Providence Equity To Invest $100 Million In Yet-To-Be Launched YouTube Killer
Sat, 08/11/2007 - 23:00 — Sahad P VCall it the power of YouTube. Private equity fund Providence Equity Partners is believed to be investing $100 million in a yet-to-be-launched video distributer website. The difference is it's not started by a 20-something startup entrepreneur. The names behind the unnamed website are big media companies - General Electric-owned NBC Universal and Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp.
Reports suggest that the two companies have reached a preliminary agreement with the private-equity firm to sell a stake - rumoured to be 10 per cent - for $100 million. The website is expected to see light of day this fall. Coming from big media, the content will be copyrighted unlike Youtube, which is currentky fighting a few law suits for carrying copyright infringed material. Reuters reports that the site will feature content from TV shows such as "Saturday Night Live" and "The Simpsons", and hit films such as "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Borat".
The NBC-NewsCorp JV for a YouTube killer was first announced in March this year. It has also hired ex-Amazon exceutive Jason Kilar as its CEO. By the way, Providence Equity has invested $400 million in Idea Cellular.
Comments
It's not joost...this venture is backed by NBC and Newscorp, and is yet to be launched.
The site is called Joost (www.joost.com). The Skype founders are behind the project and are seeking funding from PE and VCs. Index Ventures has already committed to Joost; so has Li Ka Shing - the owner of Hutchinson Whampoa (in personal capacity).
Joost has already launched a Beta version (membership by invitation only)
-P
August 13, 2007
Bigmedia and youtube are in two seperate lanes... youtube is user powered... majority of the videos that get high ratings are in fact created by users like you and me... and youtube will become home to independent production companies that dont have a lauch platform (remember lonelygirl15 et al)... The copyrights issue would be resolved soon, as you know google has come up with this high tech scanning system that can detect copyrighted material(i'm not joking)... it is also used officially by BigMedia to release trailers etc. But i doubt one day we would be able to watch full movies(from Big Production houses, like Fox, NewLine) on youtube... but i hope to see more Independent films there.
I think this unnamed project would infact compete with joost. But Joost's technology (peer to peer video distribution) is one of its major USP and i think they would have to come up with something like that to even get started. Also i believe joost and youtube would never compete... they can live symbiotically... joost is gonna bring your normal TV programs to your PC on Demand (plus it will have seperate channel for youtube).. youtube will continue to deliver us with funny cat videos, drunk girlfriend videos, podcasts etc.