VentureBeat

NBC Universal said it will pay $925 million to acquire Oxygen Media, the female-focused cable network co-founded by Oprah Winfrey, continuing NBC’s aggressive effort to own the female demographic.

NBC already owns iVillage, one of the largest women-oriented content and advertising sites online, which NBC bought last year for $600 million. The female online demographic online has become one of the more sexy lately, boasting high growth rates. As viewers move online, Oxygen should stand to benefit from the relationship with iVillage. Oxygen estimates its prime-time viewership has risen 19 percent among its target demographic and 7 percent among all households.

NBC is also a backer of Sugar, a female-oriented content site, which yesterday said it acquired a fashion blog network Coutortore.

NBC, in turn, is 80 percent owned by General Electric and 20 percent owned by Vivendi.

Oxygen, it should be remembered, originally launched as a website and failed. It successfully survived the downturn by focusing on TV/Cable — after burning through eye-popping $400 million in financing from America Online, Europ@web, LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton and Vulcan Ventures.

IVillage, meanwhile, has been overtaken by fast-moving Glam Media for ownership on the women online, according to comScore Media Metrix. Glam is considered primarily an advertising network, but that Silicon Valley company is raising up to $200 million in cash in order to boost its offerings, including content.

NBC said it expects to realize revenue and cost savings of about $35 million next year from the acquisition.

Here’s this morning’s roundup of the latest action:

Joost opens widget API to developers: Joost, the oft-hyped online video site started by the founders of Skype, has soft-launched an application programming interface this week. It is trying to get third-party developers to build widgets on top of its online TV network so Joost users can do more with the site’s data.

The company already has sample widgets available on its test site, including a “What’s Similar” widget that displays recommendations for video clips similar to the ones you’re already watching. The most exciting aspect of Joost’s API is the access it gives developers to build social tagging and video-programming features into the site. As NewTeeVee notes: It’s a way for users to create sets of videos tailored specifically to their own interests, with minimal effort.

Widgets can do wonders for a site’s growth, but we’re still not sure if they will for Joost. For example, Myspace stood out a couple years ago for allowing outside developers to build widgets that integrated with its social network, giving users the chance to redefine how they used Myspace.

However, Myspace’s flexibility — and hardcore marketing in influential Los Angeles circles — came in tandem with market-leader Friendster’s implosion.

Joost doesn’t appear to have the same advantages. It may have raised a lot of money, with big content deals under its belt, and a solid grounding in how peer-to-peer video-sharing works. But, a lot of other big video sites, like Dailymotion, Veoh and Metacafe, have their own ideas about the future of online video, and they are raising big bucks, too.

Fliqz’s new super-easy toolbar to upload video — Fliqz, the Berkeley start-up, has made it extremely easily to copy a video into your blog. Until now, it has offered an nifty video upload tool, but not as easy as the toolbar. That older product lets you upload video into a player on your Web site sites (the player is called Fliqzster) and does it without forcing you to download any software. That was simple, but you still had to tab to your hompage to to get the code, and then toggle back to your editor to paste it in your article or Web page. But now the company has released a toolbar, called “Quikvid,” which lets you upload any video from your desktop or other source straight from your editor (because it reside on the top of your browser). If you’re a blogger writing an entry, you simply raise your eye to your toolbar, browse to select the video from your desktop, then hit “upload” and cut and paste the generated code into the editor. The toolbar is an install on your IE browser. There’s no other product like it on the market, Fliqz’s Kris Drey says.

Viacom hits guy for copyright infringement, but does so for a post he made of content that Viacom itself had taken from him without permission — Read this bizarrely ironic story here.

NBC Universal won’t renew contract with Apple’s iTunes service — NBC Universal says it was unable to come to an agreement with Apple on pricing, and so will no longer sell digital downloads of television shows on iTunes after the current contract runs out in December, according to the New York Times. NBC was the largest supplier of digital video to Apple, accounting for 40 percent of video downloads, including hits such as “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Office” and “Heroes.” This is a big deal, because its the latest evidence studios are bugged by Apple’s power and are trying to break free. It comes after NBC has made progress recently in creating its own joint venture, now called Hulu, to compete with iTunes and YouTube. In July, the Universal Music Group of Vivendi, the world’s biggest music corporation, said it would not renew its long-term contract with iTunes.

The YouTube-like site being formed by NBC Universal and News Corporation has received $100 in financing from a Rhode Island investment firm, Providence Equity Partners.

