Can NBC and MySpace Take Out YouTube? And the Crying Idol Girl Gets Her Own Taste of Media Overkill

Pay no attention to the flacks who keep insisting that the new advertising-supported, video Web site announced by NBC and News Corp. may be YouTube compatible and will work with the video-sharing Web site.

Make no mistake: This is another attempt by those who make high-priced video content to ensure that it mostly appears somewhere they can make money on it. And if it sticks a fork in YouTube, so much the better.

  And while this approach seems to be the carrot compared to the stick of Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google, the goal is the same -- making sure those who produce video content are the primary folks to make money from it. So far, content from NBC, NBC's cable channels and Fox's array of media properties will be feeding material thrugh Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN site, News Corps' MySpace and America Online.

But they'll be fighting some serious trends. Online consumers don't even have the patience for short commercials, so they may still prefer the wilds of YouTube, which doesn't place ads in the video content. And they need a wide array of programmning to make it work -- one of the reasons Google Video and so many other YouTube wannabe's never took off is because their selection of video is too limited.

Fox example: when I wanted a video clip of the crying 13-year-old who worshipped lame-o Idol contestant Sanjaya for this blog, the video was available within hours on YouTube -- before Fox even had pictures from the performance on its official Web site. Ditto with clips from Spider Man 3 aired on NBC during Heroes and bits from a review DVD given to critics of Fox's 1/2 Hour News Hour.

So thi new site's content needs to be available early -- hopefully, exclusively -- from a wide variety of programs with a minimum of commercial intrusion and a way easy-to-use interface, so people quickly build the habit of utilizing it. And they also have to hope Viacom's lawsuit hampers YouTube enough that all that ubiquitous content disappears and ans turn to them as an alternative.

Man. Sounds like an uphill battle -- even for the networks that gave us Twenty Good Years and Celebrity Duets. 

ONE MORE THING

Former WFTS news director Bill Berra keeps making headlines for his in-your-face style of local TV reporting. This time, one of his reporters at WTMJ in Milwaukee wound up inadvertently telling a woman her husband was dead before the police could. Berra has apologized for the circumstance. (thanks NewsBlues)

LITTLE GIRL OVERKILL

Because the actual competition sucks, are we surprised that media outlets all over the planet have jumped on Ashley Ferl, the 13-year-old girl whose tears for lame-o Sanjaya probably saved his skinny butt from elimination from American Idol? (thanks RealityBlurred!)