ScrewYouTube
Exactly one week after Viacom said it was suing Google and YouTube for copyright infringement, two of Hollywood’s other big TV boys showed that there can be a different approach to tackling the Tube. Today NBC and NewsCorp announced they are joining forces to launch a website of professionally produced video content. What’s more they’re doing it with the distribution power of Yahoo!, AOL and MSN. And NewsCorp’s mighty MySpace is there to help with distribution. The partnership crows that they will be able to reach 96% of all US Internet users with this new, yet to be named, website.
A few observations about this deal:
1. Google must be thinking oh shit, there goes all the good stuff from the website we just sunk $1.65billion into.
2. For NBC and NewsCorp to form a partnership I guess they must have been pretty desperate not to have to rely on YouTube to keep the youngsters intersested in their content.
3. They are selling ad space and no doubt are offering it as part of a value-added package to TV advertisers and have a business model that works. They’ll probably be in profit quite quickly while YouTube won’t be for a long long time.
5. All the content will be professionally produced. This doesn’t show they have much faith in the consumer-produced stuff, which soon will be all that will remain on YouTube.
6. Viacom better jump in with NBC and NewsCorp or come up with an alternative plan soon or they’ll be looking like they missed the boat…again.
7. Marketers can experiment with both YouTube and the new website before they invest too heavily in either. That’s good, right.
8. If the content on the new site isn’t great and does not pique the interest of younger consumers in the same way that YouTube content does, they and then the advertisers will quickly say, nah forgeddit and move on. Professionally produced could end up being as bad as the shit on TV. Remember it’s not where the stuff is placed it’s how good it is.
9. Let’s hope they come up with a good name for it soon. Any suggestions? We’ll pass on the ones we like to NBC/NewsCorp. Our favorite so far is ScewYouTube, but see if you can beat it.
Screw Viacom. Screw NBC. These big, bad guys are idiots. They don’t get it that consumers are tired of being fed content from THEM, and want more control over creating their own content. And Viacom should understand that YouTube exposure HELPS them. They should figure out how to work with it, and embrace the present reality and industry shift, instead of trying to hold on to the past. Be innovative, instead of stodgie old dried up rich men.
Name-wise, How about making it a little shorter such as “ScrewTube” because that’s all we will be getting is screwed. The content will suffer and it will tank.
They (Corporate America)from this point forward will never get a handle on the trends of technology & marketing. It just morphs too fast for them. The genie has left the bottle, and we the people all win.
Long live Bit Torrents,DVDFAB, YouTube etc…