The New York Times’ Brad Stone has the story, saying the deal places a value of $1 billion on the venture, an astonishingly high valuation for a joint venture that has made surprisingly little progress since it was announced several months ago. The site, planned by NBC and News Corp. to feature their own copyrighted content, still has no name or Web site.

The fund-raising was expected, as was the valuation. The deal terms were leaked earlier (see our coverage; scroll down). VentureBeat has not confirmed the facts of the deal, including the valuation. The challenge confronting this venture is that there are two large companies behind it, with their own agendas, and indecisiveness means joint ventures typically don’t do well, as media investor Roger McNamee points out in the NYT piece.

The longer it waits, the greater YouTube’s establishes a lead in drawing viewers, and the more other sites and companies offer rival offerings — including the likes of Joost, which are trying to license similar content. Also NBC’s and News Corp’s own entities are already putting content online, rivaling the mission of their own joint venture. MySpace launched MySpaceTV, for example.

Perhaps Providence, led by Jonathan M. Nelson, who sits on the boards of MGM, Warner Music Group and the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network, can bring focus and energy to the venture. Nelson has invested in other media properties such as local newspapers, television stations and cable networks. In June, his firm also invested $850 million into NexTag, the online comparison shopping site.

Albie Hecht, a well-known producer for some Paramount’s successes (including Academy Award nominee Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie), has just gotten a whopping $9 million in a first round of financing for his new entertainment studio company.

Investors in New York’s WorldWide Biggies, as it is called, include NBC Universal, Hearst Corporation, Alan Patricof’s Greycroft LLC, Platform Equity and PrismVentureWorks.

It’s difficult to count the number of new video studios that have launched recently, with venture capital or other backing. We’ve mentioned the number of questionable ventures that have arisen lately; we’re now well into bubble territory. Beside venture investments, hedge funds and strategic investors (Hearst, NBC) are also stepping up the pace.

[Update: These fundings are happening almost daily: Okapi Venture Capital recently invested an undisclosed amount into www.MyDamnChannel.com, a newly launched video channel featuring comedian/political satirist Harry Shearer (“The Simpsons,” “This is Spinal Tap”), music producer Don Was (The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan), independent comic filmmaker David Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer,” “The Ten”); and Andy Milonakis (“The Andy Milonakis Show,” MTV). Its content is being syndicated to YouTube and will be embeddable in personal Web pages.]

NBC Universal will also partner with the company to provide advertising sales and production support, according to a company statement.

Here’s a snippet:

The studio specializes in creating innovative broadband experiences for kids, young adults and families, ranging from community games and webisode series, to a new breed of gaming called gametoons. The company has already produced such successful multi-platform projects as Nickelodeon’s ‘tween rock ‘n roll “mockumentary” mega-hit The Naked Brothers Band which features the top-rated Nickelodeon TV series, web shorts and podcasts. Worldwide Biggies has also created the place for the best dog videos on the web, WorldwideFido.com, and partnered with a leading celebrity news website to launch the innovative online game STARVSSTAR.com, where fantasy sports meets celebrity scandal, coming this August. A slate of webisode series is currently in development in partnership with media entities including iFilm and Spike TV.

Giant players such as Google and Microsoft already provide health care-focused search sites, but they aren’t that impressive.

San Francisco’s Healthline, however, is focusing solely on health search, and is making surprising headway. It has six million monthly unique users, and is the only search engine among the top-twenty U.S. health-related sites — with the exception of Yahoo Health (see list below). And with healthcare a very important part of the economy, there’s a land-grab going on, and investors want a part of it. Healthline today announced it has raised $21 million more in financing, led by GE/NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund.

Its success apparently derives from giving users more options, such as links to trusted article sources related to the symptoms they experience, along with lists of possible causes, tips and advice.

West Shell, chief executive, told us that’s why sites such as AOL and others are booting Google’s health related search, which provides a simple list of results but no other context, in favor of Healthline. Over the past two months, it has signed numerous other syndication deals, and now powers search at sites like NBC Universal’s iVillage Total Health, Eons and Health Central Network.

There several players in this area, most notably Kosmix, Microsoft’s Medstory (see our coverage), and Google’s health-only search site. A host of others are trying to build communities around health issues, but don’t focus purely on search per se. Healthcare.com, with $6 million in fresh cash, recently joined the crowd.

