Startup offers 'neutral' web video outlet

Positioning itself as an independent third party, ClipSyndicate is distributing short-form video clips for Clear Channel and Sinclair stations. Other broadcasters may follow.

By Wayne Karrfalt
The National Broadband Co. (NBBC), a joint venture of NBC and its affiliates, is a way for the various NBCU networks, NBC affiliates and other content partners to repurpose—that is, resell—their vast reservoirs of video programming as short advertiser-supported clips via the Web.

That’s just fine for NBC affiliates, but what about the hundreds of other TV stations. Where do they go to get in on the online action?
ClipSyndicate is one place. Last April, the startup company launched a service similar to NBBC and it already has deals in place to distribute video for Clear Channel and Sinclair (including the TV groups’ NBC stations) to more than 500 Web sites, including those of the McGraw-Hill Information and Media Group and industry-specific e-newsletters produced by Washington, D.C.-based SmartBrief.

The company says an additional station group also recently came on board, but that it is waiting until its service is fully integrated with the group's sites before announcing the deal.

Some companies such as Brightcove have stepped up to provide digitalization and ingest services for broadcasters. Others such as Mochila are in the business of syndicating print content.

But ClipSyndicate is the only syndicator with significant TV station business, according to Jason Gould, general manager of Inergize Digital Media, a division of Clear Channel Television. Inergize has already published about 25,000 video clips drawn from the Clear Channel stations through ClipSyndicate.

"There have been lots of other ‘me toos’ coming behind them, but they're in the lead by far," said Gould.

ClipSyndicate CEO and founder is Sean Morgan, one of the founders of the text news syndication service ScreamingMedia that was sold to CBS Marketwatch in 2000 for more than $100 million.

Creating a Web-based video ingest and archival system involved a lot of heavy lifting, Morgan said. And ClipSyndicate’s head start has given it time to smooth out some of the kinks that arise when working with different encoding formats, he added.

Morgan said that his marketing challenge is that many stations don't have the human bandwidth to devote to the new business.

"This is the first time stations have ever taken their video outside of their local markets," said Morgan. "Text providers have had someone in charge of secondary markets for 20 years. Until a year ago, there was not one individual at any station group whose job it was to create additional revenue streams."

That ClipSyndicate is independent of any broadcaster or other video producer is an advantage, said Morgan. As a neutral third party, it will not play favorites, he said.

"NBBC will be a great facility to share content across their base of affiliates, but, if you're CBS, do you want NBC skimming revenue off your syndication model? I wouldn't think so. And just having NBC content doesn't satiate the marketplace's need. You need every player in there. There needs to be neutrality," said Morgan.

For some NBC affiliates it’s never been an either/or scenario. The video deals they are signing with NBBC and ClipSyndicate are non-exclusive, and it behooves them to gain experience with as many different outlets as possible.

As CEO of Gannett Broadcasting, Roger Ogden helped create NBBC. But he said he isn’t bound to use the service exclusively.

“We're happy to have our video available on as many platforms as possible that can generate revenue. The more chances we have to sell it the better,” he said.

Inergize's Gould said he's not worried about potential conflicts of interests between NBBC and other distributors, noting that Inergize’s goal is to maximize reach and revenue.

And it's important for a pure-play technology company like ClipSyndicate to be involved in the video syndication business, he said, because it helps to push the envelope from a technical standpoint.

"You need an aggregator, someone whose core business it is to build a search engine, grab the video and track it accordingly," said Gould.

The emergence of ClipSyndicate and other possibly other third-party syndicators may obviate the need for the other broadcast networks to follow NBCU’s lead and launch their own video syndication services. So far, none has shown any interest in doing so.

Copyright 2006 TV Newsday, Inc. All rights reserved.