The next gen cable network: new Youtube-funded channels begin launching

Glad to see our partner, ClevverTV get a nice mention in this WSJ story today. The Youtube channel strategy with a rumored $100MM dedicated to producing new, high-quality content on Youtube is starting to roll out - excited to see how the audience will react to these channels over the next few months and whether they will actually reduce TV consumption in favor of youtube.

By Amir Efrati

With YouTube’s redesign last week, the stage was set for the Google site’s big bet on professionally-produced video “channels.” Now here come the channels.

On Tuesday, KinCommunity, a women’s-oriented lifestyle channel run by a company called Deca, went live with videos on food, fashion, parenting and personal stories. With its mission to celebrate the “simple artistry of everyday life,” KinCommunity features short clips including advice for moms on how to dress after having kids, a mini-documentary about a mother who uproots her American family and moves to Tuscany, and a video that shows people how to make coconut chocolate macaroons.

“We want to be the big online brand for women over 25,” says Deca CEO Michael Wayne, who started the company in 2007 and previously launched sites including Momversation.com, HerSay.com, and ParentsAsk.com.

By the middle next year, more than 100 channels featuring everything from sports to drama to new Disney programming will appear on YouTube, the world’s most popular video site, which hopes to become a premium video network that also graces the world’s living-room screens.

Last month we introduced you to some of the channel creators. Since then two other channels have launched, both with Spanish-language videos: Maker Studios’ Tutele, which includes a telenovela called “Melodia de Amor,” or “Melody of Love,” and ClevverTeVe by Clevver Media, which features a round-up of entertainment news. Another channel for women and moms will debut on Wednesday, a YouTube spokeswoman said.

KinCommunity will produce three new videos a day. “We want to give women a moment where they can get away and experience something beautiful and take two minutes to themselves,” Deca’s Wayne said. Unlike other new YouTube channels that will feature or be tied to well-known personalities such as Brooke Burke, Madonna and Jay-Z, KinCommunity won’t have any brand name celebrities so that it can focus on “being authentic, real and accessible,” Wayne said. On-camera talent will include women who write popular blogs or Deca’s own vice president of programming, Beth Le Manach, and its creative director, Eileen Levinson.

He added that Deca, which is “spending more on creating this content” than prior online videos, has hired a social media manager to help promote its KinCommunity content on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere on the Web.

YouTube paid out large cash advances to the creators of the new channels. The creators will split advertising revenue with YouTube after the company recoups its advances.

Above, a video from KinCommunity, a new women’s-oriented lifestyle channel on YouTube.

via blogs.wsj.com

Posted via email from digbits's posterous