NBC, News Corp Join to Create YouTube Clone

Brett writes "It's official: NBC Universal and News Corp have announced their plans to create a video sharing site of their own. The joint venture will features both TV and movie shows in full length, including episodes of '24,' 'My Name is Earl,' and movies like 'Borat.' The plan is to also syndicate content on other portals like MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo! It's unclear how YouTube's previous deal with NBC relates to this, but it's clear that the major players are now shunning YouTube."

Comments

Tune in to irrelevance

[realinvalidname]

Have they squatted the name wedontgetit.tv yet?

While they're at it, maybe they should develop their own web search engine too. Oh, and a portal! And some dancing hamsters! Everyone loves the dancing hamsters!

Re:Tune in to irrelevance

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's ironically the Internet articles that don't get it. The company not only didn't refer to it as a competitor to youtube but actually played down such comparisons. I think this is brilliant if you think of it from the perspective of the thing itself, and not pretending that it's competing with something that is inherently different.

Displace YouTube?

[mymaxx]

I just don't think NBC is going to be able to displace YouTube for the homemade videos. They'll probably get people to come and watch their shows though.

Re:And so ends YouTube

[spoondisaster]

Not necessarily. People will still do it anyway and YouTube has more of a purpose than the mashup of TV shows. Some musicians, rather than posting their videos on their websites, are posting on YouTube and then linking directly to that from their website. There is always a need for a service where literally anyone can post anything, and much of the content is more than music videos set to Battlestar Galactica scenes.

Re:And so ends YouTube

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

B.S.

It's crap - not community driven. It misunderstands the interest in YouTube.

YouTube is not popular because people are "snagging free stuff" that they already have on their Tivo, etc. Repackaging the TV is stupid. That is an aspect of YouTube, and the only one that this is a reaction to.

The Corporations who are driving this "partnership" never even heard of "All your base are belong to us" - let alone understood what it means. The Internet is a social phenomenon, not just a marketing experience.

People who've destroyed their creative thinking process in the marketing field fail to understand this.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah? Well I'll create my own YouTube! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the YouTube!

great...

[kennedy]

but what will it cost to view the content? i mean it seems to me that one of the largest draws to youtube is that it's free and good for a quick time waster/video fix. remove the free aspect, and youtube would have been just another failed web start up. anyway i highly doubt news corp and/or nbc would be open to simply giving away viewings to movies. NBC is already dabbling with free tv shows online (the only example that comes to mind is Heroes - you can catch that on nbc.com for free [they advertise it with each episode of heroes on the tube).

I have a question

[stratjakt]

Is any video sharing site to be labelled a youtube clone?

Just like newbies to the intarweb would think that Yahoo is a "google clone"?

Is this a "Apple invented the computer, mp3 player, and are currently inventing the phone right now and we cant wait" type of a deal?

I just remember seeing video on the internet pre-youtube.

As if google didn't know

[shawn443]

How is this bad? This is natural. I did not expect gootube to be the end all for online video. I doubt google expected a monopoly position either. We are only seeing natural competition within this type of service.

Re:And so ends YouTube

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Um...........

You really think the people in charge of this little venture know that 'mashup' is a word that sometimes doesn't involve food?

Be serious. This isn't going to end YouTube. This might cause a little healthy competition. Honestly, I'm kinda disappointed because YouTube isn't clusterf*d with video ads all the time, and this will be. There's little chance you'll get to watch short clips of pieces of the Daily Show. You'll get to watch the entire thing, and commercials will come with. Lame? Yeah, kinda.

And my bet is their solution will be DRM enhanced. Another little bit of lame.

Re:If you build it they will come

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Three words:

GO DOT COM

NBC = bad track record

[MobyDisk]

I hope it is better than NBC's Video Rewind site which lets you view previous episodes of their shows. It is so glitchy that it is probably easier for an end-user to install BitTorrent, find a site, and download it. They use Flash video, so you get postage-stamp size video. They divide it into 6 sections and run short commercials in-between -- shorter than network TV commercials, which would be nice... except that half the time it gets stuck and doesn't move on to the next section. Then if you try to seek it displays another commercial. And it plays the video before it is buffered so you have to pause/play it manually and guesstimate when it is safe. Then of course, if you mis-click, or the playback glitches, you seek and get an ad and have to start over. It took me 2 hours to watch a 1 hour episodeof Lost.

