network went on display at this week's MIPCOM audiovisual trade show
offering legal, free entertainment and raising questions about what
this will mean for the massive TV business.
The network, Joost, launched this month just ahead of a clutch of
competitors that include Italy's Babelgum, offers legal rather than
pirated entertainment for free.
"The Internet will start off showing traditional entertainment but
eventually users and content creators will use the capabilities of the
Internet to create some amazing entertainment," said Mike Volpi, who
heads up Joost.
Many mighty Internet operators, such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo are
investing heavily in making their own TV shows.
Media giant News Corp has spent a fortune buying into massively
popular Internet social networking site MySpace, and has launched
MySpace TV, which will be available in over 12 countries.
And telecommunications companies around the world are investing in
IPTV television packages packed with satellite TV shows, as well as
video-on-demand that customers can watch on their sitting room TV
sets, and pay for in their telephone bill.
The TV and digital media industries are right to be concerned, experts
said at MIPCOM this week, as no one really knows how the current
explosion of new ways to watch and interact with television will
evolve.
But everyone remembers how the Internet quickly changed everyone's lives.
Volpi said over two million users had already downloaded the Joost
application needed to use the fledgling TV service, which has been
recording more than 100,000 downloads a day since it started on
October 1.
But "it's early days," Volpi cautioned, adding that the length of time
users were staying on the channel varied enormously from region to
region -- though it was upwards of 20 minutes.
In the US, TV fans were opting for comedy and sci-fi, while in Latin
America, and Brazil in particular, music videos were tops. Europeans
were going for full-length feature films.
Volpi said Joost aimed to remain a free service funded by
advertisements and hoped to attract more creative, interactive ads.
As to content, he said users could look forward in the future to
big-branded TV series as well as a vast library of older TV shows
along with the mass of user-generated content on services like
YouTube.
Joost would get a huge boost if Volpi succeeds in persuading major TV
channels to put "fat belly" crowd-pulling shows such as "CSI" and
"Survivor" and major sports events like major league baseball.
But that looked unlikely here, where the world's broadcasting
heavyweights this week were busy explaining they were moving into the
Internet space themselves to increase and keep audiences.
BBC Worldwide digital media head Simon Danker said its popular
motoring show "Top Gear" made a big hit on Yahoo!Japan after it failed
to get a spot for the show on Japanese television.
And US broadcasting giant CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said his company is
starting to create original programming for the web as well as
exploring other opportunities.
Whatever transpires, this year's MIPCOM Mobile & Internet TV awards
gave a taste of the original content being created for mobile media
devices and the Internet, including the latest in short-form snack TV
entertainment.
Prize winners included British-based Weakend Productions' hilarious
computer animated short-form comedy "Jeb's Job", which stars
long-suffering Internet support technician Jeb being constantly
interrupted by callers with Internet problems or worse, who stop him
from getting a bite out of his subway sandwich lunch.
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