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NBC’s News Unit Teams With Video Clip Start-Up

Posted by Unknown on Sunday, January 12, 2014

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Media & Advertising |NBC’s News Unit Teams With Video Clip Start-Up



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Broadcasting executives realize that viewers increasingly get their news by glancing on their smartphones instead of spending a half-hour in front of the television.


Reacting to that shift, NBC’s news division has invested in a company that will help it produce short videos as brief as six seconds.


NBCUniversal News Group, a unit of Comcast, will announce on Monday a partnership with Now This News, a start-up that creates short-form news segments tailored for distribution over social media sites like Vine, Instagram and Snapchat. The videos are also stored on Now This News’s mobile apps for viewers to watch throughout the day.


Now This News is backed by Kenneth Lerer and his investment firm Lerer Ventures. Mr. Lerer co-founded The Huffington Post and now serves as chairman of BuzzFeed.


NBC’s deal with Now This News comes as companies across the media landscape are aggressively expanding their web and mobile video operations. Internet companies like AOL and Yahoo and major newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and others are also heavily investing in this growing business.


It is unclear how much money NBC invested in Now This News, but the transaction will give it a roughly 10 percent stake, as well as a toehold in a new news format. The start-up’s journalists will have access to a couple of NBC producers and the network’s extensive archival footage. In return, NBC has the right to use any of the company’s videos on its various networks and shows.


“It allows them to experiment in this new medium without putting their legacy brand at risk,” Mr. Lerer said.


NBC’s investment is the latest in a series of deals the company has made in an effort to keep pace with the vast changes in how people consume news.


This month it announced a partnership with ReCode, the technology website formerly called AllThingsD started by Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher. The company also last year acquired Stringwire, a start-up that recruits video contributors around the globe to upload video as news breaks.


Patricia Fili-Krushel, chairwoman of the NBC Universal News Group, said the investments were a change in philosophy.


“Rather than just get more eyeballs to our television program or our website, we want to be wherever the users are whether it is Instagram or Twitter,” she said. “We can’t be as precious about having it all within our house and our platform.”


Now This News started in 2012 and is based in the same offices in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood where The Huffington Post began. In its brief existence, Mr. Lerer said, the company has already changed its mission from focusing on short videos to extremely short videos.


“We are not doing long form,” Mr. Lerer said, “and by long form I mean anything over two minutes.”


He added: “We are serious about doing six-, 10- and 15-second serious news segments.”


Although many of its 30 employees come from established news outlets including ABC, NBC and The Washington Post, Now This News recently named as its president Sean Mills, formerly of the satire site The Onion. Mr. Lerer said he hired Mr. Mills because he wanted a nontraditional perspective on how news can be delivered.


The company is producing about 50 segments a day on everything from breaking news like Gov. Chris Christie’s news conference on the George Washington Bridge scandal in New Jersey to a Golden Globes preview. Some are straight compilations of clips while others are narrated by young anchors in a chatty tone.


Mr. Mills said Now This News’s edge was its ability to produce videos in nearly real time. While acknowledging that 15 seconds allowed for limited reporting on news, he said that the company expected viewers to have a base of knowledge and that their videos could “add layers of meaning and context” to a story.


The Now This News site features a 30-second reel of what it calls “Chris Christie’s Least Presidential Moments.” A 15-second clip summarizes the life of Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel who died on Saturday.


Although the company does not have the capacity to link viewers to a longer story or video, Mr. Lerer said that would come soon and the partnership with NBC would facilitate that evolution.


Now This News will also distribute short videos from advertisers, something it likens to the branded contents that now appear on some news sites. A user of the company’s app, for example, might see a video advertisement from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream interspersed with news videos.


Mr. Lerer says that Now This News’s lean cost structure makes the company’s video product a compelling business proposition.


“I’ve built a beautiful state-of-the art studio for $150,000,” Mr. Lerer said. With technological innovation, he said, “it costs us hundreds to make a video it costs others thousands to make because we are not saddled with a legacy structure.”








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