Feature Films Coming to YouTube
For months, Google, YouTube's parent company, has been talking to the major film companies about launching an ad-supported, streaming movie service, two execs with knowledge of the negotiations told CNET News. The search company, which has said often that it doesn't want to be a media company, won over many a bitter studio suit by developing systems that help them either thwart piracy or profit from it. Another sticking point with some of the film companies is Google's insistence on using a specific ad format for feature films, according to two studio sources. At least one other studio is trying to cut a similar deal for short-form content with Google, said a separate high-level industry insider. YouTube got rich on the backs of filmmakers, or so it seemed to many content owners. Things got hostile enough for Viacom, parent company of Paramount Pictures, to file a $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google last year. Last month, CBS, parent company of CNET News, announced it had agreed to post full-length TV shows on YouTube. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman last summer called YouTube a "rogue company." YouTube became the Web's No. 1 video site and amassed an enormous following, partly by becoming a favorite place for people to post pirated clips of TV shows and movies. This post has be en done by GSA C ontent Gener at or Demov ersi on.
YouTube's new wide-screen player presents video in a less pixilated 16:9 format than the site's standard player, but it falls short of providing Hulu-esque quality. This means that if someone posts a pirated copy to some blog or message board, Auditude can slip an ad within the player and allow the rightful owner to turn a buck. He singled out Auditude, which enables a content owner to insert ads into clips wherever they might appear on the Web. There's skepticism in some circles about whether enough ads can be placed into a streaming movie to make it profitable without also overloading viewers with commercials. Google also wants to deliver all the ads and this is problematic because some other companies do a better job, according to one of the executives. The one thing that Google and YouTube should be encouraged about is the growing number of Hollywood executives who believe there is plenty of interest in viewing films on PCs.
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Something else Hulu has going for it is a superior viewing experience. While the footage shot with the 4S is vastly superior to the iPhone 3GS or the iPhone 4, it's the Steadicam Smoothee that may thrill mobile cinematographers. If you're really into cinematography and don't mind shelling out a few bucks, the Steadicam Zephyr may be what you're looking for. That same month, Google rolled out a new wide-screen video player built to display long-form content. No other video site comes close to reaching an audience of that size. Consider that Hulu, the joint video venture formed by NBC Universal and News Corp., attracts only a fraction of the 80 million people who visit YouTube each month, but Hulu still managed to generate nearly the same revenue in its first year in business, according to reports. It's going to be hard for YouTube to land Universal or 20th Century Fox because each has a parent company that owns a stake in Hulu.
The company captured the world's imagination by showcasing 10-minute long user-generated videos but the strategy hasn't yielded much in the way of profits. Hulu attracts more ad revenue because advertisers are more comfortable with full-length TV shows and films than they are with user-generated fare. Google representatives also became more flexible about sharing ad revenue, according to insiders. How far the relationship between Hollywood and Google will go is anybody's guess. YouTube will begin offering feature films produced by at least one of the biggest Hollywood movie studios possibly as early as next month, video shorts according to an executive with a major entertainment company. Instagram, however, snapped up the Luma app and incorporated the technology into its Cinema feature. They declined to specify which ad unit Google prefers--whether it's prerolls or postrolls or something else--but said some of the studios want the final say on how to advertise to viewers. Google actually began wooing the studios. To be sure, not all the studios are prepared to give YouTube full-length movies.
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