ITV Goes Cold On YouTube, Hulu, Sticks With ITV.com
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By Mark Sweney: A senior ITV (LSE: ITV) executive has said that the broadcaster had “no plans” to do output deals to put its programming on video-on-demand aggregation services such as Hulu, YouTube, SeeSaw and MSN Video Player.
The ITV director of online and interactive, Ben McOwen Wilson, told a session at the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit that the broadcaster would instead seek to build online viewing of its programming via its own VoD service, ITV Player.
This sets ITV apart from the UK’s other main terrestrial broadcasters, the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel Five, which have done VoD programming deals with YouTube and SeeSaw. BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, also has an output deal with MSN Video Player for archive programming.
“We have no plans at present to do any deals with YouTube. We are following an ITV Player-led solution because we want to push our own platform as hard as we can. We enjoyed 180 percent growth in terms of usership of ITV Player last year,” McOwen Wilson said, speaking at a Changing Media Summit session on the future of TV.
“Hulu is a major success in the US but the UK TV market is a different place,” he added.
ITV was understood to have been talking last year to the backers of Hulu – NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), Disney (NYSE: DIS) and News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) – about an exclusive content deal in return for an equity stake in the UK version of the service.
Posted In: Media & Publishing, TV, VOD, Companies, Google, YouTube
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