Huffington Post Begins an Online TV Network

August 13, 2012, 12:11 pm

By BRIAN STELTER

The Huffington Post on Monday began what it hopes will be a never-ending news talk show on the Internet, HuffPost Live.

The online network is one of the most ambitious attempts yet to rethink what television should look and feel like when streamed via the Internet. Accordingly, a chat box took up the same amount of space as the live video, and a bright red button labeled “join this segment” let viewers sign up to participate through their own webcams.

The segments themselves, at least initially, didn't stray much from a television script. The first hour, from 10 to 11 a.m. Eastern, was dominated by talk about the presidential race and about the actress Jennifer Aniston's engagement to the actor Justin Theroux. But the people talking were a mixture of paid hosts and unpaid viewers at home. “Continue commenting!” a host encouraged chatters at the end of the first hour. “We love it, love it, love it.”

The network will have 12 hours of programming on weekdays and reflects a serious push within the media industry to produce the kind of online video that advertisers are asking for. Cadillac and Verizon are the two advertisers that The Huffington Post calls “founding partners” of the network.

“Now that almost everyone in the country is watching online video, it just makes sense that some people would want live programming, too,” said Mike Vorhaus, a digital-media analyst who heads Magid Advisors. “Of course, with the Web, it will be recorded and replayed forever.” Indeed, The Huffington Post expects that much of the consumption of its live programming will happen later, through links to conversations that were recorded earlier.

The Huffington Post, which is owned by AOL, isn't alone. Other companies that previously didn't think of themselves as live video sources, like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, are vying for attention the same way that traditional video sources like CNN and the BBC are, both with live programming and replays. And Ken Lerer, a co-founder of The Huffington Post, is investing in a live video startup that has been code-named Planet Daily and has yet to start.

It's very early going, according to executives involved in the new ventures. Amid the excitement about HuffPost Live on Monday there was a skeptical undercurrent that asked, in effect, will anyone watch this after the first day?

Mr. Vorhaus's first half-hour of viewing - which he admitted he never would have done “just for fun” - “didn't give me much other than a talking head in a box and a stream of Tweets,” he said.

The network's namesake, Arianna Huffington , started the live stream at 10 a.m. the same grandiose way that cable networks used to arrive, with a flashy video and a declaration of its mission. “Seven years ago, HuffPost disrupted the way people engage with news,” she said. “And now, with HuffPost Live, you're invited to be part of a different kind of conversation, whoever you are, wherever you are.”

Ms. Huffington was joined on a couch in the network's new studio by Roy Sekoff, the president of the network. Mr. Sekoff was the founding editor of the Web site with her in 2005. “This is not a new brand that we're trying to create,” Mr. Sekoff. “This is just an extension of a brand we hope that you already love, The Huffington Post.”

Like the main Web site, which promotes the fact that it garners millions of user comments each month, HuffPost Live says it will encourage conversation among viewers. A video reel showed sample webcam users “live from my kitchen,” “my bedroom,” “live fro m my office, “from my music studio,” “live from a 30-foot travel trailer in a parking lot in rural New Mexico.” They were beamed in through the Hangouts tool promoted by Google.

The segments themselves will be selected by HuffPost Live producers and 10 young hosts who were hired earlier this year. Among the first to appear on Monday morning was Abby Huntsman, a daughter of the former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, Jr. Several of the other hosts have progressive backgrounds.

Along with the hosts and the viewer-guests, the network will bring on The Huffington Post's writers and editors. What it won't have is traditional reporters in the field, preferring mostly to talk about the news rather than gather it independently. Talking, of course, tends to be cheaper than reporting.

There were a couple of technical glitches in the first hours, but nothing overtly surprising.

The first hour was produced from HuffPost Live's studio in New York. The network also has a studio in Los Angeles and what it calls a satellite studio in Washington, D.C. By the second hour, Ms. Huntsman and several webcam guests had moved away from the campaign talk and onto another passion of Ms. Huffington's: the need for a good night's sleep. The segment was titled “unplugging and recharging” - an inside joke by the producers, perhaps?