Only if industry players successfully balance content, customer experience and revenue models

By Tom MacIsaac, CEO, ExtendMedia

MacIsaac: "TV Everywhere" is a logistical challenge that media companies need to face. Photo: ExtendMedia

Add this to the list of things the Internet has changed: Your cable or satellite company now wants to let you, as a subscriber, watch the content you’ve paid for on any device you want, any time you want.

The cable crowd has little choice: consumers are accustomed to time shifting their television viewing using DVRs, and now sites like Hulu make it easy to access network television and old shows on the web.

But getting cable and satellite companies to buy into “TV Everywhere” was the easy part. The hard part comes in executing the concept. More

To battle back against Facebook, MySpace tunes into more online music

MySpace, the once and would-be king of social media, is increasingly turning

Van Natta's MySpace is doubling down on music. Photo: MySpace

toward music to combat a dominant Facebook, and keep its 125 million users coming back.

On Wednesday in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Summit, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta announced the launch of two new music products for the online site – one for the fans, the other for the bands. More

Break Media CEO Keith Richman. Photo: Break Media.

By Keith Richman, CEO, Break Media

It has become fashionable to claim that it is impossible to profitably produce original video content for the web.  After all, many high-profile digital studios closed after burning through millions in venture capital, while established media companies are finally making real money by streaming prime-time shows on their websites and through ventures like Hulu.  The future of entertainment on the web, these people suggest, will continue to be driven by expensively produced “premium content” that looks a lot like today’s prime-time TV.  Nothing could be further from the truth. More

The video-sharing site loses money and has failed to attract quality studio programming. So why does Google continue to pump money into it?

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley (left) and product manager Salar Kamangar

You would think Google's executive triumvirate — CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page — would be worried about YouTube. Almost three years after they forked over $1.65 billion in stock to acquire the video-sharing site, YouTube last year delivered only an estimated $240 million in revenue and is deeply in the red.

YouTube is the largest video platform in the world. Users upload 20 hours of video to it each minute, at tremendous cost to Google (GOOG). The company doesn't break out YouTube's expenses, but analysts believe it spends tens of millions of dollars each month just on network capacity to host all those videos.

And, oh, what videos! Four years after its inception YouTube remains a repository for "long tail" content that appeals to niche audiences: clips of cats on skateboards, babies laughing, and kids lip-synching. (There are occasional mass-audience moments, like the clip of Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent, viewed 71 million times.)

Gallery: See YouTube's greatest hits

But despite Google's repeated efforts, YouTube has failed to create an environment for professional video content, where many advertisers are clamoring to put their money right now. More

Alec Baldwin promotes Hulu in traditional TV spots.

The Web video shakeout has begun. Hulu, a venture of NBC, ABC, and Fox, is growing nicely, aided in part by a slick marketing campaign using, of all things, television ads starring Alec Baldwin. But a slew of smaller sites are starting to reformulate their strategies in the hope of surviving.

Joost, which was started by the founders of Skype Technologies, recently announced it would reinvent itself as a wholesale technology provider for media companies to publish video. The New York City–based outfit was launched amid great expectations in 2006 with $45 million in funding.

Video-sharing site Veoh may also be in trouble. High-profile backers, including ex-Disney (DIS) CEO Michael Eisner and Goldman Sachs (GS), have sunk $99 million into the New York–based site since its 2005 launch. In addition to the usual startups costs, Veoh has been hobbled by an expensive court battle with Vivendi's Universal Music Group over alleged copyright violations.

Back to main story: Google (still) loves YouTube

It's been two months since Apple (AAPL) and NBC Universal (GE) broke up over video pricing on iTunes, but the wounds don't seem to have healed — at least for Jeff Zucker.

Variety reports today that NBC's CEO let loose on Apple in a breakfast interview with The New Yorker's Ken Auletta at Syracuse University. Zucker claims that NBC — Apple's single largest video partner — made only $15 million in iTunes sales in the past year. That's about 1/3 of what outsiders had estimated and far less than the entertainment giant is used to pulling in from hit properties like The Office and 30 Rock.

"We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side," he said, according to Variety.

But in describing the negotiations that led to an impasse in August, Zucker repeated claims that Apple has already contradicted, specifically:

• that NBC Universal represented 40% of Apple's iTunes video content (Apple claimed in a press release it was only 30%)
• that its demands were modest: to raise the price of one show — any show — from $1.99 per episode to $2.99 (Apple claimed NBC wanted to hike the per-episode cost to $4.99)

Zucker also suggested that NBC was asking for something Steve Jobs is unlikely to give any media partner: a cut of his iPod sales.

"Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money," Zucker said. "They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing." (link)

NBC's iTunes contract with Apple expires in December and from the tenor of Zucker's remarks, renewal doesn't seem likely. “We know that Apple has destroyed the music business – in terms of pricing – and if we don’t take control, they’ll do the same thing on the video side,” he told the breakfast audience, according to FT.com.

NBC and News Corp., meanwhile, are set to launch Hulu.com, their bid to offer studio-produced video on the Web that's supported, like broadcast TV, with advertising. Hulu is handing out beta subscriptions here, if you want to give it a try.

See What iTunes Looks Like Without NBC and Apple to NBC: Drop Dead