Today we announced that 1Cast has extended an open invitation to the coming private beta of 1Cast to all former users of Redlasso.com.  As the first online news service to obtain legal distribution rights with several major national and international networks and cable news operations, those of you inside and outside of the blogosphere will no longer have to worry about embedding or linking to illegitimate video content.

In the coming weeks, 1Cast will officially launch, in beta, the world’s first on-demand personalized broadcast delivery news service, a project that has been under development for more than two years.  

Since we emerged from stealth mode in August, we have been working quietly behind the scenes to test the 1Cast platform with a select group of consumers and bloggers.  The knowledge and feedback we gathered from these individuals will be reflected in the beta version of our product, and we’re very excited to share our unique service offering and wealth of up-to-the-minute video content with you soon.

In the meantime, we welcome former users of Redlasso to sign-up for our private beta at http://1cast.com/welcomerlusers.html.

Some of you may remember this 1988 film staring Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips. The film is about an inner-city math teacher who decides to change an educational system that is blind to the needs of its students.  This true story is a great example of overcoming challenges to deliver on a promise.  In this case, the promise of a valid education to kids, regardless of geography or socio-economic status.

The team at 1Cast believes in the premise of “Stand and Deliver.”  For the past two years, we have been quietly developing a service that delivers on the promise of seamless mobility of professionally produced content.  This has been more than just a technological undertaking, but an educational one as well.  For us, our real challenge was to educate broadcasters and cable programmers that by giving viewers more control over how they consume content, two things happen: first, the user is able to build greater affinity with a brand if it’s flexible to use and easy to consume whenever and wherever people want.  Second, specifically in the case of perishable news content, this affinity leads to more time spent with the content and additional monetization for a product with such an inherently short shelf life.

We are extremely pleased with the response we’ve seen from national and international broadcasters and programmers to our proposition.  Yet, in the end, only the consumer has the ability to say whether we’ve delivered on our promise. 

I think the following post by political blogger Ben Domenech of RedState answers that question:

“The fine folks over at 1Cast, a new media delivery tool for smartphones, were kind enough to let me try out a beta version of their software on an iPhone during the DNC and RNC. It’s an excellent solution to a problem for smartphone users who want to find video content across multiple channels, but end up getting RickRolled by Youtube half the time, and have to deal with proprietary constraints on others.

Imagine an automatically updated RSS feed for video, personalized to your specific political, corporate, or news tags, delivered smoothly to your device, and that’s this new service. The ability, within hours of her speech, to pull up footage of Sarah Palin’s remarks and then effortlessly move to related news clips of responding coverage on a variety of networks was just wonderful when you’re on the go at a convention. To me, the untapped potential of this service for Sports is the most tempting - the day I can get an inexpensive service on my existing smartphone (as opposed to having to purchase some specific device) that delivers so quickly and smoothly that I can get fully streamed TV highlights from a first half of NFL play while sitting at the game at halftime will be a very happy day.

If you’re a gadget addict or a politics and news junkie, check them out at 1Cast.”

Anthony

While I’m a fan of Ayn Rand’s works, borrowing the title of one of her books as the theme for this blog is in many ways an anathema to modern day political correctness. 

And yet, when it comes to media consumption, specifically online video, we’re all guilty of a bit of selfishness.  We want media delivered on our terms, to our devices and at times that are convenient for us.  We rely on terms like uniqueness, relevancy, targeted and in-context to avoid the ugliness of the word “selfishness.”

But let’s call it like it is shall we?  Selfishness is the natural reflex to decades of having to deal with the one size fits all mentality of traditional media.  Today’s environment though has changed dramatically, with more content available than ever before and on more mediums than we can possibly watch in the span of a day. 

So doesn’t it stand to reason that being a bit selfish and picking the content or information that is important to us and watching it how, when and where we want is now the expected norm?  And as a corollary, by allowing me to revel in my media-centric selfishness am I not giving programmers, advertisers and others in the value-chain a better glimpse into who I am, how I think and what I’m interested in?  Doesn’t that lead to increased value?

I would argue yes to all three.  My selfishness means that if programmers want to reach me, they need to make their content more widely available and in different consumable formats so I can choose what I want.  By doing so they get the benefit of learning more about their viewers, which can lead to greater programming diversity – both in terms of content choice and distribution.  Advertisers benefit as well as they can segment viewers more effectively thereby increasing the relevancy, and arguably the ROI of the ad placement.  Finally, consumers’ benefit by having a wealth of content at their disposal that can be packaged to suit their needs.

So is selfishness really a bad thing after all? 

Anthony

Welcome to the 1Cast company blog! Today marks the official unveiling of our corporate website and the announcement of our first round of financing. In the coming weeks, 1Cast will launch the world’s first on-demand personalized broadcast delivery news service!

For well over a year, we have been building an online experience focused on making traditional television news programming readily available online and just minutes after the original broadcast. We believe that 1Cast offers an exceptional value proposition to advertisers, who can reach connected consumers in contextual settings, and to broadcasters, who can add new distribution avenues in a way that preserves their brand integrity and adds additional revenue streams.

What does this mean for you?

The 1Cast web and mobile-based video delivery service will enable you to build your own personalized video news feed or “micro-cast” from broadcast and cable news sources around the world. For the first time ever, you will have the ability to search online for the broadcast news that is relevant to you and watch the latest coverage on that topic. Are you interested in a recap of the day’s Olympic coverage? Simply enter ‘Olympics’ as a search term and you will have the ability view your personalized micro-cast comprised of multiple Olympic news video clips in succession and from various news sources.

We look forward to transforming the consumption of quality broadcast and cable news programming from a lean back, time focused experience to a push out, receive and consume experience. We’ll update you each step of the way here at the official 1Cast blog.

You can sign up now at www.1cast.com for the beta trial!