Comcast is the largest cable TV company in the United States with over 21 million subscribers. But the company takes its competition very seriously, so much so that a deal is in the works for YouTube and Revver videos to be available through Comcast’s video-on-demand service. Comcast hopes to organize YouTube videos into “video-on-demand genres” while sponsoring contests for best video in each genre.
But another option Comcast is exploring is developing its own user-generated online video service. Either way, Comcast is expected to announce its plans as early as the end of next month, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Comcast is also the largest provider of high-speed Internet connections in the U.S. and will be adding more user-generated content to its main portal: Comcast.net. The site already has approximately four million videos viewed a day, though mostly music videos and movie trailers. And that’s still a far cry from YouTube’s 100 million per day.
This latest move by Comcast is being designed by the company’s “interactive media” division, which was formed in December 2005 as a means to take advantage of the changing TV environment. The division is also working on a web-based TV guide that will better organize TV and video-on-demand offerings.
The main question here: Will YouTubers (that is, avid YouTube fans) watch these same 100 million videos on TV? Or is there something special about watching the videos on a computer? Well, for one, leaving comments about the videos won’t work in a cable-TV based environment (at least, not as it is presently constituted). But perhaps the videos themselves are what is most important. At least, that’s what Comcast hopes…
