Networks may announce YouTube rival soon
Cory Bergman December 18th, 2006
The NY Times reports that NBCU, News Corp, Viacom and possibly CBS will announce as early as this week that they’re teaming up on a new site to take on YouTube. The idea is to offer an ad-supported site that features the media companies’ clips, as well as encourage users to upload their own. But executives warn, the deal could still fall apart because of the unprecedented amount of collaboration between the competing companies required to pull it off. And CBS is in talks with Google about selling radio time, which is complicating matters. But the question remains, can big media create its own YouTube? Will user switch? Posting professional video is easy, but getting users by the millions to start posting their own is a challenge (although the networks certainly have enough promotional muscle to get the word out.) And technology is critical, so will acquiring an existing site like MetaCafe, as rumored by TechCrunch, be enough to get things rolling?
3 Comments Add your own
1. thedetroitchannel | December 18th, 2006 at 11:46 am
another attempt at doing it on-the-cheap?
had they partnered prior to the goog deal they could have owned the original!!!
oh, that’s right… THAT youtube had no business model.
sorry.
2. thomas | December 19th, 2006 at 7:32 am
thedetroitchannel, they didn’t have a business model that was completely clear but because someone is too conservative doesn’t mean that they were wrong in their decision making. Can the big “Networks” successfully make a clone of YT, yes they probably can. Will it be successful, I don’t think so because I doubt they have a vision to create something that will draw users away from YT, not that YT is all that visionary, they just got lucky and make a few bucks.
3. thedetroitchannel | December 19th, 2006 at 10:04 am
agreed.
i was only pointing out the fact that their argument seemed to morph along with the success of youtube.
first was something like “who will watch homemade video?”, next was something like “napster reincarnated”, add your own at any time.
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