AllThingsD » channels

YouTube Unveils Paid Subscription Channels

Amir Efrati — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:17:54 +0000

Google Inc.’s YouTube video service on Thursday unveiled its long-awaited paid-subscription channels, which allow some video creators to charge viewers a monthly fee to watch certain content.

The channels represent a potential new revenue stream for YouTube and its thousands of content partners, and plans for them already have helped to draw some new video makers to the site. They include the producers of “Sesame Street” and “Ultimate Fighting Championship,” both of whom wanted a subscription model for their videos, rather than relying on revenue from advertising that is sold largely by YouTube.

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YouTube's Magic Number

Peter Kafka — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:21:48 +0000

YouTube is grading the channels it has launched in the last year. At least six in 10 of them won’t make the cut.

Out in videoland, there’s lot of chatter about who’s in and who’s out. But if you take Google executives at their word, this shouldn’t be that mysterious: They want to keep the channels that keep people watching the longest.

That’s why the video site has been pushing “watch time” as a key metric over the past few months. In August, YouTube told content creators that time spent watching videos was now the site’s primary focus. Last month, they reinforced the message by making it easier for channel operators to see how much time viewers were spending on their stuff (see an example at the bottom of this post).

And this month, Jamie Byrne, YouTube’s head of content strategy, spelled it out again: He said watch time would guide the site’s decisions about which channels merited a new round of funding.

Here’s YouTube executive Eric Meyerson in August, explaining the change:

We’ve updated what we call video discovery features, meaning how our viewers find videos to watch via search and suggested videos. These changes better surface the videos that viewers actually watch, over those that they click on and then abandon.

Why this shift? Our video discovery features were previously designed to drive views. This rewarded videos that were successful at attracting clicks, rather than the videos that actually kept viewers engaged. (Cleavage thumbnails, anyone?)

Now when we suggest videos, we focus on those that increase the amount of time that the viewer will spend watching videos on YouTube, not only on the next view, but also successive views thereafter.

If viewers are watching more YouTube, it signals to us that they’re happier with the content they’ve found. It means that creators are attracting more engaged audiences. It also opens up more opportunities to generate revenue for our partners.

All of that makes plenty of sense. But, as Meyerson notes, it’s also a change. Up until this summer, YouTube, like everyone else in Web video, was primarily concerned with overall views, because those related directly to ad sales: More views = more opportunities to show ads. And this is still supposed to do that — but over the long run.

I can imagine that some channel programmers are griping that YouTube has changed the rules of the game while they’re playing the game. But that’s the nature of Web video, period — all of this stuff is a work in progress, and if you can’t change as it changes, you’re going to have a very hard time.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/hvoya)

New Boxee TV Will Be Sold at Walmart

Lauren Goode — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:46:36 +0000

Boxee’s newest device, a $99 hybrid basic-cable-plus-Web-apps box that comes with a cloud DVR service, will be sold in 3,000 U.S. Walmart stores this holiday season, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. The Walmart distribution could bring some needed visibility to start-up Boxee, which sold 120,000 devices last year, and has struggled to compete with Roku and Apple TV.

Boxee Looks to Reinvent Itself with Cloud-Based DVR Box

Lauren Goode — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:00:18 +0000

Boxee, the New York-based start-up that introduced the irregular-shaped Boxee Box for streaming Web video to TV sets, is betting with its new box that users are going to want to DVR a lot of basic TV — that’s right, real TV.

The company’s new device — simply called Boxee TV, not Boxee Box 2 — still works like the previous Boxee Box in that it connects to your Internet router at home and streams Web apps, like Pandora or Netflix, to your TV. It’s still made by D-Link, Boxee’s manufacturing partner on the first box.

But Boxee TV also includes a DVR service that records TV content from free, over-the-air channels patched through the box’s dual tuner — provided that users are in one of eight markets where the TV can be recorded through Boxee. It’s also supposed to transmit unencrypted cable. So if you have a cable TV subscription, you’ll be able to plug Boxee TV into the wall and watch those channels.

What sets this device apart from other set top boxes, Boxee says, is that the DVR is entirely cloud based. There’s no internal storage on Boxee TV; the content is stored in the user’s cloud account.

The new Boxee TV costs $99, nearly half the price of the original $179 Boxee Box, and ships November 1. Boxee’s DVR service, which uses Amazon’s cloud servers, will cost $15 a month for unlimited cloud storage.

Boxee also said it would no longer make, but will continue to offer maintenance for, the original Boxee Box and its short-lived Live TV dongle.

Boxee’s earlier device options. The company will no longer produce the original Boxee Box.

The start-up, lead by Avner Ronen, has come a long way from its early days, when it first offered a Web app for video viewing on a laptop, then put out a designated set top box, followed by a live TV plug-in “dongle” that combined Web video apps with basic TV channels, to its Cloudee cloud service, all of which has culminated in the full-fledged system it’s unveiling now.

Along the way, Boxee has managed to piss off everyone from cable operators to Hulu to Mark Cuban, but now insists the box is a good thing for cable operators. In fact, Ronen said in an interview with AllThingsD, he’d like to do more work with cable operators, especially smaller ones, to perhaps offer an alternative option to the clunky, subsidized cable boxes consumers normally get with their basic or premium cable packages.

The hybrid device is a bit of a head-scratcher, so here are some basic pros and cons of it, based on an hour-long hands-on with it:

Pros:

Boxee offers unlimited DVR storage — for a fee, of course. No more deleting never-watched shows because you’ve run out of space and can’t record new episodes.
Cord-cutters or cord-never-getters can now put Boxee in the same price category as a Roku or Apple TV, and still get a few basic TV channels to boot, plus the DVR, plus Web apps (provided they have monthly Internet service).
Cord-shavers who want to keep their cable subscriptions for premium content, like Showtime’s “Homeland” or ESPN, now have another inexpensive option for a supplemental or second-TV Web video box.
Users who have been getting free basic TV through antennae can buy and connect the Boxee to coaxial cable and opt into its $15 a month DVR service.
In terms of design, Boxee has grown out of its gangly phase and is now a lightweight rectangular box that should fit easily on console shelves.

Cons:

Boxee has put a lot of emphasis on offering free TV channels — both broadcast and basic cable — through the device, but the number of free TV channels that are available will depend on which markets users are in. This could range anywhere from zero to a handful of channels to a couple dozen. And channels can be encrypted (read: made unavailable) by cable operators at any time, but Boxee says it has been working with cable operators to elude that problem.
Only about 30 percent of U.S. households across 8 markets will be able to use DVR on Boxee TV.
Hulu and Hulu Plus still aren’t available on Boxee.
Boxee also doesn’t support cable authentication apps. So let’s say, for example, you’re still paying for your premium cable subscription — you won’t be able to access HBOGo or Comcast Xfinity through Boxee.
Boxee TV doesn’t offer a basic Web browser.
Boxee has ditched that fantastic Qwerty remote, the one that kept you from having to painstakingly search for TV show and movie titles using a set of arrow keys. I asked Avner about this; he said going back to a standard remote kept costs down, and pointed out that users can do most of their searching on Boxee’s compatible Web and mobile apps. But I really liked that little remote.

