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Analysis: Paul Potts, Britney Spears and Pulling Clips Off YouTube

Authored by Jay Baage on September 13, 2007 - 10:09am.
People go to YouTube to find some of the best moments on TV like Paul Potts' amazing audition for “Britain’s Got Talent” and some of the worst like Britney Spears’ perfomance at MTV’s Video Music Awards. In the Ivory Towers of the television networks they are debating whether these user-uploaded clips are great branding or just plain piracy. While Potts’ clip is still up on YouTube after over 30 million views, Viacom has pulled most of the clips from Britney’s VMA performance. So what is the right strategy here?

British ITV is aiming to keep content free on the web, but does not completely rule out a paid-for model in the future. In a recent interview with the newspaper the Guardian, ITV's executive chairman, Michael Grade, cited the popularity of clips of Paul Potts, the opera singer who won the talent show Britain's Got Talent in June:

"We had 30m hits for Paul Potts on YouTube - we should be able to monetize that. How? Through advertising on the free model," he said.

This is what Viacom, MTV’s parent company, has tried to do with its Video Music Awards this year. They shortened the televised show from three hours to two and, instead, promised viewers more show performances and clips via its web site as well as other "remixed" versions of the show.

When word got around about Britney Spears’ embarrassing come-back performance at the VMA Sunday, curious viewers caused a record amount of traffic to MTV's site.

MTV.com drew a total of 4.7 million unique visitors by Monday afternoon, which the net said was the most traffic it had ever received in a day.

In an attempt to hold on and monetize that traffic, Viacom apparently sent take-down notices to YouTube for the clips of the performance that had been uploaded by the sites’ many users and watched by millions. A recent YouTube search resulted in this version of the performance.

So was it a good move by Viacom to make sure the clips of the show were pulled as evidenced by the traffic surge to MTV.com? Short term, maybe. But I would like to see a calculation of exactly how much MTV has made from advertising on its site this week. Then you can weigh that against the long term effects of in effect keeping buzzy moments like this from reaching a potentially huge global audience on YouTube.  

Which brings us into the tricky area of digital rights and clearances. I have been trying to access MTV.com from Europe to see the complete VMU show. It turns out that MTV can’t show any of the performances outside of the US. Hence, by forcing YouTube to take down the VMA clips, Viacom basically just shut a great backdoor to global distribution of its content.

In the end though, perhaps we’re better off watching a star in the making like Paul Potts instead of a star seemingly on her way down like Britney Spears. But from a business strategy perspective I think Viacom should think twice about its decision to pull clips like this off YouTube.

Keeping the clips up on YouTube is an investment in MTV’s diminishing brand equity.

For once MTV has a clip that people want to see, maybe for all the wrong reasons, but still. Reaching a huge potential audience that have moved to YouTube should be in Viacom’s best interest right now and keeping popular clips like this up there is the best way to get the message across to YouTubers: “Hey we still have content that you want to see – come check us out!”

Joakim Baage

Published in DMW Daily, September 13, 2007
tags: Internet | Video | Marketing | iTV | MTV | YouTube | Britney Spears | VMA | Paul Potts |



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