Techcrunch had a brief, interesting article recently about rumors concerning YouTube, Metacafe, and a number of the major television networks. It seems that the networks saw what YouTube was doing and wanted a piece of it; they were even working on building their own online video service joint venture months before Google acquired YouTube. The technology would have been very simple, since it's Flash-based; it's the legal kicker that would have really added the spice.
The plan was that the networks would license their online rights to content to this YouTube competitor. So anyone who visits that site would be able to watch full TV episodes online, legally. At the same time the site is launched, the networks would launch a massive lawsuit against YouTube, forcing it to pull any content that violates the networks' copyrights. That would leave the new joint venture by the networks as the only place one could go online to watch TV.
It may sound like a truly nefarious scheme, but it certainly would have been legal. Why hasn't it happened? Well, apparently, trying to get the networks to agree on anything is rather like herding cats. Techcrunch claims that Viacom and Disney have dropped out of the discussions entirely. As for the ones that are still involved, there was some disagreement as to how revenues from advertising would be split among them. And then there's Google, which has dangled serious amounts of money in front of the networks if they will let YouTube keep their content.
So will this "YouTube killer" ever launch? Techcrunch quoted "insiders" as giving the deal a 50-50 chance, and said that Metacafe is the most likely acquisition target for getting it started. But these moves by television networks (FOX, NBC, and CBS were said to be continuing discussions) highlight the one area that Google hasn't gone into yet: television. YouTube is its first real step in that direction.
MediaPost's Cory Treffiletti recently wrote an article that pointed out television as the one area that is "conspicuously absent in Google's arsenal" and saw some kind of entry in television advertising as the "logical next step in the ascension of the world's largest single media company." The networks probably realize this, and seem to be running scared. Look for this TV theme to become more dominant in the months ahead - unavoidably so by mid-2007, but that's just a guess on my part.
Search Engine News 
