Companies Like BuzzFeed, Vice Media, and Huffington Post Shift Attention to TV

At the Wall Street Journal, "New-Media Companies Shift Attention to TV":

Companies like BuzzFeed, Vice Media and Huffington Post are known as “new-media” specialists—makers of lists, articles and videos designed to go viral online and lure young audiences.

Now, they’re venturing aggressively into a decidedly old-media stronghold: television.

There are a variety of potential models, most of which involve some sort of tie-up with traditional media companies: BuzzFeed says it may create TV shows with Comcast Corp.’s Universal Studios. Vice Media is in talks to take control of a cable channel from A+E Networks.

Complex, a network of websites focused on fashion, music and pop culture, says it may funnel video content into Hearst Corp.’s television properties after receiving an investment from the company. And the Daily Mail is working to develop a syndicated program with daytime TV king Dr. Phil that is set to air next fall.

On one level, it’s a jarring and seemingly illogical shift for companies that have prided themselves on being the opposite of traditional. The TV business is in turmoil, as networks fret over young audiences lost to cord-cutting and the fragmentation of viewing from having so much original content on so many cable channels.

The new-media outlets appear to have been a beneficiary of this: many young viewers have fled in their direction, industry executives say. Why, then, would they want to launch into the TV business?

For one thing, TV offers new—and more predictable—revenue streams for digital-media upstarts that until now have been largely dependent on advertising. The owner of a TV show gets the right to license it in many ways, to TV networks, mobile-phone companies and international media players.

“Even having a little exposure to those platforms can be pretty lucrative for us,” said Jonah Peretti, founder and chief executive of New York-based BuzzFeed, which has a staff of 230 in Los Angeles creating around 75 video segments a week and is working on developing content for television. “The economics of traditional platforms are still so much richer,” he said.

Trying to break into television has become the next logical step for many sites that have watched valuations climb to eye-popping levels in their investment rounds and now have to deliver on those expectations.

Despite its problems, TV is still a bigger business than online advertising: TV ad spending is forecast to be $70 billion this year, compared with $7.8 billion for online video, according to eMarketer, a research firm...

Pretty interesting.

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