Saturday, December 9, 2006

Fox, Viacom, NBC, CBS To Create a Rival To Youtube

A report in Wall Street Journal says -

"Four major media companies, including News Corp.'s Fox, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, are in talks about creating a video Web site to compete with Google Inc.'s YouTube, according to people close to the situation.


The companies, owners of most of the major TV networks, envision a jointly owned site that would be the primary Web source for video content from their networks, allowing them to cash in on fast-growing Web video advertising. They also have discussed building a Web video player that could play video clips from across the Web. A deal to create a competitor remains far off, however."


The reason of their paranoia is not Youtube, but the piracy which is escalating Youtube's business while eroding their own. The claim that pirated content from these channels makes way to Youtube from odd users across the world. Though there is some logic in this argument, it sounds ridiculous that this pirated content has popularised youtube. Youtube actually thrives upon a user-generated content which these media houses would not have bought for a dime. This is a typical mainstream media mentality and is indeed the reason why Youtube has thrived.

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