Healthline’s financing comes from GE/NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between GE Commercial Finance’s Media, Communications & Entertainment business and NBC Universal, and includes strategic financing from Aetna Ventures, LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, U.S. News and World Report, and previous investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Reed Elsevier Ventures.

The company has now raised a total of $59 million. The site launched in 1999, but then went through a major reorganization to focus on search in 2005.

Here’s the latest (updated) action:

The solar-powered motorbike from SunRed in Spain — Read the little story about how the company hopes to make a prototype soon, and needs venture capital to do so.

Marchex launches huge Web site — The public company said it has launched more than 100,000 local and vertical Web sites, publishing more than one billion pages of content for hoping to bait people surfing online. These are third-rate sites, originally filled with advertising, but now hosting more than 15 million business listings in sundry categories. Marchex also scrapes the Web for reviews and other content to place in these sites. The sites include www.cuisine.com, www.locksmiths.com, www.remodeling.com, and www.bayareahotels.com. Marchex paid Yun Ye of Name Development $164 million for 100,000 sites. Marchex says 30 million unique visitors monthly land on its sites by typing in domain names, willingly or unwittingly. This is very similar to the strategy of Demand Media, another opportunist land-grab company we’ve covered. (More at the NYT).

Venture Capitalist blasts buyout industry — Dixon Doll (left), the co-founder of venture capital firm DCM, next chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, said his group is working hard to fend of a new tax that could affect the VC industry. He blamed the buyout industry for the recent proposal in Congress for such a tax, saying it is “plain and simply because of the unbelievable egos of the guys running the PE firms like Blackstone and KKR,” he said. “They put big targets on their back … calling attention to themselves in a nonflattering way.” (We’ve reported on the lavish parties and $300 stone crab eaten by the Blackstone crowd.) They also don’t create jobs, he said: “It’s ‘Barbarians at the Gate’ all over again,” he said. (Via VentureWire.)

The slow video joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal — We’ve reported on this joint effort to answer YouTube. Today (Thursday), they appointed a high-level Amazon.com executive, Jason Kilar, to be chief executive of the venture. He led Amazon’s efforts in video and DVD. It is supposed to launch later this year. However, we were on the conference call today, and the date of launch seems uncertain. This is a very slow project. And each week that goes by, YouTube gets bigger. And strangely, News Corp.’s own MySpace launched MySpace TV today, which will serve to confuse. The venture has 30 employees, Kilar said. The venture — which still has no name — is reportedly trying to raise $100 million on a valuation of $1 billion (Paid Content).

Hollywood veterans launch Film Department — Mark Gill, formerly president of Warner Independent Pictures, and Neil Sacker, a former executive vice president at Miramax, said they’ve formed an independent film company with $200 million in financing from a group of unnamed private investors. (Update: We’ve been told Gill got money from Deutsche Bank). It will be called Film Department (no site yet). It will produce six films a year with budgets between $10 million and $35 million. Sounds almost retro, at a time when there’s so much Web novelty. (Details here.)

Google Gadget Ventures — Google announced a pilot project to support third-party developers of gadgets, the cornucopia of items you can choose for your Google home page. It is offering (1) grants of $5,000 to developers who’ve built gadgets in for Google’s directory that already receive at least 250,000 weekly page views, and (2) seed investments of $100,000 to previous Google Gadget Ventures grant recipients who’d like to build a business around the Google Gadgets platform. More details here. This is a smart way for Google to build an active community around its platform

The exodus continues from Google — Indeed, Google may need to nurture those smart developers sooner than they think. Here’s a good summary in the WSJ about the growing stream of people leaving Google. The Silicon Valley mentality: There’s no point working for a public company, especially if it looks like the stock has hit highs for a while, and when you can go roll the dice at another start-up. By being up in Redmond, Microsoft doesn’t suffer the same walk-across-the-street problem. This will be interesting to watch.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets supports folders — Folders, that’s right. Gmail doesn’t give you folders, but Google Docs does. This, and other updates (details here).

Feedster launches disorienting “Version 2.0″ — We’re having difficulty understanding what this well-funded company does that is different. Odd. We’ll look into it.

Pageflakes turns your home page into a social network — Pageflakes is one of dozens of companies offering you a home page where you can put widgets of information such as email, news, weather and sports. Next month, it launches Blizzard, which lets people subscribe to their friends’ widgets of information, or “pagecasts” as Pageflakes calls them. (Erick Schonfeld has the details).

Webwag, which is similar to Pageflakes, lets you synchronize your widgets with your phone — Details here. We first wrote about this company here.