About a week ago, I wrote a piece concerning Comcast's efforts to secure internet video content via a major licensing program. At that time, I thought, mostly because Comcast's licenses don't seem to be exclusive, that it is a somewhat iffy strategic proposition.
In the intervening days, there have been a few more developments reported in the Wall Street Journal.
First, a piece in the Journal reported that 'big media' is launching dozens and dozens of web channels with narrowly-focused content. Rather than wait for the web to get to the TV, these networks are moving their new content directly onto the web, paying for them with embedded advertising.
On one hand, that seems pretty savvy. Why wait to be eaten by other websites, when you can develop them yourself. The bad news, of course, is that this essentially moots their broadcast assets.
Like the AT&T of old, where I once worked, it is a classic good news/bad news situation when technology is cannibalizing your product line faster than you can react to it. In the end, better you should lose to yourself than to your competition.
As a side point, I think this will blunt the Comcast initiative about which I wrote earlier. With so much content spewing forth, Comcast may well find itself offering for money what its competition is giving away for just the price of watching ads.
Then, this past Monday, Google and Viacom agreed to have the former distribute the latter's video content, with paid advertising, to third-party websites. The bet here is that the many smallish websites will draw viewers to the content, and sell the ads along the way.
Call me narrowminded, but I don't get this one. If you think the content is valuable, why squander it across a thousand unnamed websites? How exactly do I find Spongebob, or some other content I specifically wish to view?
Instead, this strategy seems to lock into existing websites, and pour content at them. It's "push" marketing, all the way.
I guess Google can't lose, since ads pay for this. Viacom could lose, if it has sold its content to the web too cheaply. Users might lose because content sort of vanishes onto the web in hard-to-find places.
The more players jump into the web video content game, the more curious it gets.
Should be fun to watch in the coming months and years.
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