Media Mindfulness

As the article below indicates, there is extensive hype about NewTube (a placeholder name until NBC Universal and News Corp. come up with a brand identity), which is essentially the big media response to YouTube. Although considering that google now owns YouTube, it’s getting harder to view Internet behemoths as the “little guy” anymore. But I think there is something missing in the discussion about the looming battle of on-line media networks. The essential difference (to me) is that NewTube will not allow users to upload media. So whereas YouTube has spontaneously self-organzied into a “people’s archive,” NewTube is just going to be a venue for corporate media that pays lip service to consumer democracy through its remixing feature. No doubt there will be stuff that people will want (or think they will want due to extensive marketing bombardment that is surely in the works).

I’m not surprised that “traditional media” responds favorably to NewTube, because it fits the paradigm of top-down content generation. I think some old media companies will adopt more citizen journalism and locally produced content as new media practices seems to favor, but if NewTube is any indication, it’s more an example of OldTube put into new media bottles.

NewTube Is Just The Beginning:

For media geeks, NewTube (its executives, unsurprisingly, prefer the clunkier handles NewCo or NewSite) is big news. But the venture, expected to launch this summer, is merely one of myriad developments that will remake the world of Web video in the next few months. Google (GOOG ) is expected to begin rolling out advertising systems for YouTube this summer. This spring, News Corp.’s MySpace will formally push into YouTube’s video-sharing turf, launching an offering that insiders currently call MySpace TV. And top executives at Time Warner suddenly sound confident that a mutual technical solution to copyright issues with YouTube—the subject of a lawsuit Viacom (VIA ) filed in mid-March—is close enough to make likely a content-licensing deal. (Spokespersons for YouTube and other companies declined to discuss potential deals or negotiations.) Mingling within these overlapping layers of competition and cooperation is the suddenly less remote prospect of making some actual money.

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