IP Democracy: NBC to Syndicate Content on the Web

NBC’s online video company, the National Broadband Company (which will have the acronym NBBC…not NBC) announced yesterday it will syndicate content to other web sites. NBBC will sell commercials that appear before the video plays and will split the revenue with the participating sites.

Unlike other sites that currently syndicate content on the web, or plan to jump into the syndication business, such as Yahoo!, Google or AOL, NBC plans to give itself the biggest split of revenue - 50%. Site owners (no personal blogs, although high-profile blogs may apply) keep 20% while the program producer gets 30%.

“We want to create new tools to allow NBC Universal to do what it has always done: to deliver quality entertainment experiences to as broad an audience as possible,” Mr. Falco [Randy Falco, President of the NBC Universal Television Group] said. “In short, we are going back into the broadcast business on the Internet.”

YouTube was the spur for the creation of NBBC and the impetus behind the syndication concept.

“When ‘Saturday Night Live’ had a great clip of Lazy Sunday, YouTube made a lot of money off it,” Randy Falco, the president of the NBC Universal television group, said at a news conference yesterday. “In the future, when we have a Lazy Sunday clip, NBBC will make a lot of money on it.”

Um, I’m not sure YouTube made any money off of “Lazy Sunday,” although it did rocket to national consciousness with the hit viral nature of the skit.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on September 13, 2006 6:55 AM to IP Democracy