The Praized Blog

“CBS has not found the Internet to be cannibalistic to TV”

Quincy Smith (on the left), President, CBS Interactive, CBS Corporation, on the impact of the Internet on their TV business. They’re finding the Web and TV are different media and they’re strong believers in bite-sized entertainment. CBS clearly seems to get it.

(via Mediapost & Hearst-Argyle press release)

Hearst-Argyle (a US television station owner) has cut a deal to distribute video clips on YouTube, the companies announced today. With the arrangement, news, weather, and clips from other local programs in five markets - - Boston, Manchester in New Hampshire, Sacramento, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore - - will be available on the video-sharing site, as well as clips of high school sports, among other material.

While this deal appears to mark the first time YouTube has made a deal for local video, the company has allied with NBC and CBS in the past. As recently as March, CBS tapped YouTube to create an NCAA channel for streams of the basketball games.

The agreement marks the first revenue sharing agreement between Google, YouTube and an independent television group.

What it means: Brilliant! To expand their online reach, Hearst-Argyle has chosen to sign a distribution agreement with YouTube, the leading video site. In addition, to motivate their distribution partner, they are also doing revenue sharing. Given that online is much more fragmented than offline, traditional media has no choice but to embrace the wholesale model. This allows the media company to sell an online product with a reach that approaches the offline one (insuring a smoother revenue transition between offline and online). I suspect that we’ll eventually see that strategy happen in the directory space as well. Given that many directory players are showing their print display ads in their destination site, it’s not too much of a stretch to distribute that content elsewhere, in decentralized online destinations. Paid distribution agreements will be part of the deal.

(via BBC News)

CBS just picked up one of the darlings of the Web 2.0 world, Last.fm for $280M. The site “allows users to connect with other listeners with similar music tastes, to custom-build their own radio stations and to watch music video-clips. The online network was founded in the UK five years ago and it now has more than 15 million active users. As part of the deal, Last.fm’s managing team will remain in place and the site will maintain its own separate identity. ”

What it means: great acquisition by CBS as Last.fm is a very interesting site and application. Interesting also: CBS will maintain Last.fm’s separate identity. It seems like this is happening more and more when large media corporations acquire smaller Web 2.0 start-ups. The Flickr example comes to mind. I think media companies are realizing that innovation happens in smaller, tightly-knit teams.

From Variety.com via NewTeeVee.com

News Corp. is forging ahead on talks with a number of congloms to create a video platform that could compete with YouTube. “We’re in very active negotiations with all of the media companies to create the most robust video offering from professional content on the Web,” Fox Interactive Media topper Peter Levinsohn told investors at the Bear Stearns confab in Palm Beach, Fla. “Those conversations are ongoing, but they’re going very well,” he added. (…)

And then, perhaps hinting at where such a convocation would happen, he added, “No doubt MySpace will be a huge beneficiary of that.” News Corp. would reportedly like to see much of the content from other congloms live on its social-networking subsid. But comments glossed over a big sticking point: Other congloms have been resistant to making video available to MySpace, worrying that it would drive traffic and revenue to a competitor. Congloms are by no means unanimous on the subject; NBC has reportedly been more willing, while CBS has been more reluctant.(…)

Viacom recently decided to go its own way on video-sharing after talks with Google broke down, signing a content deal with a YouTube competitor, the Europe-based startup Joost. MySpace has been a major platform for News Corp.’s video, offering a hefty number of clips and sneak peeks of Fox content. Levinsohn did say that a major obstacle to pacting with other congloms is ensuring that those in charge of digital operations have the ear of the conglom chiefs. Digital divisions have gained clout in recent months but still may not have as much sway in the exec suite as they may need.

What it means: reading between the lines, this article highlights a couple of interesting points. First, the struggle of traditional media firms to redefine their competitive space with the arrival of Google: “Other congloms have been resistant to making video available to MySpace, worrying that it would drive traffic and revenue to a competitor”. Who’s the biggest long term competitive threat to CBS? Is it News Corp or is it Google-Yahoo-Microsoft (GYM)? And why not partner with both groups? I personally think you want to build up your own assets while partnering within your industry but also with GYM. We’ve seen the same kind of ambiguity in the newspaper world with Tom Mohr’s “Winning Online” manifesto “proposing that the US newspaper industry should merge into a single industry-wide network, at least for its digital assets“. The article also discuss the kind of internal politics interactive teams are facing within traditional media companies: “Levinsohn did say that a major obstacle to pacting with other congloms is ensuring that those in charge of digital operations have the ear of the conglom chiefs.”. This internal in-fighting is, in my opinion, completely useless. The competitors are outside the walls of the company, not inside. Trust your interactive teams, they understand this new world order.

Meta-Praized is a collection of links & stories we’ve “dugg” on Digg.com in the last 7 days. Feel free to add us as a friend: PraizedDotCom .

• “How Much Privacy?” (re: ComScore MediaMetrix) in Forbes Magazine
• “Fox, Viacom, CBS and NBC discuss YouTube rival” via Reuters
• Google adds new layers to Google Earth via TechCrunch
• BidNearBy.com: a cool eBay, Craiglist and Google Maps mash-up via ProgrammableWeb.com
• “Google’s Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%” via Marketing Pilgrim
• “Google Base Has a New Interface” via the Google Operating System blog
• Google adds “+ box” to show Google Maps in regular search results via Search Engine Journal
• “LiveDeal.com Adds Yellow Pages to its Online Local Marketplace” via PrNewswire
• ” Consumers Prefer Movie Rentals To Downloads By A Wide Margin” via TechWeb
• Yahoo’s business case for acquiring Facebook.com pops-up on the Web via TechCrunch
• Skype reorg, eBay people now in place via GigaOM

Meta-Praized is a collection of links & stories we’ve dugg on Digg.com in the last 7 days. Feel free to add us as a friend: PraizedDotCom .

• “Seeking Executive to Tame the Digital Future” in the New York Times
• “What does ‘Web 2.0’ mean to the world of Public Relations?” in CMSWire.com
• “Do Google and YouTube have ethical responsibility for their video services?” in ArsTechnica
• “VirtualCity delivers the real thing” in the Globe & Mail
• “Experts rate Wikipedia’s accuracy higher than non-experts” via Ars Technica
• “To Web Fans, Peter Jackson Is the One True Director” in the New York Times
• “Sex and Social Networking Sells: Fake User Profiles in Marketing Campaigns” in Read/WriteWeb
• Google shuts down the Google Answers service via the Google blog
• “Report: Pentagon investigates YouTube video of U.S. troops” via News.com
• “CBS attributes ratings boost to YouTube” via the Chicago Tribune
• “A New Twist: Voting for News You Trust” in NewAssignment.net
• “Real-Time map showing available parking spaces in Santa Monica” via the actual site
• Yahoo! TV gets a redesign via TechCrunch