Comments on: New Video Distribution Site Announced

By: Dave Cole

Dave Cole — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:23:17 +0000

Business 2.0 had an interesting article a little while ago about Beth Comstock, the head of NBC’s president of digital media. Even within NBC they had warring factions of support and detractors from the YouTube deal. I’m not surprised that they finally realized that it might be smart to hang on to their advertising dollars on the media that they create. (Full story: Beth Comstock article in Biz 2.0)

I’ll be honest, I really like how the networks have started exploring their digital options. For instance, CBS launched a show last fall called “Jericho” and touted on air that the pilot episode was available online, so I checked it out. (Interesting show, by the way).

I think for YouTube to succeed, it may need to become literally a competing network to the existing ones. By that, I mean that I think YouTube or Google or someone involved should start harvesting the truly talented web video creators that are online, and start funding them to create bigger and better projects. Maybe I’m just being too optimistic.

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:25:25 +0000

Wow those are a lot of big names teaming up take on Google…this one should be fun to follow.

By: Scott Polk

Scott Polk — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 03:33:13 +0000

Dave:

I agree its HUGE – funny thing is NBC already has a distribution deal in place with YouTube .. wonder if they will keep it

By: Dave Cole

Dave Cole — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 03:26:23 +0000

Hey Scott,

I agree, this is a big deal… When YouTube was bought by the big G, it just struck me that Google was buying a mountain of pirated content and lawsuits to boot. I don’t think YouTube’s case of “we take them down when you tell us to” is going to continue to hold up.

I like the move though, on NBC’s part. It seems like a logical step for the networks to wake up to the web and start changing their business models.