Meredith and Scripts Networks, both large legacy media companies in the lifestyle space, are making strides to branch out in new areas of digital media. The NY TImes profiled their efforts in this article.
What’s impressive is that they are not just posting their magazine or cable television stories and out-takes on the web, but instead they are creating entirely new video content for the web.
This incremental content has the best chance for attracting incremental revenue. And the best chance for learning the new medium that is enabling their competitors on blogs and YouTube.
Meredith is setting out to create entire original series online – an independent over-the-top video play. It’s a smart way to leverage its magazine brands like Better Homes and Gardens into video, perhaps some day creating a cable network, or bypassing cable altogether in favor of a YouTube or other online video channel.
Even more impressive is Scripts’ over-the-top network ULive. It’s impressive because they already have a large cable TV presence. So going over the top is potentially competing with their cable offerings, and is also exactly the sort of thing the cable operators that pay Scripts for The Food Network and other channels don’t want to see.
Smart moves powered by guts.
Photo: iStockPhoto
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