Announcing the launch of its high definition (HD) podcasts service yesterday the washingtonpost.com's multimedia managing editor said that to remain relevant as a news source the Post had to evolve past simple web video, adding that demand for high quality video via the web was now surpassing supply.His words will be balm to the ear of business and consumer publisher VNU which has banked on video becoming a significant element of its editorial output and invested upwards of £125,000 on a suite of four studios, high definition cameras and editing equipment.
Editorial production for the publisher's host of tiles is developing slowly, but is it just a lot of money just on a whim? What's the business case for investing in videos?
Besides from producing news editorial for VNU titles - including Accountancy Age, Computing.co.uk and the consumer title Computeractive.co.uk - the studio is used to host online seminars for B2B audience that are either sponsored or have interested parties pay to log in or download the session.
"Journalistically it offers some real benefits. From a commercial perspective it also gives rise to some wonderful sponsorship opportunities and some inline advertisement opportunities," said Duncan Tickell, publishing director of VNU's personal technology group.
"We are building a content library and while we build that content library the fact that we have partnership deals with alterative content suppliers allows us to deliver a rich user experience across our websites.
"If you look at Computer Active not only is there Computer Active TV channel which contains all our video reviews, but there is a photography channel and a Bloomberg news channel.
"There are different channels for users who wish to view other content, and once again we can sell adverting in those channels on our sites."
Those extra channels have come in for criticism on other publisher's sites, where the relevance of some of the extra content supplied through the Roo player (as also used by Times TV, the Sun and the Mirror) has been called into question.
However Mr Tickell dismissed the idea that it was just padding while the content being created by VNU caught up. he said that when the publisher's library of home grown content had grown larger third party content could be retained to sell advertising against.
He added that there was also potential to distribute original content to third party sites.
"When we have got to a volume of programming that makes it worthwhile we will start to do that. Clearly there are bigger opportunities to do that with some portfolios than others," he said.
"Consumer clearly has a content aggregation opportunity and if we aggregate our content, in time, we will receive a slide of the profit from adverting made from that content."
But will the video always be viewed on a VNU or partner site, could any content be let go virally?
“I don't see why that in some point in the future we can't offer people the opportunity to download it to their websites or to paste it on to Youtube," said Bryan Glick, editor of VNU's computing.co.uk.
"The ethos really is not to be afraid to try things and if things don't work then not to be afraid to say OK lets switch that off and try something else."
Journalists were being encouraged, Glick added, to develop editorial ideas in conjunction with the studio production team.
Computing.co.uk, he said, was developing weekly programming that would include interviews with industry figures, video case studies, and single issue or technology focuses.
"When we were doing the pilots of computing TV we started off on the basis of thinking that what we wanted to do was a news-type show with a presenter behind a desk.
"We haven't currently got a source of external video so it ended up for us being a presenter in front of the camera reading the news.
"Once we did a few of those we realised quite quickly that there is no point in filming something just for the sake of filming it.
"I hope that in a year or twos time we're in a position where we can run pretty regular scheduled video program.
"I would like to be able to come out every month in the same way that you come out with a forward features list and have a schedule of TV interviews, case studies, news programs, analysis, discussion and develop program formats that people are familiar with.
"I want to get to the stage where they know that 10am on a Thursday the latest issue of computing TV program is live."
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