It’s official, here is our latest syndication partnership, with CBS’ TV.com. See some write-up’s here and here.
TV.COM ANNOUNCES CONTENT AGREEMENTS WITH NCAA® AND THOUGHT EQUITY MOTION, STARZ MEDIA AND MORE
Adds to Existing Line-Up of Premium Content Providers, Bringing TV.com’s total Video Library to More than 2,000 Hours of Content
SAN FRANCISCO, March 17 — TV.com, the place where television lives online, today announced content deals with NCAA and Thought Equity Motion, and Starz Media, along with niche content providers like Smithsonian Channel, Comedy Time, Howcast and WatchMojo. This adds to its line-up of existing agreements with premium content companies, including Endemol USA, Metro Goldwin Mayer Studios Inc., PBS, SHOWTIME, Sony Pictures Television and CBS. The addition of this content brings TV.com’s total video library to more than 2,000 hours of content, spanning everything from today’s most popular shows to coveted classics.
“TV.com already benefits from a massive online community, and our job from here on out is to layer more content on top of this great community to further engage and expand our audience,” said Anthony Soohoo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, TV.com. “We continue to see massive growth in video viewers and streams as more and more people turn to TV.com for information and content around their favorite television shows. We create a highly complementary experience to television, one that uses content to fuel active discussions among our community of TV fans.”
Through a deal with CBS, the NCAA, and NCAA content library rightsholder Thought Equity Motion, all available semifinal and final games from the Men’s Final Four between 1982-2008 are available for viewers to watch in either a full-length format or a condensed two-minute highlight package at TV.com. Additionally, viewers also can watch NCAA highlight packages set to music, including classic footage from NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships including the 1979 Final Four championship game featuring Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, and many other great games and players from the past.
Starz Media’s Manga Entertainment content available on TV.com will include full episodes of Astro Boy and Virus, as well as short-form videos from titles, including Ninja Scroll, Kai Doh Maru, Street Fighter Alpha, and Hellboy: Blood and Iron, with many more to come.
“Starz Media’s Manga Entertainment library has proven very popular with anime enthusiasts and we are very pleased to make some of our best content available to TV.com users,” said Marc DeBevoise, senior vice president, digital media, business development and strategy for Starz Media. “We look forward to expanding this content lineup in the future and building our partnership with TV.com.”
Smithsonian Channel will offer shows including “Stories from the Vaults” hosted by Tom Cavanagh, “Remembering Vietnam: The wall at 25,” and the Emmy® winning Nature Tech. Comedy Time, which offers stand-up comedy and original episodic programming known as “Funnysodes”® from today’s best comedic talent, will offer content from its brands including “Comedy Time,” “Comedy Time Latino” and “Comedy Time Urban.” The TV.com audience will also have access to videos from Howcast, the best source for fun, free, and useful how-to videos, and WatchMojo.com, one of the largest producers of original, professionally-produced, evergreen, ad-friendly high-quality video content, will provide profiles and interviews with musicians and filmmakers, scripted entertainment comedy skits, and fashion shows from runways around the world.
TV.com’s content providers have their videos viewed by one of the most active and largest community of TV fans online. People come to the site for its rich content and dedicated community, posting an average of 6 social contributions per second – things like forum posts and poll votes – for a total of more than 18 million social contributions per month on the site. In addition, as the site continues to layer more premium video content on top if its community and information features, TV.com posted a 184% increase in unique viewers, 844% increase in streams, and 3101% increase in minutes year-over-year (Nielsen VideoCensus February 2009).
About TV.com
TV.com is one of the leading unbiased destinations for premium entertainment and community around TV. The site features video content such as full episode streams, video-clips, live-event coverage and behind-the-scenes footage, plus expert editorial content like entertaining features and weekly podcasts. The site also provides in-depth show summaries, episode guides and downloads, bios, photos, news, and more on over 19,000 TV series. This content is greatly enriched by one of the largest and most vocal communities of TV fans who express themselves via show summaries, reviews, ratings, blogs, forums, polls, and videos.
About the NCAA
The NCAA is a membership-led nonprofit association of colleges and universities committed to supporting academic and athletic opportunities for more than 400,000 student-athletes at more than 1,000 member colleges and universities. Each year, more than 54,000 student-athletes compete in NCAA championships in Divisions I, II and III sports. Visit www.ncaa.org and www.ncaa.com for more details about the Association, its goals and members and corporate partnerships that help support programs for student-athletes. The NCAA is proud to have the following elite companies as official Corporate Champions—AT&T, Coca-Cola and Pontiac—and the following elite companies as official Corporate Partners—Enterprise, The Hartford, Hershey’s, Lowe’s, Sheraton and State Farm.
