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Watching the meta-world of online video right now is rather like watching a storm picking up speed out at sea. You know something is going to hit but it’s hard to tell exactly what, where or how much actual impact it’s going to have.
There’s stuff happening on two fronts right now that I find interesting and both of them at set to make land in the next couple of weeks - one is the run-up to Hulu.com from NBC Universal and Fox and the other is the impending Writer’s Strike. In both cases, it’s a flexing of muscles to see who really has power.
The networks clearly think they do in both cases. The Hulu hubbub started weeks ago when NBC announced that they weren’t continuing their contract with Apple and iTunes - so no more Office or Battlestar Galactica from iTunes. The reason is because NBC-Uni wanted the content to be exclusive to Hulu and the rumors were they thought Apple’s pricing was too low.
Now, NBC seems to be gone from YouTube. NewTeeVee reports…
NBC’s YouTube channel, along with all of the network’s posted videos, has disappeared, as first reported by Valleywag. NBC — which is preparing to launch Hulu, a project long nicknamed a “YouTube Killer†— previously had a revenue-sharing partnership with YouTube for more than a year and was one of the most popular channels on the site.
NBC has been closely woven into the story of YouTube, with the explosion of viewer-uploaded versions of the Saturday Night Live skit “Lazy Sunday†coming at a crucial time in the site’s growth in late 2005. After the damage (or success, depending on how you look at it) had already been done, the network pulled the clip and set up a video portion of its own site to try to divert viewers. But then last June NBC struck a deal with YouTube to create an official channel for short clips from popular shows like Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Office, and SNL.
NBC Yanks YouTube Channel? « NewTeeVee
The Hulu site has a splash page up, showing some of that now exlcusive content including at least one show (New Amsterdam) that has been cancelled. Is it catty to mention that? Maybe, but one problem for the big networks is that nobody out there is really pulling for them to succeed. When Hulu launches, there will be a lot more people looking for mistakes then ready to cheer them on.
Then mix in the Writer’s Strike…
Members of the Writers Guild of America overwhelmingly voted on Friday in favor of authorizing a strike if they fail to sign a new labor contract with the studios by the time their current agreement expires on Oct. 31. Nearly half of the WGA’s 12,000 voting members cast votes, with 90.3% of those who voted in favor of authorizing a walkout
There’s a lot of funding and work out there now for content that is completely bypassing traditional TV and going straight to the internet. The people who are producing media directly for online services are crossing their fingers for this strike to happen and to be long and painful for the networks. They think it could interrupt people’s viewing habits in a way the networks might never recover from.
So the monopoly of exclusive content could be a fleeting victory. There’s a lot of what-ifs in this scenario but it’s going to be interesting to watch.
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November 10th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
[...] Here’s a related post I wrote before the strike began about power, TV and online media. [...]
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