When L.A. media figure Arianna Huffington and her partners launched an online news site seven years ago, it was far from certain her Huffington Post would conquer the blogosphere.
But its mixture of hard news, opinion and grabby headlines brought tens of millions of visitors – and a $315 million acquisition last year by AOL Inc.
Now, AOL and its Huffington Post Media Group is making its next big bet – this time to capitalize on the popularity of online video. HuffPost Live, an online news talk site that blends traditional talking heads with a web sensibility, launched last month out of studios in Beverly Hills and New York.
Roy Sekoff, president of the bicoastal venture, said the site will distinguish itself by keeping with the Huffington Post theme of allowing visitors to chime in with no formal expertise.
“This is the era we’re in. People want to participate,” Sekoff said. “They’re tired of the one-way conversation.”
Some notable names, such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, already have made appearances, but the majority of talk – on topics ranging from women’s opportunities in college sports to living paycheck to paycheck – has been done by amateurs who use their personal webcams to debate one another as well as a host who moderates.
The site is live 12 hours a day, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. PST, allowing guests and viewers to comment on the day’s hot topics. The effort comes as other media outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Politico also are increasing their Internet video output.
Andre Sequin, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in New York, said there is a sizable opportunity for AOL since advertisers are looking to buy more ads on quality online video, but the site will have to keep viewers tuned in.
“There is quite a challenge in maintaining a 12-hour video service throughout the day that will be relevant at all times and maintain a consumer’s interest,” he said. “If they can do that, I can see it being profitable.”
Dialing-up deal
HuffPost Live is in many ways a byproduct of last February’s acquisition of Huffington Post by AOL of New York. The deal was a financial windfall for the liberal news site, which had launched with just a $1million investment.
For AOL, the mostly cash deal was all about taking a bigger stake in the online content business to increase its advertising revenue. It was AOL’s largest acquisition in years and the clearest indication as to how the beleaguered company would make the transition from an Internet service provider in the dial-up modem days to a full-fledged online media business.
Just after the deal, Sekoff, who was a founding editor at the Huffington Post, sat down with Huffington and AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong to pitch the idea of a live video site.
“We always wanted to do more original video,” Sekoff said. “The merger with AOL allowed us to dream bigger dreams.”
They decided on a layout for the site that emphasized interactivity, and decided to launch with 12 hours of daily programming, four hours of which are produced in the Beverly Hills studio.
Features include a video player, a Twitterlike feed displaying comments from viewers and a banner on top that allows users to visit pages for upcoming segments. Visitors can either read preposted articles on the subject matter or click a button to be screened by producers if they want to appear on camera.
In the studio, a handful of hosts rotate between on-air duty and preparing for upcoming bits, for example, screening potential guests from the public. After a segment ends, editors package the footage for future use, such as posting them on pages next to Huffington Post stories.
By shooting in existing AOL studios and relying on multitasking on-air hosts, the plan is to operate lean with few producers. And rather than pay to send reporters out in the field, the shows discuss already reported events, many of them from the Huffington Post. About 35 of HuffPost Live’s 100 employees are in Beverly Hills; the majority of the staff is in New York.
The site’s lifeblood will undoubtedly be news events that get people talking and tweeting.
Just one opportunity presented itself last week when Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, who is running for a Senate seat, made comments on a local TV station about how a woman’s body can shut down a pregnancy if she is the victim of a “legitimate rape.” Shortly after, the Huffington Post homepage displayed a large picture of a coat hanger on a white background to raise the question of whether removing a woman’s right to choose could lead to more back-alley abortions. Meanwhile, over at HuffPost Live, Akin’s comments were examined in full, as was the main site’s use of the coat hanger on its homepage.
In one of the comments, Wendy Widom, a Chicago mother, told Sekoff, who was participating via webcam, that the homepage was over the top and was just trying to attract women visitors.
“I just see it as more bombardment by the media in general to get my attention,” she said.
Advertiser driven
Judy Muller, a TV correspondent and associate professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, said events like Akin’s comments might bring in a spike of visitors, but there are inevitably lulls between hot-topic issues.
“I can’t imagine tuning in to this all day long. It will depend on the topic,” Muller said. “Let’s say there’s an uprising in Iran – it’s just one more place to go. The more voices the better.”
AOL is hoping the new video content will continue its recent upswing in ad revenue, which was up 6 percent in the second quarter to $338 million. Much of the increase was fueled by ads sold for the company’s videos, which are hosted on various AOL sites; the Huffington Post has seen slower growth.
So far ads for the HuffPost Live stream have been sold to Verizon Communications Inc. and General Motors Co.’s Cadillac luxury car brand, both of which have their logos affixed to the bottom of a constantly running chat feed. Other ads are imbedded into the beginning of archived clips made of the site’s segments, similar to many YouTube clips.
Sekoff said advertisers can easily grasp the idea of buying ads for the packaged clips, while sponsoring the live broadcast is a larger leap of faith.
But as the quality of live streaming improves and becomes more professional, Drew Baldwin, a co-founder of L.A. streaming video company Tubefilter, said he thinks advertisers will increasingly come around to live online video sponsorships.
“Even when you have talking-head content, the live (part) just makes it more urgent,” he said. “Everything about the Internet is about choice. (Live) prioritizes you.”
