Other sites such as Hulu, the joint venture between Fox and NBC, have been getting much of the long-form video attention and name recognition, whereas YouTube remains known for short-form content that lasts 10 minutes or less.

Google, YouTube’s parent, is seeking to change this as it has added select full-length content from CBS in an attempt to take on Hulu and attract other network content to YouTube. [YouTube blog]

Available full-length shows include 20- to 48-minute episodes from CBS’s past and present lineup, including “Star Trek,” “MacGyver,” and “Beverly Hills 90210.” The season premiers of “Dexter” and “Californication” and current episodes of “Young and Restless” will also be shown on YouTube.

To improve the viewing experience, YouTube has introduced a new player for long-form video — known as Theater View — which plays video in a less pixelated 16:9 format. It’s no where near as nice as watching a full video on Hulu, but it may suffice for most viewers.

“When you go to full screen  you can actually kick back and watch it,” Shiva Rajaraman, senior product manager, told AdAge.

To support the effort, Google is also experimenting with advertising [see NewTeeVee]. The content will be  supported with pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads. YouTube will get a revenue cut, but neither CBS nor YouTube would discuss the terms of the agreement or revenue sharing.

If long-form video gains traction on YouTube, the balance of power — already in YouTube’s favor — will shift even more toward the Google property.

YouTube served up 5 billion videos in July, representing more than 44 percent of online videos viewed in the U.S. The next closest competitor was Hulu, with a share of 3.9 percent.

The YouTube giant has 330 million users, according to comScore, while Hulu has just 3.3 million. Even so, Hulu’s relative success with long-form video content has caught the attention of the cat-napping Google.

---
Related Articles at last100:

• News Corp. and NBC Universal name joint venture
• Veoh now includes content from Hulu
• Hulu invites
• Moving to No. 8, Hulu continues to impress and gain viewers
• Find out who shot Laura Palmer; CBS adds five classic TV shows for online viewing

You can also find “Kath & Kim,” “Crusoe,” “My Own Worst Enemy,” “Life,” Lipstick Jungle,” and “30 Rock” everywhere you look — NBC’s Website, iTunes, Amazon’s Unbox, Microsoft Xbox and Zune, Hulu, and through TV providers such as Comcast, Cox, Charter, Dish, and Verizon FIOS.

Did NBC leave anybody out?

“We want to make (programs) available in as many ways as we can so we can get fans,” NBC’s marketing boss John Miller told USA Today. “If you don’t embrace people’s behavior, you can be lost by it.”

NBC’s early-release strategy is at odds with most other networks.

CBS

After offering “Jericho” last year, CBS is putting nothing online this season. Oddly, it’s screening pilots of “Worst Week” and “Gary Unlimited” on American Airlines flights since Sept. 1. It’s also screening “Worst Week” and “The Ex List” at 10 universities.

ABC

“Samantha Who?” “Pushing Daisies,” and “Ugly Betty” will go online this week, but only in approximately six minute clips. That’s hardly worth the effort and teasing to watch.

Fox

The network offers no advanced premiers this year after serving up “K-Ville” and “Back to You” last season. “Fringe” (potentially my favorite new show) and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” were streamed at the same time they aired on TV, but only to on-campus computer users.

Bill Bradford, senior vice president at Fox, told USA Today, “I don’t think anybody’s reached the sweet spot yet in terms of Internet viewing of television.”

CW

The CW held back the pilot of the much-hyped return of “90210″ until its debut. It streamed two shows last year on Yahoo, only to see them fail.

As USA Today notes, the strategy of streaming TV shows before their premiers is risky business, although there is no definitive answer whether it helps or hurts a show’s chance for success. It can build positive word of mouth (what NBC hopes for) or it can spread the news that a show is a dog (what The CW experienced last year).

Either way, kudos to NBC for experimenting again. Raspberries to ABC, CBS, Fox, and The CW for wimping out.

---
Related Articles at last100:

• ABC streaming shows on AOL
• Moving to No. 8, Hulu continues to impress and gain viewers
• Find out who shot Laura Palmer; CBS adds five classic TV shows for online viewing
• HBO cautiously wades in Internet TV waters with new show “Hooking Up”
• YouTube adds select TV shows from CBS; takes aim at Hulu for long-form video content

In doing so, Hulu bests all of the major networks — NBC and Fox (Hulu’s parents), ABC, and CBS. It’s an impressive feat.

At the same time, Hulu is expanding its content footprint by adding seven partners, meaning its library of current and vintage TV shows will be more widely available. Hulu videos will be distributed on entertainment and social networking sites TV.com, TVGuide.com, BuddyTV, Flixster.com, MyYearbook.com, Break.com, and Zap2it.com.

“While it is extremely early in terms of Hulu’s history of serving users, we’re quite excited to see such positive trends in Hulu’s growth and viewership,” Jason Kilar, Hulu’s chief executive officer, told Reuters.

In April, people watched 63.2 million videos on Hulu and its partners’ sites and spent on average 129.3 minutes per month, beating nearest rival ABC.com (60.8 million videos, an average of 57.3 minutes).

