In an attempt to salvage what little network savvy Viacom has shown (see Viacom destroys a $1B business opportunity) they’ve done a deal with Joost. An interesting play to be sure, though Joost is far from a sure thing. I still maintain that Viacom would have been dollars and kilometers ahead simply doing a deal with GooTube, and then doing one with Joost and perhaps Apple. This is starting to remind me of the bad old days of modems where you had to get manufacturer X’s modem to be able to talk to the same modem on the other end.

The modem stuff was a pain for years and couldn’t stand-up in the long term. This is a similar case, in the end, the consumer will win and the content will be freely available period. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. The faster content creators realize they are being paid for what they will create going forward and content controllers realize that volume begets value, the better off it will be for content creators and the shareholders of content controllers.


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