U-T San Diego wants to expand its U-T TV network nationwide.
Lynch, who is also a partner (with Doug Manchester) in Manchester Lynch Integrated Media, U-T San Diego’s owner, says participating papers would be analogous to local affiliates of a national television network.
“We think it can be every bit as good or different than Fox News or CNN,” Lynch says, “[utilizing] this content that all of these metros are generating every day.”
It’s form, he says, would be a next-level iteration of U-T TV, the 24-hour streaming video site run out of the paper’s newsroom that launched last May on its own URL and also broadcasts on two of San Diego’s three cable systems.
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The as-yet unnamed network would be monetized by national and local video advertising, he says. Participating newspapers would keep 100% of the revenue on the local spots sold, while national ad sales revenue, which would be handled by U-T San Diego, would be split with other papers on a share of undetermined percentage.
As for handling those national ad sales, Lynch says, “I presume that we’ll either affiliate with a national rep or we will have a national organization ourselves. One way or the other we’ll be covered with a robust national effort that will be focused more in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.”
Lynch adds that other monetization schemes beyond ads such as presenting sponsorships are also in the works.
His proposition to prospective newspaper participants is rooted in online video’s still largely untapped revenue potential. “This would be an entrance into the broadcast marketplace with a cutting edge, interactive system that will open the door to millions of dollars for additional revenue, and it’s a game changer,” he says. “You’re no longer a metro newspaper; you’re a media company.”
U-T San Diego’s own foray into the video arena was marked by the construction of a $3.5 million television studio inside of its traditional newsroom. It now produces 15 hours of original content each day, 12 hours of which are live. Some programming is then reracked to fill the remainder of its 24 streaming hours.
Lynch says that newspapers that opt in to the new network will be given access to a proprietary content management system that U-T San Diego is currently developing internally. That CMS will help publishers integrate their new video content with their publishing CMS. They would also receive guidance on setting up an in-house production infrastructure capable of producing a significant amount of content for the network.
“We’d provide the platform that will allow them to integrate, and recommendation on very minimal equipment that they would be able to utilize to do their local inserts into the network,” he says.
The network would be housed in about 40,000 square-feet of unused space in U-T San Diego’s offices, where about 800 people now work from a high of 1,500 in the paper’s heyday.
Lynch says that he has spoken with some publishers — whose identities he wouldn’t disclose — about the idea already. “We’ve had discussion with a number of folks who are very excited about us developing the infrastructure necessary for us to do [the network],” he says.
Participating publishers could opt to use as much or as little of the national content as they wanted, he adds, noting he is confident that publishers will embrace the network concept. “Nobody is going to be so arrogant not to look at an opportunity to make their business stronger,” he says. “They can make a ton of money without the huge infrastructure investment.
“We think that they will really welcome this with open arms.”
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