Hulu, Turner Entertainment New Media Network, CNN Digital Network, Disney Online, ESPN, MSN/Windows Live, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network, Yahoo!, and Fox Interactive Media — Nos. 10 to 2, respectively — trailed online video behemoth YouTube by a huge margin. YouTube served up 4,052,984 total streams, everybody else combined presented 1,300,658 total streams, according to Nielsen Online.

To Hulu’s credit, it’s one of the few places on the Internet where people can easily find a library of recently broadcast and archived TV shows. It also helps that Hulu’s user interface is clean, reasonably well organized, the video player is above-average, and the quality is great.

In light of its success, NBC Universal digital boss George Kliavkoff said at the Streaming Media East conference that Hulu is beginning to look beyond streaming video on a personal computer to other Internet-connected devices, including mobile phones.

While expansion is laudable, here’s hoping that quick success doesn’t go to Hulu’s head. The whole relationship between TV over-the-air, on the Internet, and available for download hasn’t been worked out yet. No need to get cocky just yet.

---
Related Articles at last100:

• Moving to No. 8, Hulu continues to impress and gain viewers
• Weekly wrapup, 19-23 May 2008
• Post-Hulu: ABC.com to revamp video player
• Hulu to debut this month. Is it already too late?
• Hulu really hates the TV, PlayStation 3 blocked

NBC wants back on iTunes, but with conditions

George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s chief digital officer, indicated indirectly and directly at the Ad: Tech conference that NBC would like to be back on iTunes, which the network dumped in late 2007 over a nasty public spat about pricing.

Indirectly, Kliavkoff said during an on-stage interview at the conference, “If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gate-keeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some anti-piracy measures.”

Directly, Kliavkoff said, “We’d love to be on iTunes”, but only if Apple institutes more anti-piracy measures. “It has a great customer experience,” he said. “We’ve love to figure out a way to distribute our content on iTunes.”

The timing is interesting. iTunes is now the largest music retailer, and while the video side of the store (TV shows and movies) has not reached the same level, it still benefits from the overall iTunes brand and music traffic. Since NBC bolted, no other major network or studio has followed, leaving NBC standing alone.

Think NBC regrets its decision?

If it does, NBC doesn’t appear to be budging. In addition to the extra anti-piracy protection, the network would also like to see flexible pricing on iTunes, which doesn’t seem to be likely anytime soon.

(via News.com and NewTeeVee)

Photo credit of Kliavkoff: News.com at Ad:Tech

Fox, Paramount join Disney selling new releases on iTunes

Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount have joined Disney as the only major studios to offer new releases for purchase through iTunes, notes iLounge.

Tuesday Fox began offering Academy Award-nominated “Juno” for purchase, the same day the DVD and Blu-ray versions were released. Paramount is offering “Beowulf” for purchase shortly after its release on Feb. 26. Paramount also offered “Jackass 2.5” on the Web a week before it was released on DVD.

Variety quotes a Fox rep saying it’s likely the studio will offer more new releases on a title-to-title basis. Paramount is only “experimenting” with selling new releases. Both studios currently provide films for the iTunes movie rental service.

Wonder how these will do and if they will have any effect on iTunes selling more films. That would be nice — and needed — for movie purchase/rental portion of iTunes to ultimately be successful.

Amazon MP3 is not affecting iTunes sales

The NPD Group released a report the other day that said Amazon MP3’s growth has not come at the expense of iTunes, as one might expect. NPD said that only 10 percent of Amazon MP3’s customers had previously bought music through iTunes, indicating that Amazon is building its own user base independent of other online stores.

NPD cites demographic differences between Amazon MP3 and iTunes, now the No. 2 and No. 1 online music stores, respectively. Amazon has a greater following among males (64 percent to 44 percent), but iTunes is more popular among the all-important teen-age crowd (18 percent to 3 percent).

NPD says that the data suggests that the digital music market is bigger than we think and that it’s growing beyond early adopters, teens, Apple fans, and the iTunes community.

“The fact that Amazon’s early growth does not appear to be at the expense of Apple iTunes is a healthy indication that the digital music customer pool can expand into new customer groups who have not yet joined the iTunes community,” NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said in a statement.

Overall, I’m still interested in seeing if iTunes can keep its growth and dominate position in the market. I expect it can, but what percentage will Amazon MP3 and another online music venture, MySpace Music, wrestle from iTunes in the long run?

(via ArsTechnica)

Starbucks and iTunes team up for “Pick of the Week”

It sounds like a good promotion: Starbucks customers can get free music through iTunes.

Of course, nothing is free. That latte costs about $5 with an extra shot of espresso and sugar free vanilla.

And customers are locked into weekly music picked by Apple and Starbucks, which includes Counting Crows, Carly Simon, Duffy, Adele, Sia, and Hilary McRae — not bad artists, depending on your taste.

But I want to download what I want to listen to, not what someone thinks I should listen to.

---
Related Articles at last100:

• iTunes overtakes Best Buy to become No.2 music retailer in U.S.
• Are movie rentals finally coming to iTunes?
• iTunes hides account details in DRM-free downloads
• Apple caves to major labels in return for DRM-free iTunes
• CBS: “We like our relationship with iTunes”