1 was saying that he thought ads were BS and he never let ads determine what he buys.
Ad Guys askeds what toothpaste guy #1 used and why.
Guy #1 responded that he used Colgate because it gets his teeth whiter.
Go read the ingredients list on 10 tubes of toothpaste and then let me know how ineffective advertising is 🙂
This will become the next Microsoft “Live Search” and they will have to badger and plead to get people to use it. Let’s face it, the “Media Heavies” are getting their nuts crushed.