YouTube to Double Down on Its "Channel" Experiment

Amir Efrati — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:00:33 +0000

For Google Inc.’s YouTube it was a $150 million experiment: Seed dozens of new video “channels” on its Web service and see what works.

So far, Google likes what it sees from the eight-month effort. The company says it will put in another $200 million to market the channels as it attempts to upgrade its content from simple user-generated videos and to lure more viewers and advertising.

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YouTube's Gigantic Year Is Already Here, Citi Says

Peter Kafka — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 00:50:16 +0000

Is Google making money off of YouTube? You betcha, Google execs told shareholders today, without offering the slightest bit of detail. Par for the course.

So, in lieu of real numbers from Google, here’s a Wall Street estimate: Google is making a ton of money from YouTube.

More specifically: The video site should generate more than $3.6 billion in gross revenue this year, says Citi’s Mark Mahaney. After distributing some of that to partners, Google probably records net revenue of $2.4 billion, he says.

Mahaney is a Google bull, and has been arguing that investors have been overlooking YouTube’s value in particular. But in this case, Mahaney is sort of criticizing himself. Because, last year, when he guessed at YouTube’s 2012 revenue, he thought it would do a mere $1.7 billion.

Why is he even more optimistic now?

Basically, because YouTube’s traffic continues to grow, even though it’s already ginormous — comScore has it posting 20 percent growth, quarter after quarter. And because Google is sticking more ads on more videos, Mahaney says in a note today. He’s also bullish about the early results from its “channel” project, but doesn’t seem to be factoring in a bump from that yet.

YouTube’s Salar Kamangar is pushing the channels concept because he doesn’t think YouTube gets paid nearly enough for the eyeballs it delivers to advertisers, and he thinks that making the site look and act a bit more like TV will bump its value.

But it’s already enormously valuable, Mahaney argues. For context: His 2012 revenue estimate “is likely 50% greater than Yahoo!’s Display Advertising total and right-in-line with Netflix’s total subscription revenue. We really doubt whether most investors realize how big/important YouTube has become.”

Content Is No Longer King

Ben Elowitz — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:14:23 +0000

“Content is king” has been a long-lived mantra of media. And in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was true.

But over the last several years, the Internet has upheaved the aphorism.

It used to be that media was linear. And in that world, content and distribution were married. The HBO channel had HBO content. A New York Times subscription bought you New York Times content. And Vogue and Cosmopolitan each month delivered exclusive and proprietary content from … Vogue and Cosmopolitan.

Until the Internet came along. In every single one of the varied businesses the Internet has touched — from commerce to media to communications to payments — there has been one common impact: disaggregation.

Content and distribution have parted

In the case of the hundreds-of-years-old media business, the Internet has fundamentally separated content from distribution.

Today I can watch hundreds of South Park and Jon Stewart clips, all without a cable box — on my Apple TV, my Android phone, or YouTube on my desktop.

But wait, South Park and Jon Stewart? Content is king, you say. It’s now even more free to reign, unfettered by distribution channels!

No; because content is no longer enough. Content has always been a means to an end. And the end has always been audience.

Content isn’t the goal. Audience is.

When it comes to the business of media, there’s no question: advertisers don’t pay to reach content. They pay to reach an audience.

What’s the first item in every brief from every advertiser? It’s not Target Content, it’s Target Audience.

Media has been slow to adjust to this new dynamic. Companies have sunk billions into content management systems — using CMS as the cornerstone of their modernization — under the impression that they traffic in content.

But they don’t. They traffic in audience. And how much have they spent on audience development systems? Not much, if any at all.

Now that distribution of content to audience is no longer linear, distribution decisions are suddenly more complicated. And, at the same time, they are immensely more important — and more dynamic — to create the impact media companies are looking for: drawing an audience! Social distribution can outperform search, if you use it wisely. Day-parting your postings can boost post performance by 100 percent or more. Packaging can triple the effectiveness of content in reaching an audience.

And yet, few in media have even begun to optimize these decisions.

Who’s your Chief Audience Officer?

Distribution decisions are just as important as content decisions in building and serving an audience, and yet they are being largely ignored. Everyone has an Editor-In-Chief or a Chief Creative Officer. But how many have a Distributor-In-Chief? Or a Chief Audience Officer? A Head of Digital Programming?

The myopic focus on content over distribution is widespread, and it’s a bad business decision. It ignores a critical access of leverage, and one of competitive advantage.

The smartest media companies will do three things to take control of their digital opportunity:

Put someone in charge of audience development.
Give them latitude to think about the interplay between distribution and content, so that they can marry the two. Like a head of programming for a cable network, they should be tasked to realize the full potential of your digital channels. They should support the delivery of your content, and they should also provide back pressure to your content creators. Don’t merge it into your editorial jobs — that’s too precarious. Make it its own discipline.
Adopt an audience development strategy.
There are three basic components you have to master: insights (know your audience segments, and what each one will like); channel selection (identify the highest value distribution outlets for your brand, whether it’s search, social, YouTube, Hulu, or your own channels); and optimization (use data to create a feedback loop and tune your content, packaging, and timing to what works for your audience).
Systematize it.
You have sunk millions into content management systems. But how much have you spent on your most monetizable asset, your audience? You should be as systematic in audience development as you are in content creation, if not more so. Whether it’s with established processes or dedicated algorithms, make audience development a competitive advantage. Get so good at it that you truly know how to maximize every piece of content you create — and multiply your ROI. Use technology for what it does best: Systematize your advantages over your competitors.

With the rise of new distribution platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Hulu, there’s no question that the next generation of digital media is as much about distribution as it is about content. Media companies that orient their organizations to prize audience development above all (with distribution as a key component) will catch the upside of these tectonic shifts. And they will be the ones that survive and thrive in the digital age. After all, audience is the ruler of media companies’ fortunes.

This article by Ben Elowitz (@elowitz) is an exclusive selection from his Media Success newsletter for digital media leaders. Elowitz is the co-founder and CEO of next-generation media company Wetpaint and the author of the Digital Quarters blog about the future of digital media. Prior to Wetpaint, Elowitz co-founded Blue Nile (NILE).

Disney's YouTube Deal Kicks In, So Free Kids' TV Starts Showing Up

Peter Kafka — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:46:59 +0000

YouTube is gunning for the TV business by trying to create a new genre of Web video programs that will capture TV eyeballs and ad dollars.

