Commentary
Joost Runs Out Of Juice For Premium TV Content
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, July 2, 2009
Joost now says it is turning into a white label brand for video content providers -- the backbone, but not the face, of big TV content.
The high-end digital video site, started by those entrepreneurs who brought us Skype and Kazaa, figured to be a major player a couple of years ago. It was assumed that good technology was the main lynchpin for pulling in premium TV content and users.
But in a marketplace full of Hulus and other Internet businesses owned by large media companies -- NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney, or new operations owned by cable operators Comcast or Time Warner -- Joost began to take a back seat.
According to Screen Digest, independent video sites with no direct affiliation with big media will increasingly struggle to aggregate ad-supported movies and TV shows.
Crucially, there is this financial fact: Joost has needed to pass on 70% of its ad revenue to content owners like CBS and Viacom.
Some media executives believed sites like Joost would be like modern-day cable operators -- owning the wire that went into the home. But, this digital marketplace isn't the same as the one that gave rise to cable systems in the '80s and '90s. Technology now is easy to purchase and modify, for everyone. Strong media players with easy navigation seem to be everywhere.
In this marketplace, Hulu and other big media companies simply mused, why not own both the content and distribution? (Broadband pipes are another matter).
With the unlimited shelf space of the current Internet, marketing premium video is turning out to be a different game.
The big question: Where are the next areas of video contraction?
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Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
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