• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 13, 2007

Major magazine publishers continue to jump on the broadband bandwagon in hopes of new online ad revenue. Time Inc. and TV Guide on Monday both announced plans to boost their Internet video offerings in partnership with Internet TV provider Brightcove.

Time is creating an in-house studio to help produce original Web video across its 150 magazines, starting with flagship titles such as Time, People, Entertainment Weekly, and Fortune. Time.com, which relaunched in January, already uses technology from Brightcove, which will power video on other magazine sites as well. Each title will manage its own editorial calendar and online ad sales.

The video initiative is part of a wider effort by Time to bolster its online properties while retrenching on the print side. Starting this year, Time magazine cut its rate base--the readership it guarantees to advertisers--to 3.25 million from 4 million readers. Time Inc. also reduced its staff by 550 employees through the recent sale of 18 titles, including Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and Ski, to Bonnier Magazine Group.

Separately, TV Guide is teaming with Brightcove to syndicate online video, including behind-the-scenes footage from hit TV shows and celebrity interviews by Joan and Melissa Rivers, to other news and entertainment sites. Brightcove already hosts TV Guide Broadband, the publisher's Internet video channel. "Working with Brightcove allows us to syndicate our entertainment content to thousands of sites across the Web, while enabling us to control the look, feel and presentation of TV Guide Broadband," said Ryan O'Hara, president of TV Guide Channel, in a prepared statement.

Brightcove Chairman and CEO Jeremy Allaire expects traditional publishers to invest heavily in Internet video this year. "We began an effort to partner with the print and magazine industries starting last fall, and we believe newspapers and magazines are both ripe for transformation with broadband media," he said. "This is a category where you can expect to see a lot of announcements and launches by Brightcove in the near future."

Brightcove already counts The New York Times Company, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and Dow Jones & Company among its clients. Hearst Corp., meanwhile, is an investor in the broadband video company, which last month closed a venture financing round of $59.5 million.