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ITV Goes Cold On YouTube, Hulu, Sticks With ITV.com

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.

Mar 19, 2010 5:53 AM ET

Bet Lynch of ITV's Coronation Street Photo: Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy

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Posted In: Media & Publishing, TV, VOD, Companies, Google, YouTube

  • This is a very bad step for orkut, already there's a mass migration towards facebook by the elite crowd, although this cannot be attributed to orkut's recent pact with police, this retrograde step would only push people like me to stop using their service. It is well known that we lack strict civil liberties and free speech in this country. The internet has always been our last refuge, but if companies like google, which still claim its unofficial motto is "dont be evil", can sign pacts with govt and forsake the liberty and privacy of their users, then i guess its time we took another look at google's policies.
    And what do they mean by objectionable content?
    Do they mean speaking out against tyrannical politicians or govt?
    Do they mean posting of porn?
    Do they mean harassing someone through scraps?
    This objectionable content needs to be clearly defined and if it includes the first 2 mentioned cases, then I am out of orkut.

  • akshta

    when ever i change my profile, is it possible for me to get the updated date of my profile change in orkut

  • Nikhil: Blogger Collective mailing list - could you send me the link. I would like to read the discussion.

    Thanks.

  • Nice job. Thank you for getting it straight from them :)

  • Akash: I wrote an email to the corporate communications representative for Google India for an official statement. She responded to that email with the statement which I have copy-pasted as the update.
    Thanks for the reminder: I just realized that I've forwarded the blogger collective group mailing list to archives on my gmail. Will go through the discussion now…

  • Did you ask Google for a response and got one from them through email or some other channel ? Just trying to clarify. There is a lively discussion going on at Blogger Collective mailing list and I had posted link to this blog post with updates from google. Was trying to confirm this from other sources but couldn't find much on this.

    Thank you for your reply anyways.

  • Akash: Google PR has asked to be quoted 'a Google Spokesperson', and we've quoted her statement verbatim.

  • Can you please quote the original source for your updated info on Google's clarification.

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