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Yesterday, I spent about 40 minutes talking with Paul Pennelli of College Publisher about their new video partnership with Roo. Here’s the official press release from PRwire. Here’s an interview with one of the principles behind Roo, conducted by Beet.tv.

Here are links to the video pages for a couple of the campus newspapers who are using the video stream system: NYU’s Washington Square News and the Boise State Arbiter.

A couple of key points about the relationship, based on the interview:

• At present, this is not a YouTube-style video embed platform, but a streaming video service. So, at this time, you cannot embed a student video into a story in CP using the Roo platform, although this is something that Pennelli said should be available by the time student media begins publishing in the fall. IMHO, this is the crucial piece of the puzzle that still needs to be addressed. A streaming video player is a great addition to a college media site, but without the embed capability, it’s missing a key piece of the promise of multimedia storytelling using video.
• Student content must be uploaded through the Roo interface, although plans are in the works to integrate video uploads into the CP content management interface.
• Right now, the ads served in the video stream are national advertisements attached to nationally distributed videos. Ads are sold by Roo, not College Publisher. If a college media outlet wanted to sell local pre- or post-roll advertisements, they’d have to include those ads into the actual video that is uploaded. All revenue from local ads would remain with the local student newspaper.
• As with CP’s standard operating agreements, there are no limitations on the content that students can upload into the video channel. Also, the video player is included in the standard contract agreement with CP, not as a separate contract with Roo, and all content remains the property of the student newspapers.

There are more interesting details in the interview, which I’m including as an mp3 with this blog post. It’s about 26 minutes, edited slightly to remove some “ums.” At the end of the interview, Jason Rzepka, an MTVu communications staffer, adds one comment.

If you have any experience with the video system, drop a comment below this blog post and let us know how it’s working for you.

The interview was conducted using a service called freeconferencecall.com, which allows you to record a conference call online.

Click here to listen to the mp3 interview (12.3 MB) 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 11:25 am and is filed under special reports, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.