It’s the JV proposal that will not die, kind of like those marsh fires that look like they’re out and flame up again unexpectedly. The idea of a News Corp.-NBCU joint venture that would aggregate and distribute video in counterpoint to Google-YouTube has been circling around for months; at one point, Viacom was reported to be in discussions but never got on board. Externally, “Newco” seemed to be close to dormant; internally, though, I’m told another big push is on to get it done to the point where I have heard from multiple sources it could happen this week. Then again, it’s as likely to fall apart as it is to happen.
From what we’ve been able to gather, the potential equity partners are talking to potential distribution partners including Yahoo and MSN; no clarity on whether they would get equity stakes, too. The same holds true for whether the companies would use existing options like MySpace and NBBC or go for something completely new, using those as distribution points. It likely would live outside the current dotted lines at both NBCU and Fox. As one source put it: “I don’t know what it’s going to look like at the end of the day.”
Or whether there will be anything to look at.
Related:
-- Possible Me-Too Video JV May Have Lost Viacom; Then Again, It’s All Conjecture For Now
-- YouTube-Rival Consortium Site Could Be Announced This Week: Report; News Corp And NBCU Main Backers
-- That Cross-Company-YouTube-Rival Thing Again
-- GoogTube Dangling Nine-Figure Sums To Media Companies; Cross-Company Rival To YouTube?