Wall Street Journal is reporting that four major media companies–News Corp.’s Fox, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. and General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal–might join to create a video web site able to compete with Google Inc.’s YouTube.
Nate Anderson wonders if the Big Guys can properly design such a site.
In their own attempts at creating Internet delivery services for their TV shows, the networks have often done a nice job—if you like slick, Flash-using, plugin-downloading sites with tons of splashy graphics. Splashy graphics are great, but users want the sites they frequent to be functional first. Could a consortium of TV networks really bring themselves to design a quick-loading, low-graphics, fast-streaming, light-on-the-ads site that looks like Google or YouTube? It’s tough for marketers to allow, since it can make the brand look less stylish, but some clean and simple design will be needed for such a site to get off the ground.
