- NY Times, Monday, March 13, 2006 10:30 AM
The New York Times today has a lengthy article about production companies developing niche content for broadband TV. There are thousands of producers focused in very specific
areas whose content would never make it to prime time, but they have very dedicated small audiences. The Times, in trying to coin a new buzz word, calls the phenomenon of producing TV content
for small dedicated audiences on the Web, "slivercasting." Fine. But more importantly, this phenomenon underscores the Internet's ability to offer an infinite selection of content that would
never sell in a store or on TV. As Discovery Communications' Chief Executive John Hendricks says, "The next wave of media is to unleash the power of serving people's special interests." And
Discovery is taking some big steps in that direction. With a massive archive of content on a broad range of topics, Discovery, which already has 15 different cable channels, is now delving even deeper
into the world of specialized content: tomorrow it will announce a service that makes 30,000 video clips excerpted from its full library of documentaries and other materials to help high school and
grade school students with homework. In the future, it plans to offer content focused on narrow content, such as programming related to cancer, earthquakes, weather, geology, etc. With a steady influx
of specialized programmers--and the Times talks to several of them--the time will soon come for someone to seize the opportunity to match video commercials to specialized audiences, like Google
does with search and Web pages.
Read the whole story at NY Times »