NBC Universal, News Corp YouTube Killer Will Fail

Notes From News Corp./NBC Universal Media Call Just read through Mike Arrington's notes from the News Corp / NBC call over at TechCrunch.

What a joke. They will definitely screw this up.

People do not want to pay to download content on their laptop and watch it. You can already TiVo anything you want, skip the commercials and watch anyway.

I watch YouTube occasionally. But it's almost always to find obscure long tail type stuff (like the 2nd Season opening song for Sigmund and the Sea Monster). As interesting as this is I would never pay to download it.

Mostly I watch video on the net that I find at digg. Shows that sell for $1.99 will not get dugg. People do not want to pay. They want stuff for free. And free video will always be on the internet. And places like digg will direct us to the best of it.

Personally I'm more interested in things like Vimeo these days anyways where you can directly interact with the actual creators of some of the most interesting, funny, and artistic content on the web. Or things like PodTech and the stuff Scoble does, or I think Loren Feldman's "Ethan Talks Tech" series is great. But I don't have to pay $1.99 to download any of this stuff.

You want to know what's lame? Check out CNBC's website. I'm not going to link their but try searching there archive for a story on say TiVo, or any company. You'll notice that you have to pay up to subscribe to their service. Do you know how many CNBC videos I've watched? 0.

What's even lamer is that they have a little "digg it" button on all their pay videos. That's laughable. Who would digg a video that you have to pay for?