To top it off, it crashed when I exit the browser (Safari) which is sad since I can spent hours watching videos on YouTube without it crashing.

Why can't they just stream an .MP4 file? It's a standard, cross-platform format that every OS has a player for. Sheesh.

Re:NBC = bad track record

[YojimboJango]

About two months ago I would've agreed with you about the NBC Video Rewind. However they've really improved it over the last few weeks. Video quality is better than youTube and I haven't had it skip once on the 14.99 a month dsl package that I watch from.

I will give you points for accuracy about what it used to be. I tried watching it after hours on the work T1 line about 2 months ago and the video halted, audio got out of synch with the video and a lot of times the video wouldn't come back after the commercial breaks. Overall unwatchable. However now a days it has improved considerably. I don't know if it's still buggy for the safari browser (I don't own a mac), but it works wonderfully on FF2.0.

I actually make a point to watch missed shows from the producer now. Sure it has some commercial breaks, but they've done the right thing. They made a BETTER alternative. The video and audio quality is much nicer than youTube permits. How many times have we all heard some slashdotter complain that they'd support X company if they offered a nicer service than one they could get online for free? NBC has turned into that X company and has now bested the pirate uploads to youTube. We should be applauding and supporting NBC for this (even though they were bastards that put a hold on the next episode of heroes). They are beating the pirates at their own game and setting their selves up to make a profit in doing so.

Of course if you want copies of your favorite show in HD and on a disc the day after the show airs torrenting is still your only option. But that's another matter entirely.

Re:NBC = bad track record

[HappyCycling]

Of course it's going to be lagged if you're waiting for Lost on NBC.com, Lost is an ABC show.

Re:And so ends YouTube

[nanoflower]

Of course it's crap. It was a decision made by accountants. They saw the number of viewers that YouTube was getting, and they may even have some preliminary numbers for the TV shows that have ended up on YouTube and they wanted that money for themselves. They think if they set up a site with TV shows they will pull in the viewers and get all of the money for themselves. It might be by using ads or perhaps they want to use the site to sell DVDs and new episodes to viewers that check out the site (instead of or in addition to something like Itunes.)

Re:If you build it they will come

[vought]

This will fail miserably.

-Can't store content for future use.
-Windows/Explorer ONLY
-Advertising
-Crappy format

And most importantly:

PEOPLE DON'T SIT AT THE COMPUTER TO WATCH HALF-HOUR SHOWS.

Apple has this figured out. Why do these people feel the need to reinvent the wheel?*

*Actually, it's to make themselves feel smart. When this fails - and it will - they can blame filesharing, technology, or some other bugaboo.

A predictable step

[BlueCoder]

Youtube was ahead of it's time. It was inevitable that the media conglomerates would try to role their own. They will find out exactly how expensive and difficult it is to do this type of site and predictably the small players and producers will eventually go with Youtube and then the major ones will crumble one by one as they strike amicable deals due to customer demand for a single site.

If you can't beat 'em...

[themushroom]

...join 'em.

Hey, I think it's great that NBC would want to get into the video offerings business. Reason why people post copyrighted material to YouTube is so it will be available. NBC has already been making overtures in that direction with some of their shows (like the standup routines from 'Last Comic Standing' S5) and Fox has performances from 'American Idol' on their site, ergo you don't have to go to find a Torrent or browse YouTube et aliis to see what you missed.

And for that reason, NBC's assimilating seems a smarter move than Viacom's bitching, IMHO.

That's funny

[Z0mb1eman]

Almost every discussion about music, movies or TV shows here has countless replies saying "But the industry doesn't GET IT, man!! Their business model is OUTDATED!! If they gave me this content for cheap with no DRM I wouldn't have to pirate it!!"

So here comes an announcement that they'll be putting content online for FREE - and they'll be the ones making the money from the ads, not youtube, which seems only fair to me - and again I see replies of "but the industry doesn't GET IT!!". I think that's kinda funny.

