OPEN

The Financial Times carries news (subs-only access) this morning of MTV’s launch of the one the biggest online video-on -demand (VoD) offers by a major channel yet.

Hot on the heels of the Fox announcement last week and the BBC pushing ahead with its IMP (interactive media player) trials, the announcement is another impressive step forward by MTV, which is determined to stay at the front of the new media tide of innovation.

In the article, by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Angel Gambino, vice-president of digital media for MTV Networks UK described what she anticipated would be new usage patterns by online viewers: 

Ms Gambino said research on the US and Latin American versions had
shown people typically watched for 20 minutes at a time, but would
"snack" on four to five separate items in that time.

The UK service will offer news, music, film clips and established MTV programmes such as Pimp My Ride reformatted
into segments of between two and eight minutes. For the first time, it
will allow viewers to upload their own video clips, which will be
vetted by MTV before being made available to other viewers.

The article also quotes Ashley Highfield of the BBC as saying that the importance of online viewing of programmes was accelerating (good of him to avoid the tipping point cliche ;-)) and that demand is high:

"I think the shift is going to happen very quickly
now. The audience has got used to having music their way, and they will
want to have TV their way. The only thing holding it back is lack of
supply."

: :  There’s also a really good profile of YouTube in Media Guardian, that describes the founders’ surprise about the way it has become a media property in its own right and how blog-friendliness was key to the explosion in its popularity.

Also mentions an intriguing ploy by the makers of the latest Antonio Banderas film, Take the Lead, to make it easier for people to make mash-up and spoofs of the trailer (although that doesn’t seem to help the generally average viewer reviews for the film I found on this Google reviews page, the like of which I’d not seen before by the way). I could only find a music mix programme on the site, but still – an interesting idea.

This Addictive TV remix from YouTube is pretty good…