But Google’s Web video giant is also very happy to run good old-fashioned TV shows, if it can get its hands on them.

Here’s a reminder: Nearly 70 videos from Disney’s Disney Channel, many of them full-length episodes, are all free.

The videos have gone up in the last few days, but neither Google or Disney has said much about them. They’re there because of a programming deal the two companies cut last fall.

Coverage of that pact focused on the fact that Disney was going to create original short videos for YouTube, and would also allow YouTube to post a selection of user-generated stuff that incorporated Disney characters, etc.

But the deal also allows YouTube to run full-length shows. They’re even fully embeddable, as you can see below, if you’ve got 22 minutes to catch up on Zack and Cody’s suite life.

I’m not an expert on this flavor of kids’ programming, but I gather these are relatively old clips. But I do know that kids don’t really care about the vintage of their Web videos — they’re generally happy to watch whatever they watch, over and over again.

That’s why kids’ videos are so important to Netflix, and why they’re potentially very important for Google. That long-running, never-ending copyright lawsuit means that YouTube can’t get its hands on all the kids’ stuff that Viacom controls, but the Mouse House has plenty of its own. The fact that Disney distributes its stuff quite widely on the Web doesn’t diminish its value to YouTube boss Salar Kamangar.

This isn’t the first time YouTube has distributed full TV episodes, or even full movies, owned by Big Media, for free. (See more here and here). But it is a good reminder that it is very happy to show more of them, as soon Hollywood is ready to play along.

How to Make Web Video That Looks Like TV: Make Web Video About a TV Show

Peter Kafka — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:00:28 +0000

YouTube is spending more than $100 million to launch a series of “channels,” which are supposed to make the site more appealing to users and advertisers.

But you don’t need a YouTube deal, or YouTube’s money, to launch a channel with nice-looking content.

You can do it the old-fashioned way, and get an advertiser to foot the bill.

That’s what Outrigger Media, a Web video sales start-up, has done with Tumi, the high-end luggage company, and Road Bite TV.

Road Bite TV is a mashup, conceptually speaking, between TV’s Food Channel and Travel Channel. Outrigger doesn’t work with either cable channel, but it is leaning on one of their stars, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, to launch the thing.

Outrigger is piggybacking on Bourdain’s globe-hopping shows by getting producers Zero Point Zero, who put together Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and “The Layover,” to shoot a series of behind-the-scenes vignettes. Tumi underwrites the series in exchange for prominent placement in the clips (see below), as well as pre-roll ads and other promotional spots. (Zero Point Zero wants to make it clear that while Bourdain is on camera, he’s not part of the deal. Here’s more clarification from the producers: “There was no deal between Anthony Bourdain and Outrigger to launch Road Bite TV. Zero Point Zero Production was commissioned to create the content for Outrigger with a separate production crew.”)

Outrigger CEO Mike Henry says the first eight clips (he’s got another eight in the works) cost something in the “low-mid six figures” to produce. That gets him around half an hour of content, which makes it expensive by Web video standards, and dirt cheap by TV standards.

The finished product sort of straddles the line between the two. Interesting, but you’re not going to watch 30 minutes in a row.

What I’m really waiting for is the moment when “No Reservations” — or something like it — appears as a Web-only show. That is — something that’s as good as a good reality TV show, but which just happens to be running on the Web.

Free Web video sites still don’t generate enough money to support a TV-quality reality show (subscription services like Netflix are a different story), but those costs should keep coming down. And if YouTube is successful, ad dollars will go up, and we’ll get to that point sooner than later.

Warner Music's YouTube Channel Is Not Not the Anti-Vevo

Peter Kafka — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:38:19 +0000

Three of the big music labels distribute their clips through Vevo, the online video heavyweight. Warner Music works on its own, via a standalone deal it cut with YouTube a couple of years ago.

Now Warner has another music deal with YouTube, but this one has a twist. Warner will launch a new “channel” with the video giant, which will feature even more content from the label’s artists.

The idea has a business logic to it, but it’s hard to see the consumer appeal behind “The Warner Sound.” Because, with a couple of minor exceptions, people aren’t fans of labels — they’re fans of specific artists, songs and genres.

But at least the channel is trying to do something a bit different here — instead of showcasing music videos you can see other places, it’s going to create brand-new stuff. Some examples, via a press release:

CeeLo Green Presents ManTazia: “Directed, shaped and cut in 2D Jankyvision, each episode of this short-form series will take you on an adventure into the lush imagination of CeeLo Green.”
Untitled: “Hot on the heels of his award-winning ‘A Tribe Called Quest’ documentary, actor and director Michael Rapaport presents this documentary series featuring different WMG artists.”
Staged: “This show takes the famous lyrics of top stars and re-imagines them as the script of a drama. Each episode will be in a different style and feature recognizable lyrics from a WMG artist.”
The Live Room: “Intimate performances shot in legendary recording studios around the world.”
Countdown to … : “An up-close look at the last frenetic days before a hotly-anticipated album comes out. In the first instalment, teen rap sensation Diggy criss-crosses the country headlining tours, shooting music videos, meeting fans and even doing homework.”
Finding Cody Simpson: “Using YouTube’s annotation technology, fans will be able to create their own Cody Simpson movie.”

Here’s a teaser clip. The channel is supposed to launch later this month, in conjunction with SXSW.

How to Win at YouTube

Peter Kafka — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:57:52 +0000

YouTube is reaching out to Hollywood for help. But its “channel” strategy doesn’t mean it’s abandoning the amateurs and semi-pros who have been stocking the video site with clips for years.

And if you’re in the latter group, YouTube has something just for you: A “Playbook” that’s supposed to help you get your skateboarding dog seen by the widest possible audience. The site just put out a revised version, and even if you never plan on uploading a single video, it’s well worth skimming the 91 slides here.

When you do, you’ll get a sense of the increasing similarities between YouTube successes and the ones you see on TV and in theaters — note the emphasis, for instance, on “tentpole programming” and cross-promotions. And the importance the guide places on consistent scheduling and frequency.

And then there are some tips that are quite specific to YouTube, like the best way to use “annotations,” the interactive text video makers can layer onto their clips.

It’s also important to note that a lot of this stuff is applicable to anyone who creates anything, in any format, and wants to get it distributed on the Web.

There’s a basic primer on search engine optimization (crucial because YouTube is the world’s second-biggest search engine), for instance. And also a handy guide to understanding Google+ (and, in less detail, how to use Facebook and Twitter).

Four Weird Things the Internet Is Doing to Our Understanding of Television

Eric Spiegelman — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:21:36 +0000

People seem really intent these days on fusing television with the Internet. On one level this makes no sense. Television technology works just fine and we all understand how to use it. We’re also in the midst of a golden age when it comes to programming; I can’t remember another time when there were this many good shows on. Also, television advertising rates are enormous compared to the Internet. There are people on YouTube who have more subscribers than top network sitcoms have viewers, yet they earn a minuscule fraction of the revenue. Television, as an industry, is strong.

