Another day, another major online video announcement with BrightCove raising $59.5-milion of venture capital from a group of investors including the New York Times Co. It was only yesterday that the tech world was abuzz with the official launch of Joost (otherwise known as the Venice Project) and Netflix getting into the business of downloading movies and TV shows. Then, there’s the launch of Video.ca (well, in Canada, this is newsworthy).
Amid all this activity, it will be interesting to see how cable companies deal with the growth of video delivered and consumed on the Internet, particularly if the content owners get into the business of going direct to consumers. Does this mean the cablecos will have to aggressively enhance their video-on-demand and pay-per-view operations? Does it mean cablecos will try to squeeze more money out of their high-speed Internet access operations as consumers demand more bandwidth to download movies and TV shows?
It could be that cablecos will be squeezed by online video – much like newspapers, radio and the music industry are being squeezed by the Web. We’re in the midst of a huge shakeup in the media landscape that no one is able to avoid.
Technorati Tags: Venture Capital, Video
One Comment
I agree with your take Marc and here in Canada Bell and Videotron to different degrees are also content providers. I will be interested in seeing how this plays out over time since cable is the connection of choice for consumers needing a fast connection. This also will bring up the spector of net neutrality, as somme of these companies might wish to slow down our conection to services that do not pay them.