As the Wall Street Journal and others reported on the weekend, YouTube has struck a deal with a regional U.S. TV network to run the network’s local content on YouTube and share any advertising revenue with the company — although the exact terms of the arrangement aren’t clear.
While not a huge deal either for the TV industry or for YouTube — which is probably more concerned about the $1-billion lawsuit it is facing from Viacom for hosting unlicensed material — the arrangement with Hearst-Argyle Television is interesting because it is the first revenue-sharing deal with a local TV network.
YouTube will carry news, weather and entertainment video content from five of the company’s TV stations. Hearst-Argyle has 29 stations, including outlets in Boston, New Hampshire, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. They are affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. Hearst has about an 18 per cent share of the U.S. market, according to the company.
The big question — or one of the big questions — is whether anyone other than local audiences will choose to watch Hearst’s local content (the other big question is whether anyone will advertise on it when it is posted to YouTube). The network said that it expects some viewers might see the appeal — for example, parents of college-age students in another city might watch the local weather or news from their son or daughter’s city.
Daisy Whitney makes a good point on her TVWeek blog: how would someone — who didn’t already know the network content was there — find the Hearst content? It’s one thing to put it up on YouTube, but how do you make sure that your intended audience finds out about it?
So MySpace is launching branded news and entertainment video channels, according to a press release from the social-networking behemoth. The site has signed deals with the New York Times, Reuters and National Geographic to offer news content (National Geographic does news?) as well as with other content owners to offer channels such as The Daily Reel — which compiles links to the best of online video — Kush TV (including the Family Values Tour with alt-punk band Korn) and VBS-TV, from the creators of Vice magazine.
The big question, of course, is whether anyone will actually watch any of this stuff. And something that isn’t mentioned in the release is whether MySpace users will have to go to the MySpace Video page to see the content from these branded channels, or will they and others be able to embed or share the links on their pages and elsewhere? As Quincy Smith of CBS pointed out recently, you have to take the content to where people are, not force them to come to where your content is. That’s why he said that CBS’s Innertube project should have been renamed “CBS.com/NoOneComesHere.”
If MySpace doesn’t want its new video channels to become the same kind of online ghost town that its MySpace News seems to be turning into, it might want to give that kind of thing a little thought.
It may not be quite as good as the “Internet is a series of tubes” speech we all enjoyed so much awhile back, but it’s still pretty good: Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee has a post up about a House of Congress committee hearing on telecom and the Internet (including testimony from Mark Cuban and Chad Hurley, among others), and it starts with a YouTube video clip that the chairman recorded to show how easy it was to upload things to the Intarweb.
If you’re a fan of Lonelygirl15, or the two comedians who call themselves Smosh, or LisaNova, or ValsArtDiary, you can be happy in knowing that these stars will soon be getting paid — by YouTube, the online video-sharing network that has made them famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view). And there’s room for Geriatric1927 and Brookers and others to get a piece of the pie as well. YouTube announced on Thursday that it will start sharing revenue with some of the top “acts” on the site.
“Up until now there’s been a distinction between the content you create and the content created by YouTube’s professional content partners,” the statement on the blog said. “We want to start changing some of the perception here. Which is why we’re adding several of the most popular and prolific original content creators from the YouTube community to our partnership program.”
The video site founded by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen — which was acquired last year by Google for $1.6-billion (U.S.) — says the videos that get the most traffic will be able to “monetize” their content in the same way that the companies other “channel” partners such as NBC, CBS, Universal Music Group and the NHL do. According to YouTube, that means banner ads running on the same page as the video, and a share of the revenue from those ads.
“Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos they create,” says the YouTube blog. “Once they’ve selected a video to be monetized, we’ll place advertising adjacent to their content so participating user-partners can reap the rewards from their work.”
Some items that may grow up to be blog posts someday:
The Beeb is going to expand the on-demand TV service it has been testing, saying the video and audio service has been used by “well over” one million people watching a total of 20 million programmes since it launched six months ago. The new iPlayer system will allow viewers to store shows on a PC for 30 days.
Chad Hurley writes a new media manifesto for Forbes magazine: “Never before has the opportunity been so great for independent writers and actors, musicians and producers to create compelling content on par with the studios, networks and labels,” he writes. “The playing field has been truly leveled.” Party on, Chad.
Sony Pictures Television will launch a new Internet service featuring “minisodes” — short (three to five minute) versions of classic TV shows such as Charlie’s Angels and T.J. Hooker. But these aren’t clips — it’s the entire show crammed into five minutes.
Rupert Murdoch writes his own version of a new media manifesto for Forbes, saying: “Media companies don’t control the conversation anymore, at least not to the extent that we once did. The big hits of the past were often, if not exactly flukes, then at least the beneficiaries of limited options.” You go, Rupe.
Jesse England was experimenting with film and video, and came up with the brilliant idea of printing an eight-millimetre movie strip onto clear laminate using a bog-standard inkjet printer. It may not be high quality, but it sure is cool (hat tip to BoingBoing for the link).
I'm a technology writer with The Globe and Mail in Toronto, and this is where I blog about the collision between media and the Web. I also have a Globe blog, which is here. Send me email at mathew (at) mathewingram.com, or for more info, click the picture.
The big question, of course, is whether anyone will actually watch any of this stuff. And something that isn’t mentioned in the release is whether MySpace users will have to go to the MySpace Video page to see the content from these branded channels, or will they and others be able to embed or share the links on their pages and elsewhere? As Quincy Smith of CBS 