On another level, however, I understand the motivation. When it comes to delivering audio-visual content to a wide audience, the Internet has lowered the barriers to entry so far that anyone with even the dinkiest camera can become a major broadcaster. The television industry may face a crisis of overhead when a large number of scrappy upstarts deliver comparable value with almost no fixed costs. Also, there are some aspects of the television business that the Internet simply does better, specifically when it comes to reaching an audience.

So there is the scent of blood in the water, and out of the resulting frenzy a few lessons have appeared. Here are four of them.

There doesn’t have to be a difference between a “channel” and a “show.”

You probably have a clear understanding about what a television channel is. Comedy Central is a channel. Your local CBS affiliate is a channel. A channel is the thing you tune in to at a specific time to watch a particular show. A channel runs a lot of shows on it. Time Warner Cable offers 900 channels. This seems like too many. Bruce Springsteen wrote “57 channels and nothing on.” That sounds so quaint now.

But if you have a conversation about YouTube channels with this concept of a “channel” in your head you may experience some cognitive dissonance. There are “tens of millions” of channels on YouTube. One company, Machinima, operates 3,380 of them. That’s literally 100 times as many channels as are owned by NBC Universal, and it’s not enough. YouTube just launched 100 more channels with premium content. YouTube must be using the word “channel” differently. Except they’re not.

Both a YouTube channel and a television channel deliver a stream of content from a transmitting device to a receiving one. Viewers tune in to a television channel by selecting its number; they reach a YouTube channel via its URL. The main difference is that the cost of creating a television channel from scratch is incredibly high, while on YouTube it’s pretty close to zero. Unlike television, a YouTube channel can turn a profit with very little programming. The comedian Ray William Johnson, for example, has one of the most lucrative channels on YouTube. It plays one show. That show adds 12 minutes of new programming per week.

If a channel online costs next to nothing, and you can build one around a single show, then why do television shows need television channels at all? Every once in a while there’s a lot of fuss about getting cable channels à la carte. But who cares about that when you can have à la carte programming?

I like to think about this in the context of “The Daily Show.” On cable, you’re limited to 30 minutes of “The Daily Show” per day, and you have to tune in at 11 pm or set your DVR to watch it. There could easily just be a “Daily Show” channel, with all the extra programming that Comedy Central now reserves for the Web site, plus spinoffs for the various “Daily Show” correspondents. More content means more places to sell advertising, which means more profit. One challenge, of course, would be getting the audience to modify its behavior, but new technology seems to be inspiring this already.

Programming can now be delivered to your television set through a remote control.

Let’s define “remote control” as a handheld piece of electronics that tells your television set what to do while you’re sitting on the couch. Smartphones and tablets fit into this category, and before you argue that this definition is too broad, I submit that an iPhone is no less a remote control than it is a camera. It commands your television set far more profoundly than your traditional remote control. At least, if you have an Apple TV. Which you should.

The Apple TV comes with a technology called AirPlay, which allows you to throw videos wirelessly from your phone or tablet to your television set. Got a movie sitting in iTunes on your computer? You can watch it on TV via AirPlay. Find a video you want to watch embedded on a Web site you read? If AirPlay is available, a little button will pop up and you can stream the video to your TV. Need some good recommendations? Try one of the many “discovery” apps out there, like Shelby.tv or ShowYou or VHX. They skim your Twitter and Facebook feeds looking for videos your friends have posted. And you can throw those to your TV.

There are apps for ESPN and Discovery Channel and PBS and other traditional channels that allow you watch their shows, on demand, on your TV, via AirPlay. There are also a growing number of apps for channels that have never been included in a traditional cable provider’s lineup. The Wall Street Journal’s news channel, WSJ Live, is one of them. Time Warner Cable doesn’t carry it, but my iPad does.

I should note that WSJ Live is also available in the main Apple TV library, so you don’t actually need to use AirPlay to watch it. But the fact that you can illustrates my point. The remote control has become a very personal device, one that you carry around with you all day long, one that you use to store and index your favorite media. A viewer is just as likely to watch a channel she’s added to her home screen as anything available in the cable menu. The programming of her choice routes through her remote control.

Marketing and distribution are often the same thing.

Last month, IFC released the entire first episode of the second season of “Portlandia” online a week before its airdate. They used an embeddable video player, so that any online publication could feature the episode on its Web site. Individual sketches from the show were also made available in the same way. IFC didn’t just tease the show or talk it up, they let people actually see it for themselves. The result was an 81 percent increase in viewership among 18-49 year olds when the show returned to the network.

There are few examples of this sort of thing happening before the Internet. A movie poster hanging in a theater where that movie is playing, perhaps, or a DVD insert in a magazine ad. But this is something the Internet does really well. A single sentence can promote a film and deliver it to your computer at the same time. Allow me to demonstrate: “This video is amazing.”

That, of course, is the lifeblood of online publishing. Here’s something that resonated with me, I’m recommending it to you, my audience. They call it “curating” now. Somehow that word got separated from “blogging” recently, and I’m not entirely sure how or why. I think Tumblr and Pinterest had something to do with it. But curating, which is a thing bloggers do, is a distinct talent. It’s highly respected in other manifestations, such as museum curators or fashion buyers or television programmers. It was curators who spread that “Portlandia” preview around. And when you factor in the marketing power they brought to that show, and you consider how much a network pays to advertise a program in general, there’s only one conclusion to draw. Online curators are the most undervalued talent in the television industry.

A few of those new YouTube channels seem to recognize the power of the curatorial voice. Vice, Pitchfork, SB Nation and the Bleacher Report all received funding to create new YouTube programming. Presumably their editors will create shows that they’d want to watch themselves, and with that level of personal investment, they’d vouch for those shows to their readers.

Television is no longer that different from publishing.

Just last week, the Gawker Media site Kotaku announced a programming schedule similar to that of a television network. This strategy was conceived well over a year ago, and is designed to sell audience size to advertisers, the way television does, rather than pageviews, which have been dropping in value for years.

This is only the latest example of conceptual overlap. Video embedding took off after the launch of YouTube, turning online publications into versions of The Daily Prophet, that newspaper from Harry Potter with the magical moving pictures on the front page. Some Internet video hosting and streaming services are built on content management systems designed for online publishing. When you upload a video to Blip, the last thing you click to make it go live is “publish.” Awl Music, the music video channel launched by The Awl in January, is run entirely on Tumblr. You can watch it on a television set connected to Google TV.

Both traditional and online publishers are producing original video series with increasing frequency. Reuters, Slate and The Wall Street Journal all have news and documentary programming on the new YouTube channel lineup. The New York Times and New York Magazine have been doing their own video programming for years. It’s only a matter of time before some of these compete with the cable news channels.

