NBC turns Affiliates into local portals

NBC Stations Launch 'Locals Only' Web Sites
NBC Local Media will launch city-specific Web sites for some of its major markets, beginning today with a new “Locals Only” online destination for Chicago residents. The new sites will provide visitors with news, photos, videos and blogs from NBC local stations as well as aggregated sources in order to serve “local consumers who are looking to stay ahead of the curve and get plugged in to all their city has to offer.” Over the coming days other cities to get the “Locals Only” treatment online will be Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington, New York and Hartford. “These sites are a departure from what we’ve done in the past and the next step in our mission to provide truly relevant local content to consumers on the media platform of their choice,” NBC Local Media President John Wallace said.

Picking a Video Search Engine
For the average consumer, video search is an emerging, online space. Generally, if an everyday user is looking for a video, doing a search on YouTube Inc. is the first method that comes to mind.
But several video search engines are using both algorithms and human-powered search to index the Web's video in a way that major search engines haven't been able to do well, including Truveo, founded in 2004 and acquired by AOL in 2005; Blinkx, founded in 2004; and OVGuide, founded in 2006.
Naturally, each site believes it's the best in some way, with OVGuide professing to be the "largest video search engine in the world," Truveo claiming to have the "largest coverage area" of all the video search engines, and Blinkx claiming its status as the "fastest growing site in the U.S."


Microsoft Releases Silverlight 2
The full version is finally released, with auto-updates happening later this week

Joost Launches Flash Version For Browsers: Easier But No Hulu
Online video site Joost is finally, officially easier to use. The Flash-based, download-free version for browsers can be accessed now but the full-featured version is supposed to launch at midnight. Joost boasts of having the "largest online library of legal video programming." The company says it has doubled the number of videos in the past 10 months to more than 46,000 with a 50 percent increase in hours for a total of more than 8,000 hours. Content partners include investors CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Viacom; Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Television; Warner Bros. Television Group; the NBA; PBS and a number of international providers.

How the Downturn Will Affect Video Startups: One VC’s Take
Cohen first told us that video startups will need to take into account more general industry trends, such as softening demand, fewer new investments by VCs and lowered valuations. He said all startups should make sure they can run for 24 months on their existing cash, and if they can’t, start fund raising ASAP. Cohen also noted that run rates will be important to attracting top talent, who will be holding onto their existing jobs unless you can offer them something really stable.

Producing Good Online Video is One Thing; Delivering It Well, Another
Online video can open new streams of revenue or new ways of connecting with customers and other constituents. But delivering multimedia online represents an investment that goes beyond initial production costs. It's not enough to make a video — you need to be sure that the content you created is the content your visitors actually see, without delays or disruptions that disappoint viewers, and undermine the value of your investment.

Google breaches Copyright
Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular Internet-search engine, lost two copyright lawsuits in Germany over displaying photos and artworks as thumbnails in a preview of search results.
Google's preview of a picture by German photographer Michael Bernhard violates his copyrights, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled, his lawyer Matthies van Eendenburg said in an interview today. Thomas Horn, who holds the copyrights on some comics that were displayed in Google search results, won a second case, court spokeswoman Sabine Westphalen said in an e-mail.


Lame Journalism: A Story About Link Journalism
These depressed times call for...lame Times? A story in NYT about media sites linking to other news sources, which somehow is supposed to be novel. Every year the battle is won a little more, but this surely isn't new, or news. Anyway, one bit of new info: that NBC's local station division will start morphing the local TV sites into full-fledged city guides. This will start tomorrow with its Chicago affiliate, WMAQ, where the site will link to competitors such as The Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, TMZ and the local blog Chicagoist. 

FCC Clears Free Wireless Web
A proposal to create a free, national wireless Internet service got a boost as Federal Communications Commission engineers concluded that concerns are overblown about such service interfering with other carriers.
The report clears the way for the FCC to move forward with a plan to auction off airwaves to a bidder who agrees to offer free, national wireless Internet service. The FCC is expected to finalize rules this year and could begin auctioning off airwaves in early-to-mid 2009.