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."

And so ends YouTube

If they allow people to mashup their shows and whatnot, you can wave bye-bye to YouTube.

Re:And so ends YouTube

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.

Re:And so ends YouTube

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.

If you build it they will come

What if you built it and no one came? This sounds like a huge money pit for the folks in Hollywood.

Re:If you build it they will come

Three words:

GO DOT COM

Re:If you build it they will come

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.

Tune in to irrelevance

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!

Displace YouTube?

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.

YouTube clone?

what about a GodTube [godtube.com] clone?
not laughed so much in hours

Obligatory

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

great...

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).

When they say 'ad-supported'

..do they mean web ads, or ads in the show (like traditional commercials)? In my mind, there is a big difference, especially considering that if they were commercials the service would probably try to keep people from skipping them.

Can they spell "Antitrust violation"?

Seriously, I'm amazed that these parties would even be caught in the same room together. I've been to industry meetings (different industry) where many of the major players get together. All such meetings are preceeded by a highly-paid attorney telling us exactly what we can and cannot talk about. Even if we just heard the same lecture 2 hours ago.

I have a question

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.

Cloning YouTube without the You...

How can this be described as cloning YouTube when we all know good and well that none of the content will be created by the proverbial "You"?

As if google didn't know

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.

How many restrictions or ads will there be?

If the media conglomerates are going to create a source of truly free content, then more power to them. But I won't be holding my breath.

NBC = bad track record

I hope it is better than NBC's Video Rewind site which lets you view previous episodes of their shows [nbc.com]. 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.

Great

As someone who doesn't have or watch TV (except downloaded shows), I really hope this comes to fruition. I don't care about ads or commercials at this time -- being able to watch legitimate, high-quality shows and movies will be a blessing. I'll be waiting patiently!

A predictable step

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...

...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.

No I haven't RTFA...

...will it be called CrapTube?

who

Who actually watches 45 minute TV shows in a 3inch box on their monitor?

Re:who

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.

I'll just wait...

...until someone posts these new NBC videos over on YouTube.... I hear NBC will call their site NoobTube.

That's funny

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".

Open format and no DRM?

Note to NBC and News Corp: it's not a YouTube clone unless you deliver the goods in an easily viewed format (such as Flash) and with no DRM.

I'm pessimistically expecting Windoze Media with lotsa DRM.

I can see where this is going...

A few months to one year from now, on /.:

NBC Gives Up On YouTube Clone

This is good

Now YouTube can dump all that network junk and free up some disk space.

I am correcting now grammar

it's clear to me that the proof readers are shunning now this article.

Are they really this stupid?

I mean, honestly, are they?

To me, it would make a LOT more buisness sensefor these major companies to strike up a deal where full-length shows and such are allowed on their website, however a certain number of links on the main page must go to things from their channels.

It's the best form of advertising; people being able to "try" a "full version" of your product.

For all the degrees and everything that are required for a marketing person high on the chain, they sure are fucking stupid.

NBC - dont make it drm enchanced ffs

if you are embracing the internet revolution, do it just right.

MYFOX"city name"

has 24 and other full fox shows online with LESS ADS then on TV.

The Problem

Here's the problem. NBC and NewsCorp makes a site. Disney makes a site. Viacom makes a site. Everybody and their brother makes a site. Now, you have a dozen different video sites all making sure that no one else downloads their videos anywhere else. If you want a SNL video, you go to one site. If you want a Daily Show video, it's another site. Download a Pixar clip, another site. That was the big advantage of YouTube. It wasn't like these clips weren't already on the Web. It was the fact you only had to go to a single site to find them.

It would be so much better to make a deal with YouTube. Let Google handle the bandwidth hassle and infrastructure problems. A single mete-site will draw more users, and the money. To make sure there's no monopoly, make deals with other meta-video sites.

International

Are they going to grace those of us with IPs outside of the US with the ability to watch said content? I'd bet not (even though I live 45min. north of the US and watch all its TV).

In that case, back to YouTube!

Anyone Notice the Similarity?

Am I the only one who sees a trend here? With the soon-to-be SpiralFrog and QTrax services, the internet is heading towards an ad-supported future. This can be good in that the consumer doesn't pay for the content, and more things become available to everyday internet users. The downside is that we now have all these annoying ads stuck in our face wherever we go.
IMHO, I think the ad-supported free-ness is better than the clean-paged "premium-membership" ventures out there.

More Video Fills the CDN, Peering Network Pipes

The folks who are really happy today are Akamai, Limelight Networks and Equinix, who supply content distribution network (CDN) and video peering services for NBC/Universal and MySpace. Lots and lots more big video files will be moving to anf from through their networks.

clear...?

How does this new video venture make the following statement clear: "...the major players are shunning now YouTube."?

Yoda say

The major players are shunning now YouTube. Google perhaps a bad descision has made? NBC we are, syntax unnecessary is.

The Sector Has been Taken Over... sorry

Youtube has reached the type of critical mass where it will be very hard (if not impossible) to unseat it and take over the video sharing nitch to any real degree. Unless someone can come up with something truly unique and innovative, it won't amount to much. Youtube is synonymous with online video sharing and viewing.

Consider this: Where do you go for online auctions? eBay. Yahoo Auctions, Boxlot... all the other damn auction sites never managed to dominate that sector and has the kind of recognition and loyalty that will be difficult to overcome. Wikipedia is the biggest online free general-purpose reference, even if there are others. Slashdot has some rip-off sites, and yet it dominates. Sorry guys, but I think it's the same thing here. Try going for a smaller or more specialized group, because Youtube basically has it.

they're clueless

The whole point of youtube is YOU!

it isn't run by big media.

NBC and Alien mothership NewsCorp just don't understand the point of it.

I don't think that youtube has anything to worry a

Just consider NBC's foray into the webspace in 2000: NBCi. It was an utter failure. The upper levels of management had no idea how to approach the internet space. It was laughable but some people made enormous amounts of money. See if you can find some archives from f*ckedcompany.com there are plenty of yummy stories there. NBC should stick to what they are good at --medium gray pap for the masses.