CBS Learns The Lesson Quickly: Don't Build Your Own Destination; Syndicate Your Video Content

from the go-forth-and-multiply dept

Whenever we talk about the ridiculousness of big media companies demanding all their content be stripped from YouTube, people show up in the comments saying that they need to do this in order to build their own destination site for video. That doesn't make sense. In a world where attention may be the scarcest resource of them all, you should want your content spread as widely as possible. It appears that CBS is the first of the major networks to get this. While the company had tried to build its own video destination site for its content, it's now admitting that it should have been called CBS.com/nobodycomeshere. CBS is learning that people don't want to have to hunt down your silo for content and deal with your redesign and usability issues. They want the content wherever its easiest to get it -- and CBS has decided to comply. Rather than focusing on building out its own destination site, the network is going to push to get its content syndicated everywhere possible. This really isn't that surprising, given that CBS was one of the few networks to recognize that YouTube actually increased viewership of its TV shows. However, it is a bit amusing to think that CBS was just recently split off from Viacom, who has gone in the exact opposite direction.