Jumpin In The Deep End

I watched Startup.com for the first time last night. Boy, did it take me back to the crazy days at the end of the nineties. The team involved in trying to get govWorks off the ground in that salient documentary are now working with Jump TV (JTV.L), who are, by and large, providing out of market simulcasts for ethnic minorities.

It's an interesting business model whose biggest downside is the fact that migratory populations tend to be poor, or at least skimping to send money back home, and their native TV is a luxury they often cannot afford. Another problem is that acquisition costs for customers is very high.

However, I still believe that this model has legs and Jump TV have done well in the breadth of their coverage to date. However, I do feel that their somewhat scatter gun approach would be better served by targeting very specific large scale groups, eg Poles in the UK and Ireland, the French in London, etc...

With the big companies fighting hammer and tongs for the head of this long tail market, the only hope for smaller player is in narrowcasting.

On the subject of entrepreneurs and web TV, I recently came across a UGC site serving both: Vator TV offers slots for inventors to make video pitches.

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