James Ashton
Subscribe to The Times and The Sunday Times
JOOST, the online television service launched with a fanfare last year by the founders of internet telephony firm Skype, is preparing for a major retrenchment after failing to attract enough users and top-flight broadcasting rights.
The company is expected to rein in its global ambitions to focus solely on the US market.
Set up as an antidote to YouTube by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis after they sold Skype to online auctioneer Ebay, Joost has been overshadowed by the success of the BBC’s iPlayer, and in America, Hulu, a collaboration between NBC and News Corporation, the ultimate owner of The Sunday Times.
It has struggled to convince media and sports companies to sell it global rights, which are normally parcelled out to broadcasters country by country.
Joost has also suffered from senior defections. Chief technology officer Dirk-Willem van Gulik jumped ship for the BBC earlier in the year.
The company raised £23m last May from backers including CBS, Viacom, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital.
A spokeswoman insisted most of the cash was still in the bank.
“We are not shedding staff,” she said. “There are some situations where staff have been rea-ligned to better fit our needs.”
Zennstrom told The Sunday Times a year ago: “We want to change the way people watch television . . . liberating people from the programme guide.”
Joost is unlikely to close, however. “There are too many egos involved,” said one former employee.
The BBC iPlayer, which provides a free seven-day window for viewers to watch shows they missed the first time round, is recording up to 500,000 programme downloads a day.
In the summer, it will be joined by Kangaroo, a portal shared by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, to show older content, which will be funded by advertising.
Read the training tips and advice that helped our London Triathletes
Enjoy screenings of all the classic films you love, plus take advantage of two-for-one tickets
Times Online's new TV show helps you make the right decisions for your pet
Read our exclusive 100 Years of Fleming and Bond interactive timeline, packed with original Times articles and reviews
The latest travel news plus the best hotels and gadgets for business travellers
Shortcuts to help you find sections and articles

Overseas contacts and local business information

Find a course, arrange a game and save money
2007
£47,995
2008
£42,945
06/2006
£40,850
Great car insurance deals online
£33,000
Macmillan Cancer Support
Central/South West
£50k
NHS
Nationwide
£
£30k OTE
Meltwater News
Nationwide
circa £70k
Central Office of Information
London
Great Dubai Investment Opportunities
from £89,950
Luxury Appts, beautiful gardens w/ Thames views
Studios £33K, 1 Beds £60K, 2 beds £79K
Great Investment, River Views
New York Christmas Shopping
Christmas Cruises
From only £995pp
APTs East Coast now from only
£2425pp.
Great travel insurance deals online
Contact our advertising team for advertising and sponsorship in Times Online, The Times and The Sunday Times. Globrix Property Search - find property for sale and rent in the UK. Visit our classified services and find jobs, used cars, property or holidays. Use our dating service, read our births, marriages and deaths announcements, or place your advertisement.
Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions. Please read our Privacy Policy.To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times, click here.This website is published by a member of the News International Group. News International Limited, 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY, is the holding company for the News International group and is registered in England No 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69.
This is a massive climb down for Joost after their much hyped entry in to this space last year. They even retained CAA to represent them in Holywood but that has clearly not paid off. The previous post is accurate in that the main content owners are not going to hand over the keys to the kingdom based upon some cute technology. In my opinion their whole strategy is completely flawed as they are attempting to take the old TV model and simply apply it to the internet. This is a very naive move as it demonstrates that they have fundamentally misunderstood how the internet will work for video distribution in the future. This is particularly surprising considering the back ground of the top execs. The internet is not just another pipe to deliver content. To be successful they, and all the other I-TV start-ups, need to develop far more sophisticated strategies. We are heading towards a general melt down in the internet TV market and only the truly innovative will survive the cull:)
Stuart Livett, San Diego, California
I think Joost and many of the others are missing a fundamental concept in their business model. All of these providers need to understand that content is king and companies like the BBC and others are not just going to hand over the reigns to their brand over to another entity. They need to be able to distribute directly over the network and and the right price. Peer-to-peer (p2p) distribution like both Joost and iPlayer offer gives them an inexpensive means of transmission. However, just because it is cheap only because it gives the end-user something for free when they download the p2p client and agree to share their bandwidth and hard drive. Joost can't ever offer a compelling iPlayer like value proposition because at the end of the day media companies won't want to make them the intermediate distributor to their consumers.
Jeff Turner, Pleasanton, California