At this morning’s Streaming Media East keynote, NBC Universal Chief Digital Officer George Kliavikoff talked up NBC’s original digital programming strategy, the future of Hulu and expressed optimism that a new iTunes deal may be near.
On Apple:
All we want to do in any distribution agreement is to set the wholesale price…on every platform and with every partner in the world with the exception of one, we’ve gotten to set that price.
I applaud the moves that have been made lately by Apple. In the UK now there is variable pricing…the deal with HBO content…that we love. So things are moving in the right direction.
On piracy:
We want our partners to help the industry combat piracy…if you think short term it’s great for consumers to get everything for free…but eventually the money runs out…if we in a consumer friendly way alert people that what they’re doing is illegal and offer an alternative…this has nothing to do with DRM.
For example when Hulu content is uploaded somewhere else presumably we can use technology to detect that and push consumers to the place where that content is available legally.
YouTube has done a pretty good job lately of filtering what’s on their site…but you turn back the clock six months on any of the big UGC sites, it’s rampant.
We’re aggressive about making sure our stuff comes down from YouTube,.YouTube has an active program where we can start pre-filtering some of that stuff and they’ve made great strides in the last couple months…if you create a great experience over time people will migrate to that great experience…what we did with Hulu.
On Predictive Marketing and Original Digital Content
For the company the cable model has been hugely successful, focus on a particular community (for example Bravo has a very specific audience) Filter by top ten advertising categories. Focus on undeserved: We ventured to create a set of content verticals “digital cable networks if you will” where advertisers can spend their money…we do syndication deals with sites that are particular in that genre.
We launched about a month ago our auto channel, DriverTV.com, we went into the marketplace, found the absolute best content…all HD, ”it’s really like car porn” we syndicate it across large websites, that particular content is great because they’re [reaching] an in-market consumer so we get paid by Cadillac….Revenue we generate we’re going to reinvest in original car content.
The Health Network – we produce in excess of 120 videos a week, that had aired once on TV and syndicate them online. Yourtotalhealth, launched with a bunch of syndication partners.
In these niche categories they’re almost sold before we make them. In the case of autos the car companies get to use that footage so it’s almost no cost, and in the case of the Health Network it’s footage we already have.
On The Future of Hulu
I think in three years from now if they do their job well…it will be a one stop shop for a lot of great content…I happen to be biased but I think it’s the best user experience on the internet today….I think also this strategy they have of allowing anyone to take any section of a video and embed it anywhere in the world is great…also other devices, TV, Mobile, continuing to work closely with advertisers to…use the interactivity of the platforms.
On the CBS-CNET Deal:
I can’t wait for it to close because I can’t wait for CBS content to be on Hulu…all kidding aside I’m good friends with Neil and Quincy, I think it’s a great way for CBS to get a lot of scale very quickly…I envy Quincy because he operates under different economic conditions than I do…I work for GE, I couldn’t have gotten that deal through.
