• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 19, 2006

In a surprising development, niche publishers are utilizing new video platforms -- both broadcast and broadband -- to become television producers. Primedia today unveiled plans to create a new broadcast TV channel based on its popular Motor Trend magazine. However, the new channel, Motor Trend TV, will take advantage of the new multicast broadcast spectrum that some stations will create by compressing their digital broadcast signals into multiple, lower definition channels.

Primedia said it is partnering with Multicast Networks Group (MNG), a company specializing in network distribution via the new digital broadcast spectrum, and that the new channel would launch as a 24-hour network in 2007.

Fledgling magazine Make, meanwhile, is making a similar transition via popular video sharing site YouTube. Beginning this weekend, Make will use YouTube to hype its "Maker's Faire," a national exposition where homemade tech and gadget fiends gather to admire each other's handiwork.

Make has partnered with YouTube to air video clips that are longer than YouTube users are normally allowed by becoming a member of YouTube's "Director's Program" service, giving the print publisher the same kind of online video distribution capabilities as big TV networks like E! Entertainment and MTV2. YouTube also provides members of the "Director's Program" with features such as links leading back to their own websites and integration of brand graphics.

"I'm really interested in seeing what kind of metrics we can get for what we publish off of YouTube," said Make Associate Editor Phil Torrone. "I've been tracking response through the URLs we're positioning with the video clips, trying to get an idea of what kind of response we can get. For me it's a big experiment." Torrone said YouTube is also tracking "how many people are joining the Make group, and how many people are downloading the videos.

Make's video offerings include short-form, how-to documentaries about various projects featured in the magazine, including some of Torrone's own creations: an ambulatory humanoid robot and shoes that spell out messages in the air with LEDs as you walk. When Make begins distributing footage from the Faire, including all manner of bizarre robotics, curious inventions, and amateur water rocketry, "I suspect there will be an uptick in magazine subscriptions, and an uptick in visits to the website," Torrone said.

Because YouTube and similar services like Google Video are so much less expensive and easier than establishing proprietary video-streaming websites, Torrone predicted these platforms will be the wave of the future for smaller content providers, including printed magazine publishers. "Make will never invest the money and engineering in video that YouTube has - and why create your own proprietary video system when what they have works perfectly well?"

That said, Torrone warned of vast quality differences in the market. "The interesting thing is that with Google Video, we've uploaded videos and they just take weeks and weeks and weeks to go up. I uploaded a couple videos on Google Video a few weeks ago and they're still not up there," he noted.