Fox Business Network, Al Jazeera Partner With Video News Site
1Cast Bolsters Content Supplier Base For Aggregation Business
Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 7/1/2009 10:26:51 AM EDT
News Corp.'s Fox Business News and Al Jazeera English have inked deals with 1Cast, a video news aggregation site, to provide "up-to-the-minute" news clips.
Terms of the agreements were not disclosed. The companies did not disclose how much content FBN and Al Jazeera will contribute to 1Cast but a spokeswoman for the startup said "it is a substantial amount for all of the networks."
The 1Cast site aggregates newscasts of video clips from multiple news sources, including the Associated Press, BBC World News, Bloomberg, CBC, Reuters, CNBC, Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. The service, which also is designed to deliver video to smartphones and other mobile devices, is currently free to access; 1Cast is attempting to sell advertising and other sponsorships.
FBN, which premiered Oct. 15, 2007, is available through Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision Systems, DirecTV, Dish Network, Verizon FiOS TV and others.
Al Jazeera English, which launched in November 2006, is available to more than 140 million households worldwide but is not carried by any major U.S. TV distributor. The network and its Arabic-language counterpart are owned by the government of Qatar.
Kirkland, Wash.-based 1Cast was founded in 2006 and has received funding from Eagle River Holdings.
