Special Interest Comes To Life On Web

As Web sites try to offer new content for a variety of consumers, special-interest programming has found a new outlet beyond the traditional channels of home video and television.

An armful of companies, including the Internet Movie Channel, LearnFree.com, MPI Networks, RocketVox.com, ShowMeTV, and VastVideo, have over the past year developed plans to digitize their content and deliver it to targeted Web audiences. The business models vary but the premise is basically the same: Consumers are hungry to find information about a specific topic, and special-interest programmers can provide the answer.

"There are two types of programs—entertainment and special interest," says Will Leuden, CEO of ShowMeTV, which specializes in the how-to market. "When you think of the number of people who come to the Internet for information to learn how to do something, it is surprising that special-interest is one of the last categories to appear."

For producers of specialty programs, many of which have had limited retail exposure, the surge of interest from Internet companies facilitates an opportunity to broaden their audience, make some upfront cash via licensing deals, and share in revenue down the line. Additionally, in many cases Internet companies not only provide a new window for the content but offer a direct retail channel for the product as well.

RocketVox.com, the brainchild of a couple of RealNetworks alumni, is following a model of licensing existing video, digitizing it, breaking it down into cyber-friendly, categorized clips, then relicensing it—typically on a per-clip basis—to other Internet sites.

"We are providing the programming that will allow other sites to program their own channels," says RocketVox.com founder and CEO Kelly Smith. "We want to help [Internet service providers] and broadband companies become the [cable TV provider] of the Internet."

Seattle-based RocketVox.com is launching with five initial content categories—travel, home improvement, home and garden, cooking, and health—that it has licensed from producers whose work appears on such outlets as the Discovery Channel, Arts & Entertainment, and public television.

RocketVox.com offers producers several ways to profit. "Not surprisingly, most of these producers want cash upfront," says Smith. "But that's OK with us. Without their products, we wouldn't be in business." The company isn't making the content available for the video market but does not rule out that possibility for the future.

"In cases where we have finished goods, we would partner with a company that already has the infrastructure to distribute special-interest finished goods," Smith says.

To ensure its content does not drown in the sea of Internet information, RocketVox.com is honing in on programs and people with name recognition in their given field. "Our research has shown that, although a production shot for TV might cost [a lot more than pure video], customers want the brands and the names they recognize," Smith says. RocketVox.com will incorporate search engine functionality in mid-November.

RocketVox.com is fueled by technology from RealNetworks, which is also its first major customer. RocketVox.com has an exclusive deal to provide all the special-interest programming for RealNetworks' recently launched GoldPass monthly content subscription program. "We are a strong proponent of the paid-subscription model," Smith says. "We want to help other companies run their own kind of GoldPass programs."

On the other end of the spectrum is Redwood City, Calif.-based ShowMeTV, which launches in beta at the end of this month as a catalyst for homegrown experts to create and post original how-to segments. ShowMeTV will then provide a localized context for the content and license it to other Web sites, portals, and mobile devices.

"Our philosophy is that every neighborhood has three experts," says Leuden. "These people exist all over the world, and they've been developing expertise they want to share with others. Until now there has been no way for consumers to get to them and get that knowledge. Now with a little help from us and a now inexpensive camcorder, they can reach millions of people."

While it gets its feet wet, the site is licensing pre-existing programs. But its intent is to provide original programming produced for and marketed solely in the ShowMeTV universe. To help entice experts to jump onboard, the company will offer free service on its site to create a 12-part laymen's guide to creating a digital how-to program.

Beyond acquiring unique content, ShowMeTV is taking the retail angle a step further than some of its competitors. Its commerce model envisages not only selling related longform videos but providing end users with the opportunity to buy a smorgasbord of related merchandise. A clip on tennis, for example, could yield links to purchase rackets, balls, tennis camp enrollments, etc.

At present the company will link with affiliated distributors on the back end, although Leuden says he eventually would like to bring distribution in-house. Program producers share in all retail-generated revenue either way.

While many of the new breed of special-interest Web companies aim to seamlessly deliver their wares, some sites are destinations unto themselves. LearnFree.com, a 2-year-old company based in Austin, Texas, creates what it has tagged VidBooks, which combine text, still photos, and streaming video into content that falls under one of 35 instructional channels. Existing special-interest videos serve as the hub of each edition.

"In the near term and maybe forever, people on the Web are going to appreciate a multimedia experience rather than a purely text or purely video experience," says LearnFree.com president Gene Albert. "Part of it has to do with the technology, but unlike when you are watching television and you have a [linear] experience, when you are on the Web people are used to clicking around and interacting."

It is users' ability to jump around and get specific questions answered that Albert believes makes the Internet—and VidBooks—the ideal medium for special-interest content. The lack of ability to "thumb through" a tape on a store shelf is what has made special-interest VHS an "abysmal failure" compared with instructional books, he notes. "If you shrink-wrapped instructional books, imagine how sales would go down."

Albert says users typically spend about 12 minutes on each VidBook, which they can access on the site free of charge using either the Real Player or Microsoft Windows Media Player. The company generates revenue from advertising, a portion of which it passes on to producers.

LearnFree.com also serves as a retailer/distributor for about half of the longform titles on which its VidBooks are based. It also farms out purchases of the other 50% of its titles to third parties such as Amazon.com, according to Albert. "Ideally we would like to carry inventory on all of them. It just depends on the deal," he says.

"A lot of people are buying the longforms," Albert says, "They are more likely to buy a video if they can sample it, and VidBooks are the way to do that. What we do is finally give special-interest video its day in the sun."