Google’s YouTube is finalizing contracts for the first of more than a dozen online channels of regularly scheduled content, as it considers a launch in early 2012. Execs said they want to build a service that users will want to tune into instead of television, reports WSJ.
Regularly scheduled content on these channels would include everything from fashion to sports. YouTube has requested some content for the channels within the next 60 days.
YouTube, which media companies have long griped is too stingy cutting content deals, is paying from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million to content creators to create and curate videos for a channel, according to the story. Google recoups the original payment through ad revenue, and Google and the partner share ad revenue after that.
Content owners in talks with the company say Google executives say they want to build a comprehensive video service that users will want to tune into instead of television, not just a service to better compete with other video websites. In talks, which are being led on the Google side by executives Robert Kyncl and Salar Kamangar, Google is encouraging content owners to create schedules of programming much like traditional TV.
RBR-TVBR observation: There is a niche to fill, and companies like Netflix and Hulu are already looking to fill it with original programming, too. The niche is the millions who are cutting cable over fees that are too high for their budget, but who still have to have the internet. While many of these consumers could hook up an antenna and get programming via over-the-air TV, that whole concept is foreign to them in the smartphone and internet age. Rabbit ears and antennas on the roof are not for everyone.
