News
Channels.com Sponsors The Clip Show
Includes First Look at Revolutionary New Video Promotion Tool
(PALO ALTO, CA) - June 09, 2009 - Channels.com, creator of the free web-based video feed reader for video RSS feeds and video podcasts, today announced their sponsorship of The Clip Show. Created by technology enthusiast Jim Kirks and screenwriter Charlie Baker, The Clip Show is a popular and irreverent weekly review of video podcasts. This sponsorship will showcase the benefits of Channels’ new viewer loyalty tool - "Video Chicklets&tm;".
"Jim and Charlie have a terrific knack for discovering great video podcasts from all over the Web," says Channels.com CEO and founder Sean Doherty. "This sponsorship will enable them to strengthen their viewer loyalty through the use of our new Video Chicklet."
Beginning today, each episode of The Clip Show (theclipshow.blip.tv) will include in-video links called Video Chicklets. With just one click, these Video Chicklets enable viewers to create a free Channels.com subscription to the video podcasts being featured on the show. In trials conducted during the past 3 months, Channels subscribers watched on average over 20 times more video episodes than video Web site visitors.
"This sponsorship is very significant for us," says Jim Kirks. "We’ve been working so hard on The Clip Show for so long, and it’s a great feeling to receive this endorsement."
For Jim and Charlie, getting to this point hasn’t been easy. Five years ago, they and a few friends sunk all of their savings into writing and shooting an independent film. Three months and a couple of girlfriends later, they completed the movie but were unable to get it distributed. "It nearly bankrupted us," Jim says. "We swore we’d never do anything with video again."
Two years later, Jim came across an article in Newsweek about the growing interest in video podcasting. "We loved the idea of instant distribution on the web with video podcasting," he explains. "But rather than create our own podcast, we decided to start out by reviewing ones that were already out there."
This time, Jim and Charlie had both the timing and the idea right – since they began The Clip Show in 2006, video podcasting has experienced explosive growth and is now a mainstream Web application.
That growth shows every sign of continuing - Internet research and trend analysis firm eMarketer projects that 37.6 million people will watch video podcasts on a monthly basis by 2013, more than double the 2008 figure of 17.4 million. ABI Research forecasts that the number of viewers who access video via the Web will almost quadruple in that same time frame, reaching at least one billion in 2013.
"With the fantastic breadth of video choices on the Web today people crave the kind of guidance and recommendations that The Clip Show provides," says Sean Doherty. "With tools like Channels.com and great content like The Clip Show, it’s easier than ever for people to find and watch the best shows on the web."
About Channels.com
Channels.com is the first web-based video RSS reader to take advantage of the fast-growing market for online video. Based in Palo Alto, California, Channels.com makes it easy for anyone to find and subscribe to the many thousands of video podcasts and feeds that are published online every day. Channels.com includes the web’s largest searchable index of video feeds (over 100,000), and offers an integrated video player that supports all major video formats (custom Flash players, Quicktime, WMV, etc.).
