NBCU Inks Content Deals with MobiTV, VMIX.com
As if to answer the question, "What's the real value of the paid content deals YouTube is not making with content providers like Viacom?" today, two new deals with NBC Universal were announced: one with the burgeoning player in the IPTV space, MobiTV, and the other with an emerging YouTube competitor, VMIX.com.
The MobiTV deal will make primetime programming from NBC and several of its cable channels, including Bravo, Sci-Fi Channel, USA Network, and Telemundo, available following their initial airing, for a streaming fee of $1.99 per show. Each show would then be viewable and even repeatable for a 24-hour period, though the show isn't fully downloaded to the user's hard drive. Instead, the fee opens up a window for viewers to tune into shows they may have missed - or that they'd rather see online at their own convenience anyway.
It's that last bit of logic that is most intriguing to NBCU and its competitors in the first-run content space, and that may be most distressing to affiliates of NBC and other broadcast networks. These affiliates may be watching themselves become outmoded as their principal provider of content makes more serious investments in new outlets with more direct payoffs.
In a prepared statement this morning, MobiTV's vice president of content, Jeff Bartee, remarked, "This deal represents a significant milestone in the history of television and a key advancement in the mobile television category. NBC Universal has shown tremendous foresight in realizing this opportunity early, and demonstrated an ability to move aggressively in leveraging this new and rapidly growing distribution channel to better reach their loyal viewers."
The VMIX.com deal will make selected NBC-branded content - though not repeats of first-run programming - available for free through what will be called the "NBC Custom Channel." There, viewers will be likely to find clips from NBC shows, though not entire shows as originally broadcast.
However, NBC may be providing VMIX with certain "mini-series" that are essentially derivatives of existing shows. For instance, the network plans to provide an online-only show called "Zeroes," which is being described as a somewhat comedic spin-off of its existing, semi-popular "Heroes" program.
What's most interesting about this deal is NBC's choice of provider. Though VMIX is a video sharing service like its larger rival, YouTube, it touts itself as being fairer to rights holders.
"Since its inception, VMIX.com has distinguished itself by employing human content screeners," reads the company's statement this morning, "to filter inappropriate content and to protect the intellectual property of content, both copyrighted and user-submitted."
NBC is the second broadcast network to join VMIX, with Fox as the first. Sony and Warner Bros. are two content producers that have already signed deals with VMIX, though NBCU's Universal unit has not yet officially enrolled itself on that list. VMIX's statement speaks precisely to the type of controls that content providers are looking for with respect to consumer-driven redistribution of their own copyrighted content; obviously, VMIX wants to be more provider-friendly.
By doing so, VMIX could conceivably vault itself to a more preferable position, at least in the mind-space of its content providers, even though it has nowhere near as many users as the market leader.