Online TV Trends Attract Innovative Start-Ups

The momentum continues to build for TV stations to make use of the versatility that being online can offer ...

Brian Bergstein of the Associated Press reports on the numerous new players who are stepping forward to provide their vision of what's possible:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Eyebrows went up when Google recently agreed to spend $1.65 billion for YouTube, the most popular Web site for free video clips. But that figure could be blown away if some emerging companies achieve their much broader visions for the future of online TV.

These companies are building flexible online networks that can host content, serve up ads and dish out interactive features. These new Internet TV platforms are designed to host full-fledged channels that content creators can control.

One of the best positioned is Brightcove, which recently took the wraps off an Internet video network that handles virtually everything for content creators.

Aiming to serve everyone from garage auteurs to major media companies, Brightcove offers free publishing tools and runs video wherever publishers want it.

That could be on the central Brightcove site, which is accessible through the video-search functions at Google, Yahoo! and AOL. Or content publishers can use Brightcove to run video on their own separate, branded sites. Or they can syndicate it to third-party Web sites, such as blogs or MySpace pages, where the content might run alongside user-generated material.

All those videos can be sold as paid downloads or streamed for free, with ads. Brightcove will sell ads and pool them among its customers, or it will plug in commercials that content creators sell themselves.

"They can launch a business in our system in a week," said Brightcove's founder and chief executive, Jeremy Allaire, who formerly was chief technical officer at Flash graphics creator Macromedia before Adobe Systems bought it.

It's not a new idea that the abundant bandwidth of the Internet could become the delivery mechanism for thousands of TV channels.

But after a slow ramp-up, more than half of U.S. Internet subscribers now have broadband rather than dial-up. And the explosive growth of video-sharing sites has helped convince advertisers the medium has legs (though the term most commonly used is eyeballs).

These trends have helped Brightcove draw $28 million in funding from such companies as Time Warner's AOL, The Hearst Corp., General Electric and IAC/InteractiveCorp.

Brightcove's flexibility has attracted diverse publishers trying to expand their broadband video presence. National Geographic, the Travel Channel, Warner Music, The New York Times and The Washington Post are all customers.

So is Barrio 305, a Miami-based Internet-only channel devoted to the tropical hip-hop music flavor known as reggaeton. Brightcove pumps Barrio 305's videos to free sites in addition to Barrio 305's own pages.

"We can bypass these traditional media agencies, and we can get out directly to our audience," said Antonio Otalvaro, one of the three brothers who founded Barrio 305. "Our primary audience is online. They're not watching TV."

Brightcove is not alone in holding video publishers' hands as they step to the Net.

NBC Universal recently launched an Internet video-distribution system that is working with NBC affiliates and even rivals such as CBS and News Corp.

Another key player, Maven Networks, is headquartered in the same Cambridge office complex as Brightcove.

Like Brightcove, Maven is hosting video for customers and giving them quick, mouse-click methods of positioning content and setting up ad campaigns. Unlike Brightcove, Maven doesn't want to double as a video portal or dip into the ad business. Maven gets paid when viewers check out one of its customers' videos.

Maven CEO Hilmi Ozguc is a tech veteran who sold an online ad company to Excite@Home, which flamed out when its big dreams got ahead of the U.S. broadband penetration.

Maven's customers include CBS-owned College Sports Television and The Weather Channel.

"The whole industry is being transformed," Ozguc said.