March 25, 2007 at 11:16 pmNBC and News Corp. developed a YouTube fight plan
Late last week, America’s two largest media companies, NBC Universal and News Corp. made a long-awaited important statement on their joint strategy for developing the Internet as a promising space for doing business in the distribution of video content.
Rumors have been circulating about the negotiations among the management of large companies that own most of the American and global broadcasting markets. Giants such as Viacom, Disney, and the two already named, with the heyday of the Internet, were slowly pushed to the sidelines by rapidly growing ambitious projects like YouTube. The audience of TV channels gradually went to the Network, in the vast expanses of which it became possible to easily find popular TV shows, films and broadcasts produced by the same television companies, only without annoying commercials interrupting the show in the most interesting place.
Of course, publishing copyrighted videos is illegal and is being pursued by copyright holders with enviable tenacity. But to cope with the multimillion-dollar army of YouTube visitors, as well as with the owners of this service, they still have not succeeded. For some reason, perhaps from the reluctance to share profits with Google, media companies did not cooperate with YouTube and did not distribute their content through it. Instead, they began work on their own large-scale project.
The project, known so far only under the working name “Caterpillar”, will, according to preliminary information, have all the same functions as its powerful competitor: posting a user’s video, a social network for communication between users and the ability to play any video on a third-party site with using the built-in player. View all content, of course, will be completely free.
But both NBC and News Corp insist that Caterpillar is not only planned as a response to YouTube’s threat. No, their plans extend much wider. First of all, the emphasis will be placed on the fact that almost any show, any latest series of the series “Lost” or “24” can be watched completely legally. And the powerful power of advertising, which once made the whole of America drink orange juice in the morning, will make it look unnatural for the user to watch them anywhere else on the Internet.
The media monsters will help in this agreement with AOL, Yahoo and MSN and MySpace, which will take on a significant part of the popularization work, allocating a place for their content. Actually, the announcement of a new project was made immediately after the successful completion of negotiations with these companies.
However, do not think that News and NBC intentionally bypass Google. The press service of the Internet company confirmed that Peter Chernin, CEO of News Corp, had a telephone conversation with Eric Schmidt, but nothing is known about her results. If we discard the possibility that Chernin called Schmidt just to gloat and threaten, it may well be that Google will become a Caterpillar partner in the future.
Also, on the other hand, in the future it is possible to expand the alliance of participating media companies on CBS and Viacom, which, I recall, is currently starting a high-profile lawsuit against YouTube.
Lack of advertisers, at work with which it will be very decent to earn all parties, is not expected. About a dozen very “tasty” preliminary agreements have already been concluded.
Rumors have been circulating about the negotiations among the management of large companies that own most of the American and global broadcasting markets. Giants such as Viacom, Disney, and the two already named, with the heyday of the Internet, were slowly pushed to the sidelines by rapidly growing ambitious projects like YouTube. The audience of TV channels gradually went to the Network, in the vast expanses of which it became possible to easily find popular TV shows, films and broadcasts produced by the same television companies, only without annoying commercials interrupting the show in the most interesting place.
Of course, publishing copyrighted videos is illegal and is being pursued by copyright holders with enviable tenacity. But to cope with the multimillion-dollar army of YouTube visitors, as well as with the owners of this service, they still have not succeeded. For some reason, perhaps from the reluctance to share profits with Google, media companies did not cooperate with YouTube and did not distribute their content through it. Instead, they began work on their own large-scale project.
The project, known so far only under the working name “Caterpillar”, will, according to preliminary information, have all the same functions as its powerful competitor: posting a user’s video, a social network for communication between users and the ability to play any video on a third-party site with using the built-in player. View all content, of course, will be completely free.
But both NBC and News Corp insist that Caterpillar is not only planned as a response to YouTube’s threat. No, their plans extend much wider. First of all, the emphasis will be placed on the fact that almost any show, any latest series of the series “Lost” or “24” can be watched completely legally. And the powerful power of advertising, which once made the whole of America drink orange juice in the morning, will make it look unnatural for the user to watch them anywhere else on the Internet.
The media monsters will help in this agreement with AOL, Yahoo and MSN and MySpace, which will take on a significant part of the popularization work, allocating a place for their content. Actually, the announcement of a new project was made immediately after the successful completion of negotiations with these companies.
However, do not think that News and NBC intentionally bypass Google. The press service of the Internet company confirmed that Peter Chernin, CEO of News Corp, had a telephone conversation with Eric Schmidt, but nothing is known about her results. If we discard the possibility that Chernin called Schmidt just to gloat and threaten, it may well be that Google will become a Caterpillar partner in the future.
Also, on the other hand, in the future it is possible to expand the alliance of participating media companies on CBS and Viacom, which, I recall, is currently starting a high-profile lawsuit against YouTube.
Lack of advertisers, at work with which it will be very decent to earn all parties, is not expected. About a dozen very “tasty” preliminary agreements have already been concluded.