TV Stardom on $20 a Day

The vlogs/video podcasts are starting to take off. NY Times writes about RocketBoom.

In case you're wondering, it has occurred to Mr. Baron and Ms. Congdon that they just might be sitting on a gold mine. At a cost of about $20 an episode, they reach an audience that some days is roughly comparable in size to that of, say, CNN's late, unlamented "Crossfire" political debate show. They have no background in business, but Jeff Jarvis, who tracks developments in technology and culture on his blog, BuzzMachine.com (and who has served as a consultant to The New York Times on Web matters), pointed out to them that they might be able to charge $8,000 for an interactive ad at the end of the show, which would bring in about $2 million annually.

The financial opportunity here has occurred to others, too. TiVo, which can now be used to watch Web video on home television sets, just signed a deal to list Rocketboom in the TiVo directory - making it as easy to record as conventional television programs like "60 Minutes" and "Monday Night Football." Giving up no creative control, Ms. Congdon and Mr. Baron will get 50 percent of the revenue from ads sold by TiVo to appear before and after their newscast, and their show will gain access to more than 300,000 TV sets connected to those new TiVo boxes.

It appears vlogs are where blogs were 3 years ago. With the video iPod to watch on the go, and TiVo to watch on the tube, these are going to explode. The advertising model for blogs came from Google's AdSense, to serve up ads. Who will find the way to monetize the vlogs? Actually, I would bet on Google. And once they figure that out, how long until they are determining the ads I watch on all my TV shows?

Via New York Times