At New York’s OMMA East conference, the president of CBS Digital Media discussed blogs, streams, and news in his keynote.
When Larry Kramer delivered his keynote at OMMA East on Tuesday, he noted that the Webcast of UPN’s “Everybody Hates Chris” was a test, MediaPost reports. UPN and CBS parent Viacom wants to see the traffic it receives, and how much gets driven back to the Viacom web site.
From there, the company can determine how it might develop a rate card for future webcasts. Viacom is not charging advertisers when their on-air ad also appears online, but that could and probably will change.
CBS has been making content available online, like interviews that would normally comprise bonus content on a DVD. A new show called “Ghost Whisperer” has a blog from co-exec producer and “self-proclaimed psychic” James Van Praagh online.
More webcasts could happen in the future; a possibility of ad-supported or ad-free with payment methods could be in play. The biggest online programming initiative will come from CBS News, as the network has planned to switch to a web-first format instead of making cable or broadcast the primary way to get its news content.
The spread of broadband adoption has given sites like CBS News and others the motivation to make more video content available. Sites like MSNBC and CNN have made news video available online, in an effort to draw more traffic to them. But neither have made the Web the first point of presence ahead of a broadcast method.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