Eric Spiegelman produces the Web series “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” which is about to launch its fifth season. He helped bring the hit Japanese television show “Retro Game Master” to Kotaku.com, and he helped launch AwlMusic.tv in partnership with TheAwl.com.

Roku Plays Nice With Cable Guys

Lauren Goode — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:36:38 +0000

Roku is one of the cord-cutter’s favorite tools, because its devices make it easier to get video on your TV without paying for a cable subscription. But as Roku plans to more than double the current number of apps on its platform, it is putting a particular focus on cable apps — ones that will still require users to keep those cable subscriptions.

Roku’s founder and chief executive officer, Anthony Wood, has said that Roku users can expect to see more cable apps from providers like Comcast, Verizon, and others working on the platform, as the Saratoga, Calif.-based company ups the number of apps running on its devices from 400 to around a thousand by the end of the year.

Currently, content from HBO GO and Epix plays on Roku boxes — provided that the user is paying for and can authenticate the apps through cable services like AT&T U-verse, Charter, Cox, RCN and Verizon FiOS.

And on the cable side, providers like Comcast and Verizon have introduced their own apps, which, as my AllThingsD colleague Peter Kafka has pointed out, allow subscribers to stream channels to their iPads while they’re in the home — and not too far away from that cable box.

You’ve probably heard a lot about cord-cutting in recent years — though the data on this trend is still somewhat contradictory. With cable companies launching streaming apps, and streaming device makers looking to cable content, both sides of the TV-content coin are acknowledging the same thing: We’re not entirely sure yet that cord-cutting is a real phenomenon, there’s evidence that consumers want both cable TV and Internet streaming options, and the industry could stand to experiment a little bit while it all shakes out.

But for Roku, which brought the first Netflix-centric device to the market and has since sold around two and a half million boxes, it also means trying to take a greater stake on the hardware side. Basically, Wood said, his idea is that users will be able to get most if not all of their cable needs through a Roku product.

Roku also recently announced a cordless “streaming stick,” which is meant to enable Internet video streaming on a non-connected television set. Despite predictions that “smart,” Internet-connected TVs are set to take off over the next couple years, Wood is taking a long-term view with the streaming stick, targeting the consumers who initially won’t be looking to buy new smart TVs. He has also said that the stick, a flash-drive-sized device that plugs into the back of a TV set, will allow for easier, regular software updates to TV apps.

“While we can’t necessarily compete with gaming consoles, we see it as less likely that a family would have an Xbox paired with every TV in the house. But they might have a Roku device with every TV in the house,” Wood said, referring to Roku’s relatively low cost structure.

Wood’s assertions arrive as the Federal Communications Commission is considering a rule change that would require consumers that patch into low-tier or basic cable channels to use some sort of cable set-top box to do so, rather than access cable wires directly (and for free). One start-up, Boxee — which makes the video-streaming Boxee Box and just threw its efforts behind a Live TV stick that’s meant to provide users with basic cable channels — has openly opposed the potential change, saying that it would harm innovation in the set-top box space.

It’s unclear if or when this ruling will come to pass, though VentureBeat reports that it could come within a few weeks.

But Roku’s strategy to bring more cable apps aboard its platform is a different tack than the one Boxee is taking, since Boxee has marketed itself explicitly as a cord-cutting tool, whereas Roku is eyeing the idea of a holistic TV-watching solution.

Salar Kamangar: It's Time to Channelize YouTube (Video)

John Paczkowski — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:26:15 +0000

Turns out videos of dogs on skateboards are far more lucrative when they’re part of a dog-lovers channel or a skateboard channel. Or both. In the D: Dive Into Media video highlights reel below, YouTube boss Salar Kamangar explains why.

[ See post to watch video ]

Channel Changer: One-on-One With YouTube Content Boss Robert Kyncl (Video)

Peter Kafka — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:41:35 +0000

YouTube is trying to take on TV by beefing up its selection of “premium” content: It’s doling out millions to famous and not-so-famous people to make stuff for the world’s largest video site, and creating “channels” to make that stuff easier to find.

Google announced the plan last fall, but yesterday, YouTube content boss Robert Kyncl held a formal coming-out party for the plan, with a presentation for a packed house at the Consumer Electronics Show. And after that, I talked to him about why YouTube had changed course.

After all, plenty of people seem to like YouTube just the way it is. It attracts 800 million users a month, who watch a staggering three billion hours of clips a day. And while Google has never come out and disclosed the site’s finances, it frequently hints that it is a big business, and perhaps a profitable one.

And if YouTube really wants to get more premium stuff for the site, why not go out and buy the stuff that Hollywood and the TV guys are already making? Google could certainly afford it, and Big Media has gotten very comfortable about putting its stuff online, as long as it’s getting a big check for it. Kyncl knows that well, since he used to arrange those deals at Netflix, before joining Google in 2010.

You can see Kyncl’s answers here — apologies for the extra-shaky cam — and below that, you can see the full CES presentation. And in a couple weeks, you can hear from Kyncl’s boss, YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar, at our D: Dive Into Media conference. Registration details here.

[ See post to watch video ]

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"Soft" Ad Sales Ding Hulu's 2011 Growth

Peter Kafka — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:23:59 +0000

Remember back in the fall of 2011, when we started hearing anecdotal reports about slowing ad sales? Add Hulu to the list of examples: The company just reported a 60 percent jump in overall revenue for 2011 — which isn’t as much as it had thought it was going to do a year ago.

In a blog post, CEO Jason Kilar blames the shortfall on a “soft advertising market (economy) in the second half of 2011.”

The numbers: Hulu did $420 million last year, via a combination of ad sales and revenue from its Hulu Plus subscription service. But during the first half of 2011, it had told the world — several times — that it was “on pace to approach” $500 million.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see when sales started softening. In July, when Kilar reported his company’s Q2 numbers, he was still offering the same $500 million revenue guidance. But in early October, when he reported Q3 numbers, the guidance had disappeared from his update.

There are a whole lot of people who would like to report 60 percent annual growth. And the fact that Hulu revenue missed earlier projections by 16 percent – “overall the Hulu ad business grew aggressively and Hulu Plus materially exceeded our plan,” Kilar notes in his post — isn’t going to be the biggest issue for the service by a long shot.

Hulu’s management and its owners — Providence Equity, Comcast, Disney and News Corp. — need to reach a fundamental agreement about the video site’s direction, and how the site fits into today’s entertainment landscape. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

But it’s still worth noting the miss, because Hulu is both a digital ad business and a digital ad business that sells very premium video.

It’s an article of faith among digital ad bulls that the industry will keep growing even if the larger economy takes a hit, because ad dollars will shift from old media, anyway. And advertisers are supposed to be clamoring for the tv shows and movies that Hulu sells — which is one of the reasons Google is trying to shift upmarket from dogs on skateboards, with its “channels” strategy.

