IP Democracy: TMZ.com Proves that Video Dirt Sells on the Web

David Carr has this piece in today’s New York Times about the raging success of video-oriented celebrity site TMZ.com. In less than a year, the site that broke the story of Mel Gibson’s epithet-enhanced arrest has captured nearly seven million visitors per month with its videos of celebrities doing, well, pretty much anything.

Using the limitless appeal of the famous performing the mundane — look, Angelina’s eating a Big Mac and Jennifer is fumigating her house! — TMZ offers a media hybrid of text, video, links and polls in a snackable package, which makes sense considering that it is a collaboration of some seemingly disparate elements of Time Warner.

The site is a collaboration between two Time Warner arms, AOL and Warner Brothers, and is developed by producer Jim Paratore and former TV reporter Harvey Levin. Ironically, the success of TMZ.com has the Time Warner suits talking about making the transition from web back to TV with a TMZ TV show. But Levin, despite his TV roots, isn’t eager to do the backward transition.

“I don’t think the endgame is a television show,” he said. “We have created a vibrant news organization that is breaking news in real time. I think the model is changing to the point where in five years, the distinction between television and Internet will be meaningless. They’ll have to call it something else.”

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 20, 2006 7:39 AM to IP Democracy