Tonight's clip, in honor of Viacom suing Google (youtube) for $1 billion, is an excerpt from the MTV show "The Hills." The clip itself doesn't matter (although The Hills is a pretty good show); any Viacom content (of which there is still plenty on youtube) would've done.
The lawsuit presumably is simply a way to kick-start stalled negotiations between Google and Viacom aimed at getting Viacom content on youtube with everyone's blessing. I have the feeling that like most media companies, Viacom is overvaluing most of its catalog -- the video culture that Viacom largely created, intentionally or otherwise, emphasizes newness and quickness above all else. The main audience for Viacom's content has come to regard anything more than 10 minutes old as more or less worthless; while that's good, as long as you can keep feeding the young masses something new continually, it's bad for claiming that your old stuff is worth very much.
This lawsuit never gets to court . . . they will come to an agreement. Neither side wants a trial and youtube is here to stay --- Viacom knows their content needs to be out there.
Anyway, an excerpt from "The Hills . . . "
2 comments:
That is certainly the interpretation of tech and business writers. You can never be sure with an executive as wacky as Sumner Redstone.
Certainly recent rules YouTube. But the major media conglomerates benefit hugely from their back catalog of CDs and movies. With the incomes of Elvis and the Beatles being the most obvious examples.
While they do, the stuff of theirs that is on youtube isnt' in that category.
Suppose you want the first season of the Dave Chapelle show. While you MIGHT find, capture, piece together, convert, and burn 498 youtube clips to create that, you're much more likely to go to Best Buy and pick up the DVDs. But seeing a couple of clips on youtube might just inspire you to go to Best Buy.
youtube functions as a giant repository of "trailers" for the media conglomerates' content. Viacom, et al. don't want youtube gone . . . they couldn't have a better way of advertising for their content, new AND old. AND they will get paid for it.
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