We’ll start hearing other reports on the state of last fall’s ad market, and the outlook for the future, over the next couple weeks, when public companies start reporting their Q4 numbers.

And we’ll hear a lot more from Kilar himself, who will be appearing at our D: Dive into Media conference at the end of this month. If you want to see him in person, grab a seat.

Frequency, a TV Guide for Web Video, Tries a New Look

Peter Kafka — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 03:00:11 +0000

You watch a lot of Web video, and you will watch a lot more. Who will serve as your TV Guide?

There are a whole lot of people who want to be in that game, and Blair Harrison is one of them. His Frequency, which launched last year, has gone through an overhaul, but its gist remains the same: It wants to let you pick and choose feeds of stuff you know you like. It wants to show you stuff your friends like, too, by incorporating cues from your social networks.

Harrison, who made his money and reputation building iFilm and selling it to Viacom during the beginning of the Web 1.0 boom, raised $3 million last year, and since then has rounded up another $1 million.

More important, his new Web site is slicker, and now features a dashboard that you can program with feeds you select, along with ones that use suggestions from Facebook, Twitter, et al. And the service now offers an iPad version, as well as one that will be featured on some Samsung TVs. Here’s what it should look like on the big screen:

Harrison’s challenges also remain the same: He needs to convince people that they should use a Web video hub, period. Facebook already does a great job of surfacing cool videos my friends think I should see (thanks for the Wilco clip, everyone), and Twitter is getting better at it.

And if I am inclined to use a Web video hub, chances are I’m already doing it via Google, at YouTube.

Google is particularly interesting for Harrison, since it’s both competition and de facto partner. YouTube is in the process of dividing itself up into niche channels that will work particularly well with Frequency’s new scheme — if you like the indie music that myISH serves up on YouTube, it should be easy to bring that feed right into Frequency.

But Google would very much like to be the program guide for Web video, too, via Google TV. That means, for instance, that some Samsung models will feature Frequency, and others will feature the one from the giant company with enormous resources. Tough fight.

Harrison isn’t asking consumers to fund his fight, either. The Web sites and apps are free, and the only ads that show up on the videos are the ones that the original distributors add in there, so right now Frequency is revenue-free.

Harrison says he needs to build scale and can figure it out later, but there are some obvious sponsorship/customization routes that he can try, just like Flipboard is trying out with magazines for its Web app reader. In fact, if you said that Harrison was trying to build Flipboard for Web video, he wouldn’t stop you.

Anyway! No point in writing about Web video without showing Web video. Here are a couple of clips Frequency tells me my friends think I would like:

Now-65-year-old David Bowie, from way back in 1973, via Facebook:

And, for whatever reason, a weather balloon, via Twitter:

Disney and Comcast Link Up for Another 10 Years

Peter Kafka — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:01:08 +0000

Comcast has re-upped its distribution deal with Disney, which means the country’s largest cable company will continue to pipe programming from ABC, ESPN and other channels into its subscribers’ homes for another 10 years.

The deal will also give Comcast customers more ways to watch those shows, including the ability to stream some of the programs live, on the go, on laptops, iPhones and iPads.

I’ve published the full press release below, but here are some of the quick takeaways:

While there are digital goodies and benefits included in the new deal, this is still fundamentally about good old-fashioned TV, just like the 10-year deal that Comcast signed with CBS in 2010: It means Comcast (funded by its customers) will pay Disney an increasingly big chunk of money each year, in exchange for a big bundle of programming.

That underscores how difficult it will be for would-be Web-only “over the top” services to truly change the TV paradigm: When Disney and the other big-media companies are still able to bundle their channels together in exchange for big guaranteed revenue streams, they don’t have any incentive to break that up and offer “a la carte” programming.

Some of the digital goodies here include access to Disney’s WatchESPN app, which gives tablet and smartphone users the ability to stream the sports; Disney introduced the app last summer, but Comcast subs haven’t been able to use it until now.

Comcast users will also be able to stream some live Disney programming, but, as far as I can tell, they still won’t have the ability to stream live ABC broadcasting on the go.

There’s no mention here about the fate of ABC.com or Hulu, the joint venture that’s co-owned by Disney, Comcast and News Corp. (which also owns this site). I’ve been told repeatedly, and recently, that ABC would follow in News Corp.’s footsteps, and would begin to “window” the free programming it offers through those sites, which would mean people who aren’t paying for TV would have to wait eight days to watch the shows. But that hasn’t happened yet.

THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY AND COMCAST CORPORATION ANNOUNCE A LONG-TERM, COMPREHENSIVE DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT THAT ADVANCES THE SUCCESSFUL MULTICHANNEL BUSINESS MODEL

DEAL PROVIDES XFINITY TV CUSTOMERS BROAD ACCESS TO TOP SPORTS, NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT ACROSS MULTIPLE SCREENS IN AND OUT OF THE HOME

PHILADELPHIA AND BURBANK –– JANUARY 4, 2012 –– Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) today announced a long-term, comprehensive distribution agreement that will deliver Disney’s top quality sports, news and entertainment content to Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers into the next decade on television, online, on tablets and handheld devices. The new agreement enhances the multichannel business model and supports the companies’ mutual goal to deliver the best video content to customers across multiple platforms using the latest technology and cloud innovation. For the first time ever, Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers will be able to watch ESPN, ABC or Disney shows live or on demand and across multiple screens. The companies also agreed to collaborate over the term of the deal to create new, innovative viewing experiences for Xfinity TV customers.

The networks and services covered by the agreement include: ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, Disney XD, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Deportes, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Goal Line, ESPN Buzzer Beater, ESPN 3D, ESPN GamePlan, ESPN FullCourt and ESPN3; retransmission consent for seven ABC-owned broadcast television stations (WABC-TV New York, WLS-TV Chicago, WPVI-TV Philadelphia, KGO-TV San Francisco, KTRK-TV Houston, KTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham, and KFSN-TV Fresno) as well as more than 10 high-definition networks. Additionally, Comcast will launch Disney Junior, a new 24-hour basic channel for preschool-age children, parents and caregivers. Comcast will also provide its Xfinity TV customers with broad access to a suite of live Disney networks on an authenticated basis and expanded Xfinity On Demand content through Disney’s comprehensive TV+ initiative. In total, 70 services are covered by the broad scope of this new agreement. License fee schedules for different services under the deal will be phased in over time.

“Comcast was the first video provider to create technology that enabled us to deliver content to customers where and when they want it across any viewing experience,” said Neil Smit, President and Chief Executive Officer, Comcast Cable. “We are very pleased to have reached this unprecedented and innovative, long-term agreement with Disney which embraces the future of entertainment and allows Comcast to continue to bring our vision of TV Everywhere to Xfinity customers whether at home or on the go.”

