The New York Times is currently having discussions with four unnamed online video distributors about syndicating the work of its reporters, Martin Nisenholtz, the newspaper’s SVP for Digital Operations, told attendees at the Streaming Media East conference in New York. And aside from having others handle its original work, Nisenholtz said the growing importance of online content aggregators demands that the Times become not just “creators, but programmers.” He compared the situation the news business currently finds itself to the one experienced by horse-drawn buggies a century ago: “We’re not in the print business anymore than the people who made buggies a hundred years ago were in the buggy business. They were in the transportation business. Those who confused the two when the car was developed were the ones that didn’t last. We’re in the information business and we have to react to the changes in that industry. Video and content aggregation are changing that business.” He illustrated some of the ways the Times has been reacting to the new landscape: more after the jump…
— The Buchwald Video Obit: One of the last pieces of journalism humorist Art Buchwald participated in was the inauguration of the Times’ special online obit feature called The Last Word. Instead of using archival footage, the Times put together an original video on Buchwald’s life, along with a recent interview with him before his passing. Nisenholtz said that video represented a touchpoint for how the news business had changed. For one thing, it meant that a news organization generally regarded as a textual entity could do something broadcast news hadn’t done in terms of combining two formats. Secondly, Nisenholtz said it acutely illustrated the way people got the news and discussed it. “I was discussing the Buchwald obit we put together with Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist who had mentioned the The Last Word on his blog. Fred had linked to The Last Word after seeing it on Fred Graver’s blog, who had seen Staci Kramer’s story about it on paidContent. In her article, Staci had pointed to Romenesko’s piece about it. All of this is a huge conversation. In terms of being a part of that conversation, considering the fact that video search is still in its infancy, we’re looking to working with aggregators and we plan to pursue formal relationships with syndicators for that expressed purpose.”
— Making Money: Acknowledging that generating revenue from its online video is difficult at this point, Nisenholtz noted that the Times does have a strategy in mind. Citing projections from eMarketer that internet video ads will account for $3 billion in annual revenue, the Times has set a goal of netting $30 million a year from that stream. The company has therefore estimated, basing it on $60 CPMs and 80 percent sell-throughs, the site would have to attract 60- to 70 million streams per month – right now, the Times’ site averages 5 million video downloads. “How are we going to guarantee that kind of traffic? In the mid-1990s, we passed 1 million unique visitors per month and had set a goal of reaching 10 million a month. Today, we have 26 million uniques worldwide.” And in order to keep that goal, Nisenholtz added that the Times has no plans to charge for video viewing through Times Select or other paid services.
— TV Is Not TV Anymore: Noting that NBC and other sites are starting to view pre-roll ads as “universally accepted bad behavior,” the Times is launching a feature called Video Lounge, which will allow advertisers to display long-form content. “The idea of Video Lounge is predicated on the basic notion that advertising will become more of an entertainment product.” He cautions that such initiatives are undertaken knowing that there’s no clear direction for monetizing online video. “The incumbents haven’t taken a leadership role. Why did it take broadcasters so long to realize the importance of online video? Obviously there were existing relationships, existing ways of doing things that held them back. The new guys, like us, have nothing to protect and we have nothing to lose. When ABC started selling shows through iTunes, they had to convince their affiliates that this was a necessary change, that it was innovate or die.”
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