Sony Pictures in Talks With YouTube

CNet is reporting that Sony Pictures may be in talks with YouTube to license full length movies to the video sharing site. Set to post nearly a half a billion dollars in losses this year, YouTube could certainly use some juice to combat sites like NBC-owned Hulu which already has an array of movies for streaming. "Details about what a final agreement could look like are sparse, but any partnership between the two powerhouses would likely benefit both. Representatives from both companies declined to comment. Word of the negotiations comes a week after Disney announced it had licensed short-form content to YouTube. Those clips will come from a range of Disney brands, including ABC and ESPN. For YouTube, obtaining short-form clips from Disney is an important step but still doesn't provide what YouTube needs most."

YouTube nearly bankrupt?

[commodore64_love]

>>>Set to post nearly a half a billion dollars in losses this year

Youtube is the most-popular video site. It should be making hand-over-fist in dollars. How can this be?

Re:YouTube nearly bankrupt?

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube makes virtually nothing in advertising and have extraordinarly high bandwidth cost. Short videos, like the majority of the ones on YouTube, are difficult to monetize. People won't wait through a 30 second video ad, so the best you can do is overlays and advertising outside the video.

For full length quality content, like that featured on Hulu people will have the patience to wait through 4-5 15 second ads over the length of a 45 minute TV show. Hulu is also able to snatch up traffic from people that used to pirate the same shows they watch on Hulu. Most people would much rather directly stream a fairly high quality video, than wait 3 hours for some pixelated piece of crap rared into 50 different password protected files.

And the players line up....

[GPLDAN]

Sony Playstation 3 firmware upgrade added the link-in to Youtube during the last upgrade. Anyone who DIDN'T see this coming was blind.

Sony and it's empire vs. Microsoft and Disney and ABC on the other. Paramount is on the Hulu/Xbox side, owning NBC which really started moving so much of its stuff to Hulu, all the SNL episodes and lots of its archive stuff.

This fight will expand to be a USA vs. the world thing. If I am over at Google/Youtube my strategy is to take licensing outside the states. Get international content exclusive to Youtube with the Playstation tie in. Get broadband deals done with the major providers in Europe. Isolate the Hulu guys to providing US content only.

Content is king, and it's like suddenly everyone realized the general public couldn't do it. There are only so many videos of your guild's Epic WoW raid or cats flushing toilets that will hold an ad revenue stream in place.

Sony can really break the Hulu grip if they eschew any embedded commercials in the video streams. Grab Fox Studios and maybe Lionsgate, get New Line Cinema and it's game over.

Should be interesting...

Vimeo is strict

[tepples]

Vimeo's guidelines [vimeo.com] are even stricter than YouTube's. You can't upload public domain videos, and you can't upload videos on behalf of an author who is someone else. You can't upload videos to promote your business. You can't upload videos of video games at all because you aren't the game's author.

Re:YouTube nearly bankrupt?

[Feminist-Mom]

That makes sense. Added to the cost of the zillion employees they have to comb the thing for video that need to be taken down, or at least to write the software. And the constant legal issues. Throw in just the machines, and now I see that is reasonable as a loss, esp. that they don't sell anything. On the other hand everyone I know generally uses it as a first choice. Maybe in a few years it will make money. Remember the (good?) old days when Amazon didn't show a profit for years?

More of this in the next two weeks

[PhillC]

I think we'll see a lot more announcements like this in the next 2 weeks - other Studios and TV Broadcasters putting long form content on YouTube, laden with advertising to generate revenue. The adverts will be pre-roll, mid-roll and possibly post-roll as well.

I also prophesise that YouTube/Google will not understand broadcast timecodes and will require everything in simple seconds, to two decimal places. Why do they need timecodes? To know where to insert the advertising of course. Will users be able to skip the advertising mid-roll? Not a chance. And what problems will timecodes in seconds, with two decimal places, create? I believe we'll see adverts inserted at the incorrect places as different frame rates between PAL, NTSC and film content are not taken into account, or ad breaks that are placed in content at obvious points like fades/transitions/mixes (whatever you'd like to call them) will be a few frames incorrect, so the transition will happen slightly before or after the ad break.

I also predict that YouTube won't really understand about TV resolution and will request everything at 640x480 frame size, rather than say 720x576 for PAL. I predict they may also have problems dealing with Full Height Anamorphic content, but of course that's just a hunch.

Don't ask me how I know, just looking into my crystal ball you understand.......

Re:YouTube nearly bankrupt?

[skarphace]

Well, the users are already paying to their ISPs for their bandwidth. Couldn't Youtube demand a cut of that, or at least get "free" bandwidth for better quality service to the provider's customers?

If the ISPs don't cooperate, Youtube could always downgrade the videos or display adds like "Your XX ISP doesn't want to play ball which might mean more costs to you. May we recommend this YY provider in your area?"

So it's cool if you break net neutrality rules if it's in Google's favor? Sheesh...