IP Democracy: AOL Tries to Soften the Blow with Video Announcement

AOL’s PR shop has been busy — the ailing online giant, slated to announce Wednesday a radical new business model for the service that includes abandoning paid member fees, is promoting new, beefed-up video offerings. Every major news organization (NYT here, Reuters here, Washington Post here, AP here) this morning has the advance word of AOL.com’s revamped site, which will be announced on Wednesday and launched on Friday.

AOL will sell commercial-free downloadable videos a la Google or Apple, including shows from MTV Networks, A&E Networks and Warner Brothers. Programs such as “Pimp My Ride,” “South Park” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” will be available for $1.99/each the day after they air. In the fall, AOL will offer a subscription service when such popular MTV Networks programming such as “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” will become available.

AOL will also provide free, ad-supported programming, including shows from TNT (owned by AOL parent Time Warner) and classic TV shows. When it relaunches, AOL will have 45 VOD channels. The site will also offer pumped-up video search capabilities, aided by AOL’s acquisition last year of video search companies Truveo and Singingfish.

Taking its cue from YouTube, AOL will also offer an area, called UnCut, that allows viewers to upload and share videos.

All of the press reports put a positive spin on the development, hailing the new video-centric service as a possible turn-around move. In truth, this development is nothing that hadn’t been in the works at the company all along and is clearly being puffed-up to soften the blow of Wednesday’s announcement. I’m with Staci when she writes

But AOL has been a beat or two behind, leaving it vulnerable to suggestions of copy-catting or “me, too” even when its plans already were in the works. That might explain why the WSJ article (sub. req.) leads with the idea that this is AOL’s “latest attempt to resurrect its online fortunes” when it’s actually a continuation of the ongoing portal strategy. The expansion coming this week has been expected for months, particularly the downloads-for-sale aspect.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 31, 2006 7:05 AM to IP Democracy