The player: Alx Klive, founder and CEO of WorldTV, an Internet TV service and technology.
The play: WorldTV is a Web video service that lets consumers create their own online, high-definition-capable, full-screen TV channels, populated mash-up style with videos from YouTube, Break, Metacafe and other sources. “You can go to WorldTV.com and in the space of a couple minutes create your own channel and you will get your own personalized URL,” Mr. Klive said. “We are giving people the tools to create their own branded TV channels.”
The pitch: The service is easy to operate, letting users search for clips across YouTube, Google, Break, Yahoo, AOL and other sites to incorporate into their channels via drag-and-drop functionality. Users also can upload their own Webcam-recorded videos to their channels. “What Joost is is an online television network with lots of channels. We are the same, but the channels are created by ordinary people rather than professionals,” Mr. Klive said. WorldTV includes social networking features that allow viewers to send clips to their friends via e-mail. The e-mail includes a link to the video’s source site, thus driving traffic to that site as well as to WorldTV. Additionally, when videos play back in WorldTV, a “hosted by [source site]” message appears periodically as additional recognition. This message is clickable, allowing users to click through to the original video.
In the mix: WorldTV is competitive with companies such as Magnify.net and Demand Media, which also let users program their own channels.
Backstory: Mr. Klive first devised the idea for WorldTV in 1995 and registered the domain name at that time. He even raised $5 million in venture funding then, but wound up turning the money down when market conditions soured for new businesses in the late ‘90s. He started WorldTV’s parent company, Affinity Media, four years ago as a news aggregation service for news, sports and video game sites. That network of 50 sites, including ChelseaNews.com and LAGalaxyNews.com, generate more than 1 million unique visitors each month. Mr. Klive said he will market WorldTV to the 300,000 registered users from those sites on Affinity’s e-mail list.
The money guys: Mr. Klive self-funded the company for less than $1 million. WorldTV will make money in three ways: via ads sold against popular user channels, in a subscription model with additional features for “prosumers” and by licensing the technology on a private-label basis to smaller broadcasters, production shops and ad agencies. Mr. Klive said he is talking with broadcast and cable networks about including some of their short-form content for users to feature on the WorldTV channels they create.
The pros: “The opportunity is to create a truly global alternative television network on the Internet featuring user-generated channels,” Mr. Klive said.
The cons: “The challenge will come in working out the advertising relationship, because the idea that you could create channels of content using content that’s not your own and then monetize it is an interesting question,” he said.
Background: Mr. Klive was born and raised in London. He is the chief technical architect for WorldTV. When he was 13 he created a mail-order software company that sold video games for the Commodore VIC-20. He has worked as a news assignment editor, videographer, deejay and, most recently, as a technology reporter for CNBC Europe. Mr. Klive shepherded a photographic book called “Dawn of the 21st Century” that includes photographs from more than 5,000 amateur photographers around the world documenting the change of the millennium. He lives in London with his wife and son.
Who knew? As a child, Mr. Klive appeared in the West End production of “Evita” for eight years.