Affiliates and the NBCU-News Corp. video venture

Cory Bergman March 22nd, 2007

NBC’s owned-and-operated stations division has shown interest in becoming a distribution partner for the new NBCU-News Corp. video site, a NBCU exec tells Lost Remote. As we’ve reported below, NBC and Fox affiliates currently aren’t partners in the new joint venture, but the exec said “there’s no reason why any of the affiliates can’t be distribution partners,” which would involve a revenue share of the advertising. “We want to talk to them.” So what’s this mean for NBBC? It’s a separate service that’s more of a business-to-business syndication play, and part of its technology is being licensed to create the new site. “We continue to be committed to it,” the exec said. As for the new venture, they’re may be expanded affiliate opportunities down the road. “If this model works, it would be natural to extend it to news and other local content and to give our affiliates an incredible distribution mechanism outside their markets.”

Also, the exec offered a few more details on the user-generated content component of the new venture. They expect the video uploaded by users will be mostly related to the premium content on the site — fake episodes, mockumentaries, fan clips, etc. If someone watches a spoof on a show, the theory is the user will be more inclined to watch the show itself and vice-versa. Advertisers can buy pre-roll ads on the user clips, but at a lower CPM than the premium clips. (Full disclosure: I work for KING TV, which is an NBC affiliate, but not an owned-and-operated station.)