This site could go either way, but to me it's the first indication that they might be starting to "get it".

Re:That's funny

[daigu]

If I am interested in particular show and I know where it is available, then its one thing to "get it".

However, the real trick of "getting it" is making it available as part of an aggregate service so people can look for topics - sailing, science fiction or whatever without having to think of all the different shows and providers that have something you might be interested in. Sure, you can go to the New York Times site. You can aggregate sites you are typically interested in using an RSS feed. But a big piece of the value chain for people looking for content will be the ability to go to one place and know you are searching everything that is available by topic - you can't get that in a stand alone service. You can do it by providing people with standards - but that means "getting it" on yet another level.

There is a long way to go yet.

Re:who

[AresTheImpaler]

I do.. sometimes.. :( leave me alone..
a tv tunner card + coding session (or web browsing) = happy me
I just resize the video and put it on the bottom right corner.

Well

[unity100]

people are yelling like this, because they are still not believing it is actually happening.

neither am i.

ill only believe it when i see it.

They are playing with fire...

[CasperIV]

They think that they can squeeze YouTube out, but since the take down notices, I have not had my YouTube searching impacted at all. I don't spend my day searching for stupid TV shows (that's why I don't watch NBC). There are only a few channels I actually watch, and none of them have shows I watch all the time. TV is going the way of the music industry. They are losing focus on what people want and are following equations to make shows that will make profit. The problem is that people are starting to get smarter and are figuring it out. Why do they think people like fast forwarding the commercials and TIVO is such a hit? People are sick of the current system. Making commercials harder to fast forward and pulling videos from the web only hurts themselves in the long run... to bad they can't think that far ahead.

Re:If you build it they will come

[h2g2bob]

Ahem:

blastro.com, blip.tv, bolt.com, dailymotion.com, daum.net, devilducky.com, doubleagent.com, evideoshare.com, evtv1.com, expertvillage.com, flurl.com, g4tv.com, glumbert.com, godtube.com, gofish.com, gorillamask.net, grindtv.com, grouper.com, guba.com, ifilm.com, imeem.com, jibjab.com, jumpcut.com, livedigital.com, livevideo.com, metacafe.com, newgrounds.com, military.com, mypartypost.com, nonstoptv.ru, ouou.com, peekvid.com, pornotube.com, sharkle.com, sho.com, soapbox.msn.com, streetfire.net, superdeluxe.com, tagworld.com, tudou.com, veoh.com, vimeo.com, video.google.com, video.tinypic.com, videodubba.com, vidiac.com, vidilife.com, vids.myspace.com, vision.ameba.jp, vsocial.com, www.fabchannel.com, xtube.com, yoqoo.com, yuvutu.com

to name but a few.

YES, THEY DO :)

[pavon]

PEOPLE DON'T SIT AT THE COMPUTER TO WATCH HALF-HOUR SHOWS.

Full-length shows constantly being posted to YouTube, and have a large number of visitors. The shows made available at the networks website have also had a very large number of visitors despite technical difficulties. People don't prefer to watch 40 minute or even 20 minute shows on their computer, but if they missed an episode of $FAVORITE_SHOW, being able to catch it online is the next best thing (until IP-TV becomes mainstream).

As slashdoters have been saying for years, not making your content available in a convenient form is the best way to guarantee it will be pirated. This is not trying to replace YouTube, it is trying to curb the illegitimate uses of it, by providing an alternative that brings in some revenue.

-Can't store content for future use.
-Windows/Explorer ONLY
-Advertising
-Crappy format

We'll see how well they do, but I wouldn't write it off that quickly. None of the people that I have talked to really care about the ads that are in the shows at nbc.com and abc.com (when the player works properly) - they know the company has to make money, and are happy that the ads are shorter than on TV. In fact they prefer the short ads over the low quality of the YouTube videos. They don't care about being able to download it to their computer, just watching the episode they missed. If it truely is Explorer/Windows only than that would suck, but I don't see where you are getting that from. The fact that they are allowing embedding would strongly suggest that it is going to be flash-based, as it would give them more control with regards to showing ads.

I think this could be very successful at achieving it's goals - which is not to be YouTube killer.