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CNET Networks UK has today launched an online portal to house its original video content. CNETTV.co.uk

will be home to all the video content produced across the publisher's current vertical brands as well as launching a range of new web TV services.

The online-only publisher currently carries video on its technology, business and gaming sites.

This content will be joined on the portal by new shows, which include: Encoded, a weekly digital music news and reviews show; Reel Report, a contemporary film magazine show; Start/Select to look at video games and automotive technology show, Car Tech.

The launch, claimed CNET, is to take advantage of the shift in media consumption that has led to increasingly high numbers of internet users in the UK watching video online.

From today, 65 episodes of CNET's 12 online only TV shows will be available, to be augmented each week by 60-70 minutes of new original video content. Users can then build play lists of shows and receive email alerts when new episodes are released.

"We see ourselves as rivalling mainstream TV in terms of production quality," Geoff Inns, CNET's business development director, told Journalism.co.uk.

"It's not just the quality of the image in terms of bandwidth; it's attention to script, sound, editing and the filming environment, all those factors.

"But we are producing content that doesn't duplicate what they are doing. It's content where there is a gap... we're not competing with what they do, we're complementing it."

Earlier in the year, CNET moved into a new London HQ with a purpose-built, high-definition video studio, hiring additional staff dedicated to producing video content.

The launch of the new portal and the development of new online TV strands is the result of its focus on this emerging area of the market.

However, unlike many of its competitors, CNET will not be carrying aggregated content through a partnership with a video player technology provider.

"Joost may have hundreds of thousands of users globally... and it has started commissioning original content, [but] what it does mainly is aggregate stuff that has already been seen or made available for broadcast or that you can rent from your video shop.

"It's not really adding too much that is new, it's just putting it into one place. What we are doing is original content, all new stuff."

(Watch the trailer for its new video service over on the Journalism.co.uk editors blog .)

The second phase of development for the video portal, Inns added, will aim to build greater interactivity and community features.

CNET has engaged Hewlett Packard as the launch sponsor for the first two months of its existence.

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Written by

Laura Oliver
Laura Oliver
Laura Oliver is a freelance journalist, a contributor to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, co-founder of The Society of Freelance Journalists and the former editor of Journalism.co.uk (prior to it becoming JournalismUK)

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