The Huffington Post has found a partial home on cable television for its eight-month-old Internet channel, HuffPost Live, courtesy of Mark Cuban.
The company announced Sunday night that Mr. Cuban’s cable channel AXS TV, previously known as HDNet, would soon carry HuffPost Live’s programming for six hours a day. AXS and The Huffington Post will try to replicate some of the interactivity of the Internet channel by showing online comments on the right side of the television screen, and later by releasing an app that will encourage AXS viewers to comment on what they are watching.
The unorthodox deal may help expose HuffPost Live to more people. But it also underscores how hard it is for Internet video start-ups to find a place on cable systems, which are controlled by a handful of big companies that are reluctant to add channels.
Executives at The Huffington Post have been trying for months to have their channel picked up by cable and satellite operators, with nothing to show for it yet. Other backers of Internet channels have received lukewarm receptions at best. The most successful such channel, Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, has been picked up by Dish Network and four small cable companies and has been encouraging fans to put pressure on other operators.
In an interview, Roy Sekoff, the president and co-creator of HuffPost Live, did not rule out full-blown cable distribution in the future. He said AXS provided “a way to get on now,” emphasizing “now.”
The telecast will start on May 13. It will be shown weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time (the first half of HuffPost Live’s daily output), replacing the random assortment of repeats that AXS currently schedules during the day. Mr. Sekoff said The Huffington Post was not paying for the distribution, and AXS is not paying for the programming; the arrangement is mutually beneficial, he suggested, something that Mr. Cuban affirmed in a separate interview.
“It’s an opportunity for both of us to grow our audiences during the day,” he said.
AXS has existed since last July, when Mr. Cuban teamed up with Ryan Seacrest, the talent agency Creative Artists Agency and the events company Anschutz Entertainment Group to reformat HDNet, which Mr. Cuban helped to found in 2001. In February another company, the CBS Corporation, took an equity stake in AXS and said it would provide programming and promotional opportunities.
AXS chooses not to be rated by the Nielsen Company, a reflection of the fact that it reaches a relatively small number of viewers. It is available in about 41 million of the 100 million American households that pay for television.
AXS has sought to be known for live programming, especially live concerts. HuffPost Live, on the other hand, is a Web-influenced talk show about politics, current affairs and pop culture. “But it’s still real-time and I think that’s the more important element,” Mr. Cuban said.
The deal was a byproduct of Mr. Cuban’s friendship with Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of The Huffington Post’s parent company, AOL. The two companies may split the advertising revenue that comes from the AXS version of the programming. (One possibility is interstitial ads during the breaks between segments.) HuffPost Live’s content will not change significantly, but the producers might tap into AXS’s contacts and promote AXS’s concerts.
On HuffPost Live, the hosts (there are nine currently) take turns moderating conversations, some upward of half an hour long, with guests appearing in person and via webcams. Viewers can watch the live stream, but the vast majority of views come later, when clips of the conversations are attached to articles on AOL and Huffington Post Web pages. Mr. Sekoff said there were 51 million live and recorded streams in March.
HuffPost Live loses money, but it does bring in some revenue through the ads that precede the clips. Mr. Sekoff said he wanted to pursue more advertiser integrations in the future. One early example is a video series called “Tech Game Changers,” sponsored by Verizon.
He said he was thrilled to have access to big-screen TVs through AXS, complementing the existing streams for phones and computers. “We’re not exactly sure what the future’s going to look like, but we think it’s going to look something like this,” he said.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/business/media/deal-puts-huffington-post-channel-on-cable-tv.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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