NBBC Joins The Deadpool
NBBC, a video aggregation service launched by NBC last September has joined the TechCrunch Deadpool. — The remains of NBBC will be merged into the NBC/ News Corp joint venture first announced in March. — The new service, dubbed Clown Co by some has long been discussed but to date is yet to appear.
Context & Ripple Effects
NBBC was NBC's attempt at a standalone video aggregation service when it launched last September; barely ten months on, TechCrunch has moved it to the Deadpool and confirmed its remains will be folded into the NBC/News Corp joint venture first announced in March. As MediaPost's eulogy put it, the service hardly got time to establish itself before its parent decided it was redundant.
The shutdown also sharpens questions around the venture itself: paidContent reported only last week that a September launch for the so-called NewCo is 'maybe yes, maybe no', and the service — nicknamed Clown Co — has been discussed at length without ever appearing. NBC is now betting everything on a product that has yet to ship.
First-order effects
- NBC loses its only live, consumer-facing web video property, leaving the network with no independent distribution experiment while it waits on the unlaunched joint venture.
- NBBC's remaining assets, technology, and staff shift under the NBC/News Corp umbrella, converting a failed solo effort into raw material for the partnership.
Second-order effects
- News Corp gains leverage in the venture's shaping: with NBBC gone, NBC has no fallback platform, making the JV the single path to market and raising the cost of further delays.
- Other broadcasters weighing their own aggregation plays see the standalone model fail inside ten months, pushing them toward consortium or licensing structures instead of proprietary portals.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, big-media web video strategy consolidates around a few jointly owned platforms rather than a scatter of per-network services — with each partner's failed experiment absorbed into the shared vehicle.
- A prolonged gap between shutdown and launch would hand pure-play aggregators an open window to lock up audience and content deals while the media owners rebuild.
The trend: Broadcast networks are abandoning standalone web-video experiments in favor of consolidated joint-venture platforms, even before those platforms have proven they can ship.