Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

NBC is on an online roll today. Not only is the broadcast network unveiling its Hulu.com premium Web video offering, NBC Sports is gearing up for its own debut on Saturday: First ever, live streaming coverage of a U.S. Olympics Trials, in partnership with online sports broadcaster MediaZone.

As MediaZone entered its final preparation zone for its online Olympic debut, I spoke with Chris Ott, Sports Director, about MediaZone’s work with the Olympics and New York City’s marathon:

Last year’s first-ever live Internet broadcast of the ING New York City Marathon was a groundbreaking event, and this year’s Marathon weekend coverage should build on this success, offering expanded coverage and features that can’t be found anywhere else.

At a cost of $4.99, MediaZone subscribers are entitled to watch the marathon live online and relive the experience on-demand for 90 days.

MediaZone garnered 8000 paying subscribers for last year’s marathon, Ott told me. Marathon buffs and friends and family of participants are fans of MediaZone’s unique interactive features, Ott indicated:

Multiple camera views for the most comprehensive coverage,
Live chat with other users for real-time interaction as the race onfolds,
Video comments option during on-demand viewing,
Hot-off-the-press race news via RSS feed.

On the eve of Sunday’s New York City marathon, the 2008 Olympic Team Trials for the Men’s Marathon will be held in NYC as well, on Saturday; MediaZone will also have it, online and free:

Watch free live streaming coverage and stay in step with these elite athletes as they make their way from Rockefeller Plaza to Tavern on the Green.

Just as the runners hope to best their previous records, Ott and his team also aim to build off MediaZone’s 2006 inaugural marathon coverage, setting up for an online performance of “olympic” proportions!

ALSO: Hulu.com Debuts: Worth the Wait

PLUS: Business Plans Help the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid Go Down and paidContent Disrupts Business Media, Today in Silicon Alley!

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The knives are out for Hulu.com, the NBC Universal-News Corp. anti-YouTube intitiative?

“I think there’s a snarky desire to say this is big dumb media and this is a big dumb joint venture,” said Peter Chernin, president of the News Corporation.

Not here at Insider Chatter! Since June, I have chronicled and anlayzed the impending debut of Hulu.com (NewCo) following first-hand presentations and Q & A with top NBC Universal execs at diverse media and tech conferences in Manhattan. ( NBC: Millions in Upfront Video Ad Sales and Who Needs YouTube: Good NBC, ABC Stuff Free AND Legal! )

In NBC on Why Hulu.com IS a YouTube Killer: OMMA Report last month I cited a confident George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s Chief Digitlal Officer, in laying out an intelligent Hulu.com business model strategy based on the premise that “quality” always wins out.

Hulu.com unveils its private beta today and its quality wins vision is out of the online video gate:

Hulu’s ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how you want it. We hope to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection of premium programming across all genres and formats – television shows, feature films, clips, and more. Additionally, we want to give you more choices of when and where you can enjoy your favorite programming, while creating innovative experiences that let you watch and participate in online video in new and exciting ways.

Hulu.com aims to ofer its premium content via a premium viewing experience:

Hulu is designed with a singular focus on providing an exceptional, online video viewing experience. You can customize the experience to fit your viewing preferences - watch videos in full screen, or pop out the video player and place it anywhere on your computer screen and re-size it if you’re multi-tasking. You can even dim the lights and mute the rest of the browser window so nothing distracts you from the video you’re watching.

Hulu.com “gets” Web 2.0, “sharing is caring”:

Hulu lets you easily share your favorite videos via email or embed them on your own website. You can even choose to share the entire video or just one scene. By selecting the share or embed feature, you have the option of selecting your own start and stop point in a video to create your own fun video clips.

Hulu lets you enjoy your favorite videos at websites where you are already spending your time online. Visit our partner sites: AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo, to view the same selection of premium programming available at Hulu.com. Each partner features content in its own customized video player to provide a seamless viewing experience on their sites.

While Hulu.com is still in private beta, a sneak preview of the “fun” video time in store is offered by Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu:

I’m embedding a full episode of The Office (it gets my vote for funniest show on television). In addition to watching it from this page, you can easily grab and embed the full episode - or a clip that you determine - at your own blog or on other web pages that you manage. Just mouse over the below screen, go to the menu, and click on embed. We hope you enjoy this and other functionality that we’re offering to make it easy to share your favorites from Hulu with others.

While Hulu.com will soon be off to the races, NBC Universal itself still has YouTube to contend with, YouTube’s copyright infringement that is. SEE:  Google To World: Give YouTube Your Videos, NOW! and NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report  and NBC Still Booming on YouTube: Google Lawsuit Next?

PLUS: NBC, MediaZone Olympic Marathon First: Free, Live Streaming of Trials

ALSO: Business Plans Help the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid Go Down

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

The blogosphere delights in dissing NBC Universal because giving away copyright content for free is not part of its business model!

Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee/GigaOm, labels the entertainment conglomerate “hot-tempered,” Mike Masnick, TechDirt, lobs the “hate” word, knowingly declaring that NBC will “piss off more (non-paying) fans,” and Om Malik asserts that when “big media” ignores YouTube in favor of their own profitable (and legal) business models, they not only reveal themselves as retrograde “inward looking” old media, but are “lining up against YouTube and Google” to boot!

Malik is on the eve of his first real-world conference, which he hails as “helping the online video industry’s evolution,” but GigaOm has been rooting for NBC Universal, and subsequently News Corp, to fail in their own (rather than on behalf of Google’s YouTube) joint try at “the Web video revolution.”

Before Malik’s conference date neared, the GigaOm homepage gleefully counted down to a Malik assumed NewCo (now Hulu.com) “wreck,” as the bright red graphic illustrates. NBC Universal is NOT scheduled to speak at the Malik conference.

Malik, et al, are off the mark.

Since June, I have reported and anlayzed the impending NBC-Universal/News Corp. joint venture following first-hand presentations and Q & A with top NBC Universal execs at diverse media and tech conferences in Manhattan. SEE: NBC: Millions in Upfront Video Ad Sales andWho Needs YouTube: Good NBC, ABC Stuff Free AND Legal!

In NBC on Why Hulu.com IS a YouTube Killer: OMMA Report last month I cited a confident George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s Chief Digitlal Officer, in laying out an intelligent Hulu.com business model strategy based on the premise that “quality” always wins out.

I also asked Kliavkoff point blank about NBC’s intentions with YouTube (see NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report). Here is the exchange:

BOGATIN: “You seem to have twice indicated NBC’s unhappiness with Google’s DMCA business model. Isn’t it time for NBC to give Viacom some real support by also suing YouTube for copyright infringement?”

KLIAVKOFF responded that NBC belives in IP “carrots, not sticks,” without seizing the opportunity to point out to his Google Media co-panelist, Eileen Naughton, what it is that NBC wants YouTube to do! 

NBC had been stradling the YouTube copyright infringement fence for more than a year, playing a good cop, bad cop routine designed at maximizing “free” YouTube promotion for NBC content while at the same time publicly needling Google with pointed anti-YouTube business model commentary and serving as a supportive “friend” in YouTube copyright lawsuits brought by others.

To date, NBC can not bring itself to go all out against YouTube, as Viacom has. Perhaps that day is nearing though, as the NBC YouTube “channel” is now history.

The NBC YouTube problem lives on, of course, due to the Google DMCA fueled copyright content should be free for the taking, as long as Google can profit from it, “business model.”

In Google To World: Give YouTube Your Videos, NOW! I point out Google’s latest “anti-copyright infringement” YouTube charade.

ALSO: How Google Library Hamstrings Librarians: Book Search (not so) Fine Print and Click Forensics CEO: Click Fraud Hits 28% for Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network

PLUS: Google Nielsen TV Ads STILL Blurry: NOT AdWords for Television

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Sling Media, the self-proclaimed “digtial lifestyle products” disruptor, is selling out to EchoStar, the third largest pay-TV provider in the U.S. and a DVR provider. WHY?

EchoStar, Charlie Ergen, CEO & co-founder: With today’s increasingly mobile lifestyle, EchoStar’s acquisition of Sling Media will allow us to offer innovative and convenient ways for our customers to enjoy their programming on more displays and more locations, including TV’s, computers and mobile phones, both inside and outside the home.

Sling Media, Blake Krikorian, CEO & co-founder: By combining strategies, resources and technologies with EchoStar, Sling Media will be able to rapidly expand our open multi-platform product offerings, not only for DiSH Network sunbscribers, but for digital media enthusiasts around the globe.

Last May, I heard the President of Sling Media, Jason Hirschhorn, tell advertisers and media companies at the IAB Video Forum that revenue generating “windows” are dying: TV, cable, DVD…because consumers are empowered to “watch TV virtually anywhere in the world.”

IS TIME-SHFITING, PLACE SHIFTING MEDIA CONSUMPTION CANNABILIZING TELEVISION? Gerorge Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s Chief Digital Officer was asked yesterday at the OMMA Conference in New York City.

NO! Television viewership is what “drives everythng else,” Kliavkoff underscored:

Online drives incremental revenues for us. Viewers use the Web as a DVR to watch missed episodes. Our first-run business will be OK for a long-time.

TV 360 ad packages fuel integrated broadcast, online, mobile traction deals. TV 30s are what drives the economics of digital; We are growing our TV business and our digital business.

NBC is in an enviable position: When we sell $5 in TV ads, we charge $5.30, 25 cents for digital puls 5 cents for mobile.

