Arianna Huffington’s popular Huffington Post will launch HuffPost Live, its full-day online video network, on August 13.
“The new network, whose launch comes shortly after Huffington Post started a digital magazine, is the most ambitious expansion by the website since it was acquired by AOL Inc. last year,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “HuffPost Live, whose main studio will be in New York, will run 12 hours every weekday, with highlights after hours and on weekends.”
Huffington has hired 100 staffers, including veterans from networks such as ABC, CNN and al-Jazeera English.
Rather than including traditional commercial breaks, the network plans to introduce new models for advertising. “Up to five sponsors will be able to have their brand woven into the fabric of the HuffPost Live broadcast itself, by doing things like naming elements of the programming,” explains WSJ.
“So if the brand is about speed and efficiency, they might be part of a speed debate round on HuffPost Live,” says Janet Balis, publisher of Huffington Post Media Group. “There is no programming that we will create that we would not have had as part of the show without the advertiser.”
Cadillac has signed as the program’s first launch partner. The company will promote its new, small ATS model with the aim of attracting “a type of market segment that would seem to have a good connection with new digital media ideas,” according to spokesman David Caldwell.
The network will also earn money by selling display advertising on the network’s main page.
HuffPost Live plans to focus on commentary. “We’re not trying to report the news,” explains Roy Sekoff, a founding editor of Huffington Post and head of the network. “We are trying to have conversations that the news inspires.”
Arianna Huffington’s popular Huffington Post will launch HuffPost Live, its full-day online video network, on August 13.
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