At a conference for online advertisers at its Redmond headquarters today, computing titan Microsoft plans to announce it’s bringing video back to its MSN online service, this time focussing on free made-for-MSN programming dubbed “MSN Originals.”
The shows will be produced in conjunction with Hollywood production company Reveille (behind The Office, as well as reality shows The Biggest Loser and Bravo’s Blow Out) and Be Jane, a producer of branded women’s home-improvement and do-it-yourself programming.
MSN Originals ties in directly with Microsoft’s efforts to increase traffic flow (and eyeballs) for advertising revenue carried on the service, and to that end advertisers will have an opportunity to be integrated with the new MSN programming beginning at the early stages of production.
Microsoft produced its own in-house “shows” for MSN back in the mid-1990s before online advertising was a major force on the Internet, but drifted away from the idea when the shows, for the most part, failed to catch on, in part due to the limited bandwidth available to most MSN users at the time. This time around, nearly half of U.S. Internet households have access to broadband, and Microsoft is partnering with established production houses to make the content, rather than doing it themselves.
No date for MSN Originals has been announced, although shows produced by Be Jane could appear as early as mid-2006. Microsoft’s multi-million dollar deal with Reveille gives them first-look at any Internet programming developed by the company in the next year.
