Jon Holato

Last week Viacom sued YouTube and Google in an effort to tame the beast that is online video. Today, NBC and News Corp. announced that they will be taking a different approach, an online video site of their own that will challenge YouTube head on. The two media behemoths said that their site, which has an unknown launch date, will contain videos from their two film and TV libraries.

“There will be user-generated videos but the emphasis here is on the premium content and we think that’s the value proposition here,” said NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker.

In addition, preliminary reports say that the site will feature personalized playlists, social networking functionality, and mashups which will allow users to create their own videos from copyrighted content.

My take on this is: great idea, far too late. YouTube is cemented deeply as the dominant online video site in terms of market share, and even weak competitors like MySpace Video, Daily Motion, MetaCafe and iFilm have a loyal fan base. Obviously this new site will get a lot of members at the start as people seek to learn what all the hype is about, but I think they’ll quickly jump ship when they realize it doesn’t have the content of YouTube — I can’t see NBC and News Corp. allowing content that infringes on copyrights, which is what YouTube members live for.

In essence this would be comparable to someone trying to launch a brand new site and unseat MySpace as the dominant social networking site. Many have tried, none have succeeded. Their efforts and resources are better off spent elsewhere.

What does Google think of it all? Well they don’t seem to be too worried, as TechCrunch is reporting that Google executives are referring to NBC and News Corp.’s project as “Clown Co.”