The YouTube Killer?

TechCrunch reports on the now-confirmed rumors of a massive online video portal in the works, part of a cooperative venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.  Distribution partners include AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, and MySpace (owned by News Corp).

From the press release:

The video-rich site will debut this summer with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips, representing premium content from at least a dozen networks and two major film studios.

AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo! will be the new site’s initial distribution partners. Their users, who represent 96 percent of the monthly U.S. unique users on the Internet, will have unlimited access to the site’s vast library of content.  This media alliance will offer consumers free long- and short-form video and create a compelling platform for advertisers, targeting the rapidly growing audience of online video consumers.

Given the content on offer, this could be bad news not just for Google/YouTube, but also for Apple/iTunes.

At launch, full episodes and clips from current hit shows, including Heroes, 24, House, My Name Is Earl, Saturday Night Live, Friday Night Lights, The Riches, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show, Prison Break, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader and Top Chef, plus hits from the studios’ vast television libraries, will be available free, on an ad-supported basis, within a rich consumer experience featuring personalized video playlists, mashups, online communities and video search. Plus, the extensive programming lineup will include fan favorite films like Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, Devil Wears Prada, The Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy with bonus materials and movie trailers. Post-launch, plans will be considered for acquiring additional content as well as producing and licensing original programming for the new site’s audience.

They had me at Heroes, 24, and House.

TechCrunch lays out a few functional unknowns:

- delay if any from TV broadcast to content being on the site.
- will there be a centralized site for the service, or will this only be distributed through partners?
- Will users/viewers be able to upload their own videos as well (lots of this on MySpace Video already, could be incorporated)?
- format and “skipability” of advertising

What I'm most curious about is whether the site will offer any live content (or not live per se, but content that's webcast when telecast).  Movies and TV series fit nicely into the time-and-place-shifting offering described here (kind of like a TiVo and a SlingBox in one, only free and requiring no hardware), but there will always be some content that viewers will strongly prefer to receive in real-time.  News, business news, sports, etc.

Between News Corp's Fox News Channel, Fox Sports, Fox College Sports, and the long-rumored Fox Business Channel, and NBC Universal's NBC News, NBC Sports, MSNBC, CNBC, CourtTV, etc., the consortium controls a significant share of all imaginable time-sensitive programming.  If they do go that route, perhaps Sling Media and the odd newsman out, CNN (and parent Time Warner), count themselves alongside Google and Apple in the losers' circle, should the project be successful.

Time Warner subsidiary AOL is involved as a distribution partner, so the company apparently hasn't been completely kept out of the loop, but I'd note that among the five feature films mentioned in the launch, none were from Warner Bros., Castle Rock, or New Line (Time Warner's major film studios).  The Bourne franchise is Universal's; the others were distributed by 20th Century Fox.

It'll be a while before we know how all the specifics of this project shake out, but at first glance it appears Jeff and Rupert may have left old Ted out in the cold on this one.