TechCrunchTV Launches, Media Co’s Gaga For Web Shows

Media companies have been gaga for online video this year, and the trend is showing no signs of letting up. And it makes sense. Most of these outfits, old and new media alike, already have the pieces in place—solid brand, sizable daily audience, top notch content, and competent ad sales teams. So it’s no surprise that everyone from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and now TechCrunch, Silicon Valley’s daily must-read, have launched their own networks of original web series.

Dubbed TechCrunchTV, the network launches with six web shows, one daily and five weekly, featuring regular personalities from the popular tech blog like Sarah Lacy, MG Sielger, Jason Kincaid and of course founder Michael Arrington. Evelyn Rusli anchors the only daily show so far, a tech news and discussion show called TechCrunch Now. A handful of outsiders were tapped for their own shows, like Keen On, a weekly debate show with author Andrew Keen, and Speaking Of, an interview show with Cyan Banister.

TechCrunch TV is starting with a

modest 40 minutes a day of live on-air programming as it finds its legs, and ideally its audience. Will we one day see a 24/7 TCTV broadcast? I asked TechCrunch’s Paul Carr, who will serve as the upstart network’s Creative Director. “There’s every chance,” said Carr. “But only when we know we can do it right. Quality over quantity.”

Much like Jason Calacanis’ tech-leaning web TV network, ThisWeekIn, which officially launched earlier this spring, TCTV has built out its own modest studio, capturing the economies of scale in adding low-fi hosted web shows. And the network is aiming for a steady dose of live streaming shows, with wide VOD distribution afterwards. Carr says with TCTV, “we plan to be on everything,” referring to syndication on the sea of online video sites from YouTube to blip.tv. And also like ThisWeekIn, TCTV plans to ramp up production over the rest of the year, with Carr adding that the number of web shows on are “going to double very soon.”