Yahoo, who once produced original web video content only to scrap later, has now again decided to produce web videos.
On Monday, the Web portal will announce the latest in a series of niche Web shows. The short segments about celebrity mothers, titled “Spotlight to Nightlight,” are a stark departure from the company’s initial forays into TV-style production for the Internet. This time, Yahoo’s executives say they have found a sustainable model for making original video online, in part by explicitly not competing with television.
During the middle of the decade, the technology company dreamed up plans for elaborate talk shows, sitcoms and other TV-type shows. But the expensive attempts to transport TV entertainment to the Internet “were all disasters,” said Trip Chowdhry, a senior analyst for Global Equities Research. The attempted Hollywood makeover — which at one point even included plans for an interactive hidden-camera reality show — was scrapped in 2006.
Since then, Yahoo has acted as a distributor for audio, video and photographs from other media companies. And it has continued to produce its own Web shows, albeit quietly, without any of the fanfare that accompanied its earlier ambitions.