About Thought Equity Motion
Thought Equity Motion is the world leader in providing access to high quality film, video and music content. The company’s forward-thinking approach to digital video has produced an array of products and services to meet the exploding demand of emerging media. Widely recognized for its expertise in licensing rights, Thought Equity Motion is the licensing agent for renowned media companies including Paramount Pictures, MGM, NBC News, HBO, National Geographic, Sony Pictures, the NCAA and hundreds of others. With offices located around the world, Thought Equity Motion offers the broadest, deepest content collection available. This vast collection, combined with leading-edge technology, makes Thought Equity Motion the preferred destination for multimedia professionals. To learn more, go to www.thoughtequity.com.
About Starz Media
Starz Media, LLC, is a programming production and distribution company operating worldwide. It includes the Film Roman, Anchor Bay Entertainment, and Manga Entertainment brands. Its units create animated and live-action programming – including theatrical films – and programming created under contract for other media companies. It distributes that programming, and programming acquired from outside producers, through home video retailers, theaters, broadcasters, ad supported and premium television channels, and Internet and wireless video distributors in the US and internationally. Starz Media (www.starzmedia.com) is a controlled subsidiary of Liberty Media Corporation attributed to the Liberty Capital Group.
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WatchMojo NewsletterWhen looking for reasons why Tim Armstrong left Google for AOL is the possibility that this was a vote for content over technology.
Reading about how AOL is moving more and more aggressively into content via Media Glow - instead of simply aggregating it via its AOL.com portal - you can’t help but wonder if Armstrong’s move had more to do with content in general and less with Google or AOL. Marty Moe is the senior vice president of AOL’s MediaGlow content division, but Armstrong’s personal investment fund has invested in other content plays such as Associated Content.
Over at Google, the cultural barriers to becoming a producer of news, rather than just a technology company that works with news outlets to distribute news, are steeper. For years the company has held dear the dogma that it does not produce media content.
“We are a technology company, not a media company,” said Google spokesperson Jennie Johnston. “The tremendous amount of expertise that goes into news gathering, editors, journalists – it’s not something we have to be good at.’’
The focus across Google is instead on working with news organizations: “We want to help newspapers distribute their content online, engage their readers better.” Google’s ethos is to “create – but not be creative,” as Johnston put it. It’s an appealing model, and you can’t argue much with the results.
True. Google’s results as a pure play tech company can’t be overlooked, but search advertising is becoming mature and display (yes, display) and mainly video advertising are the next growth areas. To clarify: display is slowing down this year, but the real estate associated with display, which will make way for rich media ads, will soar. That real estate is generally associated not with intent (as is the case with search), but rather: interest. Interest is captured by content, not technology.
This explains the push into content creation.
Other portals are expanding their ambitions, too. Yahoo is moving steadily into web video, with the announcement on Monday of a new celebrity mom show, and there are rumbles that even Google’s Eric Schmidt is reconsidering the technology company’s longstanding aversion to creating its own content, according to one person familiar with his thinking.
As someone who manages relationships with Google (via our partnership with YouTube), I can tell you that while Google/YouTube is a great partner, they really are in many ways new to content and what that entails. To give credit where credit is due: YouTube has grown up and improved so much since we signed a partnership, but for YouTube to be a multi-billion dollar revenue machine, they have a way to go.
As such, whether or not Google becomes successful in content remains to be seen.
AOL, meanwhile, who has the content gene via its Time Warner pedigree, has a better shot than many would expect to win in the next phase of the Web’s boom, which will be looking to cash in on the fact that 47% of people’s time is spent consuming content. With social networking advertising fizzling (eMarketer once again reduced the estimates this week), then professional content’s value continues to soar.
If these companies do emerge as large-scale content creators, it will be worth noting that the once-dowdy AOL is leading the way. New AOL head Tim Armstrong may be inheriting a cargo boat of problems, but the company’s two-year-old drive to become a successful source of content is not one of them.
MediaGlow is home to hit machines like celebrity news site TMZ and niche-oriented, category-leading blogs like Engadget, which regularly breaks technology news, and car-nut magnet Autoblog.The sites together average 73 million unique visitors a month, according to ComScore.
Of course, what better way for Google to catapult itself in the content game than by acquiring AOL, which it already owns 5% of, no?
PLAY
