MTVN Cuts Internet Video Syndication Deals
Programmer to Distribute Clips on Veoh, Daily Motion, GoFish, imeem, MeeVee
By Todd Spangler and Steve Donohue -- Multichannel News, 1/8/2008 9:03:00 AM
Looking to drive increased traffic for its Internet videos, MTV Networks cut several online syndication deals with Web sites focused on short-form programming.
MTV said Tuesday that it will supply content to Veoh.com, Dailymotion.com, GoFish.com, imeem.com and MeeVee.com. It already has similar agreements with AOL, Bebo.com, Comcast’s Fancast, Joost and MSN., Dailymotion..com, GoFish.com, imeem.com, MeeVee.com and Veoh.com.
The Veoh deal is noteworthy, considering former Viacom executives Tom Freson and Jonathan Dolgen are among Veoh’s investors.
Beginning this quarter, Veoh users will be able to watch programming from Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, CMT, Logo, The N, Spike TV, AtomFilms and GameTrailers, including Comedy’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, MTV’s The Hills, Nickelodeon’s iCarly and VH1’s The Salt-N-Pepa Show.
Veoh, founded in 2004, started out as a YouTube-like destination for user-generated content. It currently has as many as 100,000 contributors and is now aiming to be a “hyper-aggregator” of Internet video content through partnerships with media companies.
”Our idea is to be like an ‘Internet MSO,’” Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro said.
The startup has a distribution deal with CBS, and offers access to content on Hulu, the NBC and Fox online video joint venture, though it has no formal deal with Hulu. Unlike other Internet TV services, like Joost, Veoh is “open,” Shapiro said, by which he means it links to content on numerous other sites as well as hosting its own video.
Veoh had 21 million unique monthly viewers at the end of 2007. In November, according to Veoh, users watched 30 million hours of video.
Veoh also provides a free, downloadable application for WIndows that allows users to use a remote control to browse Internet video and is able to record some Web video for later playback.
Other investors in privately held Veoh's include Goldman Sachs, Shelter Capital Partners, Spark Capital, Michael Eisner's Tornante Company, Time Warner.
MTV said Veoh and other partner Web site will host a dedicated Web site for its content, but the company didn’t disclose how it will share ad revenue from the syndicated video clips.
“We believe in a targeted approach to online video syndication, which means working with select partners who value our content and have the ability to build deep and interactive experiences around it,” Greg Clayman, MTVN executive vice president of digital distribution and business development, said in Tuesday’s announcement. “By partnering with these premium online video destinations, we’re giving our audiences even more opportunities to interact with our content and each other online, while increasing engagement with our brands and driving viewership back to our core linear channels and Web properties.”
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