YouTube. The Third Wave and especially, an unmissable 1m+ viral video from The Harvard Baseball Team 2012 just posted.

Firstly, wait... it gets going. Secondly, turn up the sound. And thirdly make it full screen (if you can)..........Then sit back.

This is The 2012 Harvard Baseball Team. On a Bus. Doing Call me Maybe. It was posted 2 days ago, it has over 1.1m views. Magic. Get me on The Harvard Baseball Team! (Thanks to Connor Hulse for filming).

Online video delivering engaging content and reaching huge audiences really quickly.

So if you read this blog regularly, you'll know how big a fan I am of the likes of YouTube, Streamabout Live Streaming, Netflix and how I wonder at the future of traditional broadcasting. Not in a nasty way, because I grew up with it intimately through advertising. But because it's a magnificent opportunity for brands and programme makers.


I like to write my own stuff because it's a view, an opinion, a blog.
And when I mention video or live streaming, people say well, he would wouldn't he (in the famous words of Mandy Rice Davies). Then they yawn.


But sometimes someone else makes the point better and maybe an objective eye is good. Like, don't just take my word for it....

So I came across a piece in The New York Times (pretty reliable source eh?) which actually makes the point better. So I'm going to quote from it (in italics) because I think it's making a really strong issue about the new TV.

It starts, "Tribeca Enterprises, the parent of the Tribeca Film Festival, is teaming up with Maker Studios to create a channel on YouTube.com, named the Picture Show, that is to go live later this year. The channel on YouTube, which is part of Google, will be a home for online series and short films, rather than the feature-length movies that are released by Tribeca Film in theaters and on the video-on-demand channels on cable systems".

So here's a channel that's professional and going to show short films and online series. An online production company, an online TV station. But they're not alone.

"The Picture Show was among several channels that were announced by executives of YouTube and Google at a presentation in New York on Wednesday; others include Team USA, a channel for the United States Olympic Committee, and Wigs, a channel aimed at women. The intent is for YouTube to offer more than 100 online original shows on some of the initial channels are being sponsored by advertisers like AT&T, General Motors, Toyota and Unilever."

Supported by advertisers like Unilever? 

Wow, brands developing their own content like the sponsored programmes of days gone by. It's a big market though - Nielsen reports US TV Adspend at 72 billion usd. Yep, billion. 

One Agency in New York alone, does more business than the whole of the Republic of Ireland.

"We’re about to see another large explosion in the use of video,” said Eric E. Schmidt, executive chairman of Google.“This is probably a third wave,” he added, following the first, broadcast TV to cable, and the second, cable to the Internet."

And in case you still don't get it,

"Some new YouTube channels are already drawing more than a million viewers a week".

Huge audiences, huge brands getting involved with huge programme makers broadcasting to a global audience. Video and Live Streaming is where it's at.

I already noted Amazon's venture into this space through Amazon Studios, before but it gets a mention here too because already (already) it's expanding.

"And Amazon.com announced on Wednesday that its Amazon Studios unit wanted to expand content development efforts for Amazon Instant Video, a digital video streaming service, to include children's and comedy series in addition to its previously announced plans for movies."

It's hard to think of a greater opportunity ever existing (nevermind in a depressed market) for programme makers and broadcasters. They just need to start to think digital.

Brands are taking note and spending money with online channels.

Interested?