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Joost signs content broadcasting deals with TBS for CNN

Joost, a company attempting to broadcast TV via the Internet, said on Tuesday it had signed several new content distribution agreements, including one with Turner Broadcasting System Inc to show CNN news and interview programs.

The company also announced its "commercial availability" -- meaning it will allow current users to invite anyone to use its free service.

"Later this month we will be completely open" and allow anyone to download the Joost software from the company's Web site, said Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, the company's top executive for content acquisition, in a telephone interview.

"This is the way you normally ramp up peer-to-peer software ... and it's a way to give our friends a little bit of a scoop," she said.

P2P

Joost -- pronounced ``juiced'' -- was co-founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the entrepreneurs who upset the music industry with the Kazaa file-sharing service and then developed Skype, the Internet telephone system that was bought by eBay Inc for at least US$2.6 billion in 2005.

Joost operates by distributing streaming video of shows from "peer-to-peer," or user-to-user, over the Internet. Consumers choose a channel via a software interface on their desktop that resembles a remote control.

Like regular TV, it is free for viewers, and aims to be ad-supported.

It is seen as one of the many candidates to become a primary distributor of TV and video over the Internet, competing against Google Inc, YouTube, Revver Inc, broadcasters' own Web sites, an as-yet unnamed cooperation between NBC and NewsCorp, and file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent, among others.

copyrights

Joost's Viacom deal was particularly noteworthy as it came close on the heels of Viacom's lawsuit against Google for alleged copyright infringement.

In contrast to Kazaa, Joost actively seeks deals with copyright holders and promises to protect music and images on its platform against piracy.

"This is a mode of distribution that Viacom is more comfortable with," said Loeb & Loeb attorney Ken Florin, who was not involved in Tuesday's deal.

"Internet ad revenue could become a very effective way to monetize maybe not the same content, but content that appeals to a different audience," specifically the male 18 to 34 category.

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Alberdingk Thijm said the company is still experimenting with when and how it will run advertisements -- including short advertisements before or after programs, traditional 30-second advertisements in the middle of longer programs, and more experimental ideas such as ads that appear on the screen briefly and then fade away while a program is running.

Overall, she said, there would be less advertising than on regular TV.
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