An interesting conversation with Philippe Dauman, President and CEO of Viacom and a big announcement that the entire Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) video back catalogue is to be put online, amounting to 14,000 clips. The Daily Show website will use also start to use widgets and embed more social media.
Philippe said that Viacom believes in following the consumer and building content around what they want to do online. They don’t necessarily jump on every bandwagon as it rolls out but are looking at what they might do with Sarah Silverman and their comedy back catalogue as next steps in this kind of online material.
John Heilemann – contributing editor of New York Magazine, and the interviewer – talked about copyright and reminded Philippe that Viacom had sued Google/You Tube last year about copyright infringement. Since then Google have committed to being more rigorous in this area so John asked if Viacom were happy with how that was going. Dauman gave a very diplomatic answer which amounted to ‘We’re still waiting to see whether they’ll deliver on this’.
The Google probing continued and turned into Mainstream Media vs the Kids (aka You Tube) but it felt like Google/You Tube’s lack of ability to deliver on copyright management led to Viacom’s decision to partner with Joost.
Philippe also talked about the non brand-related content they plan to create including virtual worlds and ways in which they intend to move users around their content and brands. He talked about Nickelodeon online, the development of Nicktopolis and how plans are afoot to partner with Marriott to create Nick Hotels.
And yet another question about potential bidders for Facebook - and was Viacom interested? Thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif gnomic Mr Dauman said they're developing apps for Facebook and will be looking at companies and partners like them in order to keep their finger on the pulse in serving their audiences. Social networking matters to Viacom and they're creating an app whereby your personal profile will travel with you across all their sites. Time spent on their sites is increasingly a performance metric for them.
A question from the floor about UGC and creative commons which, worryingly Dauman didn't seem to have heard of. Standard line from him, though, that 'we're always interested in developing new talent but we need to nurture and reward professionals in this space'. Sounds like he's still smarting from his run-in with You Tube.
Future plans? Viacom intent to invest 'hundreds of millions of dollars' in games.
STOP PRESS: Even as I was posting this, my ever-vigilant chum, Troy, mailed me to say that Viacom and a string of other Big Name Broadcasters have agreed on guidelines in order to protect copyright online. Notably absent, the WSJ article points out, are are our chums, Google.
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