We broke the news last night about renewed efforts to create a big media joint rival to YouTube, and even though there is still no certainty of the deal actually happening, we have gathered some more details of the possibilities being discussed. In addition to Fox and NBCU, as we mentioned last night, we are told Sony has also joined the discussion. Viacom was back in the game but as of yesterday, has bowed out again. There may be a fourth content player (not Time Warner) but we haven’t been able to confirm that part. The project will be capitalized to about $100 million, with each player pitching in with $25 million, a relatively small amount each in today’s environment.
The distribution of the videos will be on MySpace, MSN and Yahoo, from what we know; NBBC, NBCU’s digital marketplace, is another possibility. And we have heard conflicting reports about whether there will be a destination site, or just a specialized media player that will syndicate this content. The content players would get a majority of the ad revenues in one variation we heard about, with a window of exclusivity built in for licensing the original content.
Update: The LAT covers much of the same ground but adds a lot of quotes from observers and some from sources close to the deal. They say NBCU and News Corp. plan an announcement as early as Thursday and mentions deals with MySpace, Yahoo, MSN but not other equity partners.
One more note for now: our NYC correspondent David Kaplan reported Wednesday on comments by Yahoo’s Terry Semel on an upcoming user-gen tool and video sharing. Among other comments, Semel stressed Yahoo’s allegiance to copyrights and its respect for partner content.