AOL is rethinking how it wants to move forward with both its HuffPost Live and AOL Live video brands as online content providers struggle to attract audiences to live video programming on the web.
Ad Age reported Friday that five months after announcing it was moving forward with a new AOL-branded live channel, the online giant still hasn’t debuted the service, and the flagship show is on ice.
And HuffPost Live, the company’s original live programming channel, is “getting a rethink” after a distribution deal with AXS TV was put on hold.
“Although live video is a staple of TV, it remains relatively rare on the web. AOL embraced the “live” concept a year ago as it attempted to expand its reach in original video, but it’s unclear how far it can take it or how large live audiences can be in the diffuse environment of the web,” Ad Age’s Tim Peterson writes.
HuffPost Live reaches 5.1 million unique viewers a month according to comScore, and HuffPost says the average viewer watches 20 minutes of content.
Read More: Ad Age
Brief Take: The hiccups at AOL Live could be just the normal setbacks in putting a new network together, or they could indicate that execs are realizing that live video is simply not a concept that Internet users are ready to embrace.
Tags: