Upfront/Newfront Update: YouTube: No Jay Z for the Press, But Here's The News. Plus MiTu - Simon Applebaum

A pair of backtoback events last Wednesday brought the first annual festival of quotNewFrontsquot to a close GoogleYouTube the bigger of the two with more than 2000 people at the Beacon Theater was closed to press the other one of YouTube39s newest attractions not part of the Original Channels venture showcased at Beacon was open for observationMiTuVenue This servicepart content producer part content aggregatorused Calle Ocho the ground floor restaurant and bar inside The Excalibur Hotel on West 81st Street across the street from the American Museum of Natural History Excalibur has a 21 Clublike atmosphere while Calle Ocho has an elegant bright texture The adobecolor main dining room was cleared out to seat the crowd feasting on a variety of desserts before the speechmaking Grade 4 JacksPresentation Straight meatandpotatoes extremely fresh for show given that MiTu launched on YouTube 48 hours earlier Aimed at Latinos the service comes over as a portal mixing of original lifestyle shorts with material pulled from YouTube contributors with devoted Latino followings The stress was on MiTu39s ability to be easy to find grouped into six categoriesfood health beauty family home and pop culture quotall familyfriendly brandfriendly and extremely relevantquot in either English or Spanish emphasized president Beatriz Acevedo quotWe want to develop the next generation of stars and brand advocatesquot she said Acevedo and her senior executives rotated speeches with video clips keeping the pitch to under a halfhour in lively order Grade 4 JacksNews If you didn39t see MiTu39s press release 48 hours earlier you had no idea of the original content on display so you would conclude it was newsworthy If you did you got pretty much what you read and not much more Nevertheless the madeforsite series highlighted such as JC39s 3 Ways and Improv Cocina cooking and Casa Linda home decorating looked solid in either language A new and sure sleeper treat Spanish Word of The Day a fun riff on video language lessons Grade 3 JacksHost Acevedo did fine with her share of the presentation with no lag on the part of her colleagues Grade 35 JacksOverall Grade 4 Jacks Avoided all the pitfalls of some highlyspotlighted Newfronts while bringing a new service to everyone39s attention in an entertaining fashion5 Jacks Excellent4 Jacks Very Good3 Jacks Good2 Jacks Fair1 Jack Poor0 Jacks Worse than badSome final Newfront observationsWhile not allowing press into its Beacon Theater ceremonies last Wednesday night GoogleYouTube did hold a conference call for reporters that afternoon That in itself was a breakthrough Until now YouTube and Google TV have limited their announcements to blog postings passing up every opportunity to do themselves good via widespread press Let39s hope this new quotgo beyond the blogquot mentality is permanentThat call ended up being a newsmaker First YouTube by nature of the deals with Wigs the US Olympic Committee and Tribeca Film Festival is going beyond the 100 channels under an quotOriginalsquot banner Second with more than half of the 100 channels approved last October YouTube will keep introducing channels on a regular basis month after month Third Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt was a surprise participant offering some provocative comments on TV39s future quotWe39re about to see a huge explosion in the use of videothis is the third wave of TV following broadcast and cablequot he noted quotWe don39t see this venture as a replacement of TV We see it as an augmentation That39s a very important pointquotNice CNBC special this past Monday night Stay Tuned on where convergence will take TV and the Internet Media reporter Julia Boorstin covered the bases with choice comments from Barry Diller Bob Iger Jeff Bewkes and other luminaries One quibble when most CNBC primetime specials run an hour and the subject is as important as any other the channel spotlights why only 30 minutes for this oneNext Back to the Upfronts with AampampE NetworksUntil the next time stay well and stay tunedSimon Applebaum is producerhost of Tomorrow Will Be Televised the weekly Internetdistributed radio program covering the TV scene Simon cal be reached at simonapple04yahoocomRead all Simonamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Tomorrow Will Be TelevisedCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Upfront/Newfront Update: YouTube: No Jay Z for the Press, But Here's The News. Plus MiTu - Simon Applebaum

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