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NBC Teams with One True Media


By Adena DeMonte

One True Media said Monday that NBC Universal will use the company’s online simple video-editing technology to power viewer video creation and submission for the new interactive daytime TV talk show iVillage Live.

The Redwood City, California-based online video company competes in the market of video mash-ups like Eyespot and Yahoo-acquired Jumpcut. But it differentiates itself from competitors by selling users their final product in DVD form.

Many members of the site are moms. They also happen to be the target demographic for NBC’s iVillage Live talk show.

NBC expressed interest in One True Media when it found a lot of the site’s users were posting video content on iVillage. Since NBC was planning the daytime talk show based on the iVillage community, the broadcast producer shared plans with One True Media for the show and started to discuss ways to incorporate user-generated content into the talk show.

Founded in December 2005, One True Media is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which invested $5 million in the company in June 2006 (see Kleiner Gets Video Startup).

Kleiner Gets Video Startup

The company is offering its technology to iVillage producers for free and plans to profit from the deal with the free advertising and by bringing new customers to the site to create videos and purchase them.

“This is the beginning of what we could see as a new type of TV,” said One True Media CEO Mark Moore. “I think we are going to see a lot of attention from reality TV shows as well as others that are interested in their viewers having an interactive capability with their TV show.”

Perhaps following the model of Al Gore’s CurrentTV, where users submit “pods,” or short, self-edited clips to be voted on for broadcast airtime, NBC is building a digital strategy to reflect the rise of online television.

Online TV Gains Traction

Online TV Gains Traction

Online television viewing is gaining significant traction in the TV-watching audience. In the United Kingdom, a BBC-commissioned ICM survey released last week noted that online video-watching is starting to eat into TV viewing time.

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Forty-three percent of Britons who watch video from the Internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched fewer TV broadcasts on a TV set as a result.The BBCreported that the government-supported network, along with ITV and Channel 4, are planning to offer most of their shows on demand and on the Internet by the start of 2007 as a result of the growing online and mobile TV viewing segment.

reported that the government-supported network, along with ITV and Channel 4, are planning to offer most of their shows on demand and on the Internet by the start of 2007 as a result of the growing online and mobile TV viewing segment.

“The UK is not yet as advanced as the US, where hit TV shows are routinely available from networks’ websites and services like iTunes,” said the BBC article.In the survey, one in five people who watched online or mobile video at least once a week said they watched a lot less TV as a result. Another 23 percent said they watched a bit less, while just over half said their TV viewing was unchanged. A Sign of Deals to Come?

US.

The iVillage Live deal signals a shift in broadcast media to reflect the growth of online and mobile television. New media companies are gradually befriending old media companies. Each sees profit in the other, though the exact business models of the agreements are still being worked out.

One True Media also announced a deal with TiVo in November, allowing users to create a video and have friends subscribe to their “channel,” with the ability to automatically access shared videos on a television screen in what Mr. Moore calls “fusion TV.”

TiVo also announced deals with other online media players, like Google TV, to bring broadband video content to a customer’s TV screen (see Tivo Brings Online Video to TV.)

Tivo Brings Online Video to TV

Last week, IAC’s Match.com announced a season-long sponsorship with TBS’s reality-dating series My Boys. The deal, orchestrated by Mullen’s MediaHub, is estimated at $1 million to $2 million. 

Match.com will be featured prominently in two episodes and play cameo roles in the rest. Business Week recently reported that Google’s YouTube is offering nine-figure licensing fee sums to major programming and network players Time Warner, News Corp., and NBC Universal, probably in hopes of keeping any copyright lawsuits at bay. Viacom and CBS already have similar deals with YouTube.