Anne Sweeney, Co-Chairman, Disney Media Networks and President, Disney/ABC Television Group, added, “This landmark deal is a great example of what can be achieved when programmers and distributors collaborate and innovate together to meet the ever-evolving needs of consumers and enhance the viewing experience. By combining the best news, sports and entertainment content available today with cutting-edge technologies, we’re able to fully realize our comprehensive TV+ initiative, and introduce a brand new suite of authenticated services to Comcast subscribers.”

Added George Bodenheimer, Executive Chairman, ESPN, Inc., “Given the scope of assets Comcast and Disney/ABC/ESPN are making available to consumers, this agreement is unprecedented in our industry. It reinforces the value of the multichannel subscription and takes full advantage of new technologies, which serve all of our viewers.”

The extensive and expanded rights package for Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers includes rights across multiple platforms for:

· Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers will receive more ABC, ABC Family, Disney and ESPN content through their set-top-box and, at this time, Disney and ESPN content online, including:

o ABC On Demand, ABC’s fast-forward-disabled On Demand service, which currently features a selection of top-rated primetime entertainment programming, including episodes of such popular current ABC shows as “Castle,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Once Upon A Time,” “Private Practice” and “Revenge.” Full current seasons will be made available on a number of shows. Additionally, Xfinity TV customers will have access to a variety of ABC News programming as well as some local ABC owned-station content.

o ABC Family On Demand, which features a variety of top-rated full episodes, refreshed monthly, from such popular millennial favorites as “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” “Switched at Birth,” and “Melissa & Joey.” Full current seasons will be made available on a number of shows. ABC Family original movies like “12 Dates of Christmas” will also be available.
o Disney-branded On Demand offerings, including Disney Channel On Demand, Disney Junior On Demand, and Disney XD On Demand. Refreshed each month, the Disney Channel On Demand offering will include episodes from such series as “Handy Manny,” “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” and “Jake and the Never Land Pirates” for preschoolers, as well as variety of episodes from “A.N.T. Farm,” “Good Luck Charlie,” “Wizards of Waverly Place,” and other popular series for older kids. Select episodes featured on Disney Channel On Demand will be available in innovative new offerings, such as playlists and monthly programming blocks, in addition to a number of episodes available in multiple languages. Disney Channel Original Movies such as “Lemonade Mouth,” “Geek Charming” and “Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension” will also be available. Disney XD On Demand features a variety of episodes from such series as the Emmy Award-winning animated hit “Phineas and Ferb.”
o Disney Channel’s subscription Video On Demand service, which offers on demand access to select episodes before they air, will now be available to Xfinity TV customers who receive Disney Channel, a service that Comcast will offer to these customers for no additional fee.
o Expanded on demand content from ESPN, including content from ESPN Deportes and ESPN’s award-winning original content from ESPN Films.
o The subscription On Demand service “Disney Family Movies,” which features a selection of classic and contemporary feature films and animated shorts from The Walt Disney Studios.
Xfinity TV customers will receive broad access to existing authenticated products like WatchESPN, as well as upcoming authenticated products, including WatchDisneyChannel, WatchDisneyXD and WatchDisneyJunior. These services will give Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers more opportunities to access live and video on demand content, both in-home and out-of-home, on their computers, smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.
Xfinity TV customers will also receive the recently announced Disney Junior, a new 24-hour basic channel for children ages 2-7, parents and caregivers. Upon its debut in 2012, the new channel will feature animated and live action programming that blends Disney’s unparalleled storytelling and beloved characters with learning, including early math, language skills, healthy eating and lifestyles, and social skills.
Comcast also obtained rights to air certain content from ESPN3, ESPN FullCourt and ESPN GamePlan on Comcast’s Xfinity Sports Entertainment Package.

With Siri TV, Apple Will Dismantle the TV Networks

Ben Elowitz — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:15:01 +0000

Steve Jobs died without fully transforming television, but the day ~~after~~ before he passed away, Apple unveiled Siri, its natural language interface. Though it’s currently only embedded in the new iPhone 4S, Siri could eventually change the face of the TV industry.

Notice I said “TV industry.”

Most observers and analysts believe that Siri’s voice commands could eliminate the need for those clunky TV remote controls. With the blurring and exponential proliferation of television and Web content, telling your TV what you’d like to watch, instead of scrolling through a nearly infinite number of program possibilities, makes a lot more sense.

But from my perspective, Siri’s greatest impact won’t ultimately be on users, or on device manufacturers (though they certainly risk losing market share to Apple). It will be on the TV industry’s content creators and packagers. Why? Because a voice-controlled television interface will fundamentally disrupt the six-decade-old legacy structure of networks, channels and programs. And that’s a legacy that — until now, at least — has been carried forward from analog to digital.

There’s an important underlying precedent here.

If the Internet can be generalized to have one effect across every industry that moves online, that effect would be disaggregation. Choices go from finite to infinite. Navigation goes from sequential to random access. And audiences choose content by the item far more than by the collection. We’ve gone from the packaged and channelized to the unbound and itemized. Autonomous albums are fragmented into songs; series into clips; and magazines and newspapers into articles and individual photos.

As much as we may think that has already happened with video, it is nothing compared to the great leveling that will occur in the voice-controlled living room. Voice-controlled TV means direct navigation to individual episodes, programs and clips. And it will almost certainly lead to a discernible deconstruction of the network and channel structure — not to mention the decomposition of even the aggregated marketplaces like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube.

Here’s the simple reason: No one is going to sit on their couch and say, “Siri, show me NBC’s ‘Community.’” In a voice-activated world, monikers like “NBC” become useless. They don’t stand for anything meaningful to the consumer. They’re just remnants of a decrepit channel structure that’s unraveling. And, in the end, they’ll simply connote the fast-fading allure of mid-20th century mass appeal.

To be sure, the TV majors will lose much of their ability to realize network effects. Already, you’re hearing less about “lead in” and “lead out.” What you are hearing more about, however, is disconnected videos. A program on YouTube, for instance, will sit on a level voice-controlled playing field with an NBC show, and that field will soon become even more level, because Siri will eliminate the menus that structure the artificial hierarchies of content collections.

So how will we be able to get network effects back in video? Let’s look at four possible ways:

Branded Content — Players can build a strong brand that stands for something with their audiences. Break.com, Discovery and Oprah are all meaningful and build long-term customer loyalty. (“Siri, show me new TED Talks.”)
Curation — Brand the collection with a curation strategy so that the curator’s name and stamp of approval means something to the audience. (“Siri, show me Jason Hirschhorn’s latest movie suggestions.”)
Social — In the fully social world that we expect to see, focusing on the virality of content means you tap the human distribution network and social operating system. (“Siri, show me what videos my friends are watching.”)
Personal — We’ve already seen the extraordinary value of well-tuned personalized recommendations, with Netflix’s notable prize and other famed stories of the benefits of great recommendations. Increasingly, our own patterns of individual videos and the brands we affiliate with, along with recommendations from friends, will be combined into personalized recommendations we won’t even have to ask for. I have no doubt that Siri will be as good a “Genius” as iTunes is at recommending what else to watch. Ultimately, in the age of data, whoever knows the most about us will be able to give us the best experience.