What’s more, televison CPMs will rise, Kliavkoff asserted, as the “algorithms” improve:

We will have better targeting and advertisers will be happy to pay higher CPMs because they will get better ROI.

MORE OMMA REPORTS: OMMA Advertising Cat Fight? Google’s Media Chief Gets Defensive and NBC on Why Hulu.com IS a YouTube Killer and NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick

ALSO: Facebook Sex Sting: Will Microsoft, Yahoo, Google Buy Into Scandal? and Yellow Pages Trash Talking: The SEO Dog in the Google Local Fight

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Is a NBC copyright infringement lawsuit near, I headlined way back in May. Today, I asked NBC Universal directly: George Kliavkoff, Chief Digital Officer, specifically.

Addressing the OMMA Conference in New York City this morning, the man responsible for leading the anti-YouTube Hulu.com charge twice lobbed veiled, but pointed, jabs at Google for its scant concern for protecting the rights of content creators at its YouTube juggernaut.

During his keynote chat, Kliavkoff described how Hulu.com is getting support from Internet Service Providers in devising ways to prevent illegitimate copies of copyright video content from proliferating. He also offered that he hoped “one other” market leader would set the proper tone by taking a postive stance to protect IP.

While sitting side by side Google’s Director of Media Platforms, Eileen Naughton, for a panel on “content ownership,” Kliavkoff lamented that a search for Heros at YouTube might yield “300,000 hits,” but very little of NBC’s content returned would actually be properly licensed.

What gives? I asked Kliavkoff. During the Q & A, I noted: “You seem to have twice indicated NBC’s unhappiness with Google’s DMCA business model. Isn’t it time for NBC to give Viacom some real support by also suing YouTube for copyright infringement?”

Kliavkoff responded that NBC belives in IP “carrots, not sticks,” without seizing the opportunity to point out to his Google Media co-panelist what it is that NBC wants YouTube to do!  

NBC has been stradling the YouTube copyright infringement fence for more than a year, playing a good cop, bad cop routine designed at maximizing “free” YouTube promotion for NBC content while at the same time publicly needling Google with pointed anti-YouTube business model commentary and serving as a supportive “friend” in YouTube copyright lawsuits brought by others.

NBC can not bring itself to go all out against YouTube, as Viacom has, however, as Kliavoff confirmed today in responding to my question.

MORE OMMA REPORTS: OMMA Advertising Cat Fight? Google’s Media Chief Gets Defensive and NBC on Why Hulu.com IS a YouTube Killer: OMMA Report

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Who says Hulu.com doesn’t have a (good) shot at weakening Google’s YouTube online video dominance? A confident George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s Chief Digitlal Officer, laid out a welll thought out Hulu.com business model strategy this morning at the OMMA Conference in New York City to conclude that “quality” will always wins out.

The three core foundational principles of the NBC Universal-Nes Corp. Hulu.com Joint Venture, acccording to Kliavkoff:

1) Premium, professionally produced video content will be the ultimate winner online,

2) There is huge value in aggregating content,

3) NBC believes in ubiquitous distribution.

The three-prong philosophy will be implemented using multiple networks, multiple providers and a new best video practices destination site launching next month: Hulu.com.

Hulu.com aggregated content from participating video partners will be available at Hulu.com and at consumer portals, such as Yahoo and MSN, representing an effective 98% reach. Viewers at the destination Hulu.com, however, will enjoy “additional benefits” such as a higher quality video experience and personal video tools, Kliavkoff said.

Distribution partners are obligated to promote Hulu.com content at their sites with guaranteed page view commitments. A proprietary recommendation engine will help drive increased usage and site loyalty.

Distibution partners are also obligated to use “affirmative IP filtering,” guaranteeing ”legitimate” and monetizable quality viewing experiences.

NBC believes in the long-term appeal of episodic broadcast quality video, over YouTube’s clip-culture low-brow fare. Kliavkof underscored that snack-sized short-form ”entertainment” has dominated online video to date because “nothing else was available untill a year ago,” noting that 83% of “people who start to watch a full length show, finish it” along with the advertising.

While Kliavkoff predicts a winning business strategy for Hulu.com, the ultimate winning video ad formats are yet to be determined. NBC is open to trying and testing all types of creatives and strategies. Kliavcoff made an open call to advertisers and marketers in the OMMA audience to collaborate on innovative ad delivery, offering to “set aside” ad inventory for experimentation.

Bottom line? Call Hulu.com “ClownCo” if you like, but Kliavkoff and company are on a serious mission to unseat YouTube at the head online video table, and the Hulu.com charge will undoubtedly have legs.

MORE OMMA REPORTS: OMMA Advertising Cat Fight? Google’s Media Chief Gets Defensive and NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN