Yahoo to Sell Video Service With Sports, Entertainment (Time To Short Yahoo, IMHO)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | March 17, 2003 | Mylene Mangalindan

[Timesink]

Yahoo Inc., broadening its push into fee-based services, Monday will introduce a video subscription service that offers exclusive entertainment and sports content.

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang gave a brief preview of the service, called Yahoo Platinum, last month. The service offers entertainment, sports, news video and programs, similar to an offering from RealNetworks Inc.'s RealOne subscription service.

[Timesink]

This thing is doomed. Way too much overlap with RealOne, too expensive, and it locks out Mac users for no reason whatsoever (both use RealOne, and RealOne can handle Macs; it's a sign of laziness inside Yahoo). RealNetworks will crush them.

[Sunnyvale CA Eng.]

Have any of these online video subscription services made any money? With 24 hr cable news - why would I pay for this?

[Timesink]

RealNetworks claims over 600K retained subscribers (that is, they don't sign up for one month and then quit).

[George W. Bush]

ABC may crush them both. They're starting up a broadband video news service that will be tied to their web site. I'm not sure when they'll deploy it.

What bites is that it's Fox News and Rush Limbaugh that should be doing it, not these others. Rush's webcam and subscription service just aren't enough.