Beyond disaggregation, personalization is ultimately the most powerful consumer value of digital media. My mother’s TV experience was to walk over to her TV set and turn a dial to select among three channels to satisfy her individuality. But in the next generation, no two people will receive the same recommendations from the millions of content choices available.

Before he died, Jobs now famously told Walter Isaacson, his biographer, that he had finally cracked the TV code. It’s unclear what Jobs meant, what this entailed or what he thought it would lead to in the years to come. So, barring further posthumous disclosure, Jobs’s own predictions of his ripple effects will be a media mystery for now.

One thing that’s clear, though, is that Jobs’s Siri will start the dismantling — or creative destruction — of the TV industry as we’ve known it for the last 60 years.

This post originally stated that Siri was unveiled the day after Steve Jobs passed away. It’s been corrected to reflect that the announcement actually occurred the day before.

Ben Elowitz (@elowitz) is co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint, a next-generation media company that is reinventing the media model on the social web. Ben is also author of Digital Quarters, a blog about the future of digital media. Prior to Wetpaint, Elowitz co-founded Blue Nile (NILE).

YouTube Redesigns Around "Channels" Strategy

Tom Loftus — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:00:01 +0000

YouTube unveiled its largest redesign yet Thursday, bringing user personalization and the video web site’s growing selection of programming topics, or “channels,” front and center.

The change comes as YouTube beefs up its offerings to compete with broadcast and cable television, complete with original, professionally produced videos. Last month YouTube announced the creation of around 100 online video channels, featuring original programming from A-List talent such as Madonna, Jay-Z and actor Ashton Kutcher.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

YouTube Content Guy Robert Kyncl Expands His Portfolio

Peter Kafka — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:10:06 +0000

YouTube is busy striking and announcing content deals, but it has found time to promote the guy who’s in charge of all of that. Robert Kyncl, who came over from Netflix a year ago to help Google’s video site reach out to Hollywood, has gotten a bump up, and is now reaching out to the music labels, too.

Google won’t comment on his promotion, and people I’ve talked to who know about the site’s org chart aren’t sure whether it’s formally considered a promotion. But here’s the gist: Kyncl, who used to report to Global Head of Content Dean Gilbert, now reports directly to YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar. Chris Maxcy, who handles music partnerships and deals like Google’s linkup with Vevo, now reports to Kyncl instead of Gilbert.

Gilbert is still onboard, but I’m told his role is now more “operationally focused.”

Meanwhile, for a quick summary of what Kyncl has been up to over the last 12 months, see last month’s rollout of YouTube’s “channels” strategy, or today’s Disney tie-up.

Another Hollywood Deal for YouTube: New Videos From Disney

Peter Kafka — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:05:03 +0000

YouTube, which is making a big push to get more Hollywood pros making videos for the world’s biggest video site, is adding another partner. Disney and Google will spend “a combined $10 million to $15 million” for new clips featuring characters like Swampy, from the “Where’s My Water?” iPhone app.

If YouTube Is Doing $1.6 Billion a Year, Why Does It Need Hollywood?

Peter Kafka — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:12:42 +0000

Google refuses to hand out any details about YouTube’s financial performance, but Wall Street keeps on guesstimating. Here’s a new one: The world’s biggest video site will generate $1.6 billion in revenue this year, says Barclays Capital Anthony DiClemente.

That number is in line with some of DiClemente’s peers, but it’s still notable for two reasons:

If it’s true, it means the video site’s revenue has now synced up with the price Google paid for it five years ago.
Much more important, by DiClemente’s estimate, it means YouTube commands a staggering 80 percent of Web video revenues — he figures the whole market is worth $2 billion.

It’s possible that DiClemente’s numbers are a bit off. Hulu has said it will do more than $500 million in 2011, with the majority of that coming from advertising. So if both of those numbers are accurate it would mean that there was essentially no other video ad spending anywhere in the world in 2011, which seems like a bit of a stretch.

[UPDATE: Barclays analyst Perry Gold clarifies that the $1.6 billion YouTube estimate is a global number, but the $2 billion figure is its estimate for the U.S. market video market. Gold suggests that the global video market may be $2.5 billion to $3 billion, which would make the math a little easier to digest. But the other wildcard here, as some readers have noted, is that YouTube's revenues come from both video ads and display advertising, which means we're not comparing apples to apples.]

Still, point taken: YouTube is finally a big business that makes serious money. Perhaps it’s even profitable!

And if that’s the case, why is it pressing ahead with this Hollywood/“channels” strategy?

The big idea behind that one, after all, is to create stuff that advertisers will be happy to pay a premium for. But if YouTube is already generating $1.6 billion a year for non-premium stuff, why bother?

One possible answer: The channel strategy is a big focus for YouTube, but it doesn’t mean the site is abandoning what’s already working.

And while people who type stuff like to mention the $100 million YouTube is investing in the project (guilty!), bear in mind that the number is almost meaningless to Google. In fact, Google has already spent close to double that in the first nine months of this year — $173 million — on “content acquisition costs … primarily related to content displayed on YouTube,” and I’m reasonably sure that number doesn’t include the channel deals, most of which were only recently finalized.

So while the channels plan may augur Google’s intention to “take on TV” and “disrupt cable” and other storm-the-barricades metaphors, right now it’s just a toe-touch for YouTube head Salar Kamangar and his team. Turns out that what they’re already doing could be working just fine.

YouTube Prepares to Launch Scheduled Channels

Jessica E. Vascellaro — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:37:17 +0000

Will consumers put down the remote and tune into YouTube?

The Google-owned site is getting closer to finding out.

The video giant is finalizing contracts for its first of more than a dozen “channels” featuring regularly scheduled content on big broad themes such as fashion and sports, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Google to Revamp YouTube With "Channels"

Jessica E. Vascellaro and Amir Efrati — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:16:19 +0000

Google Inc.’s YouTube video website is working on a major site overhaul to organize its content around “channels” as it positions itself for the rise of Internet-connected televisions that allow people to watch online video in their living rooms, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company is planning changes to the homepage that would highlight sets of channels around topics such as arts and sports. YouTube is looking to introduce 20 or so “premium channels” that would feature five to 10 hours of professionally-produced original programming a week, one of these people said. Additional channels would be assembled from content already on the site.

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