Hockey is by far my favorite sport, but the NHL has struggled for years with a narrow regional appeal and small but hardcore fanbase. Over the last several years, the NHL has tried to expand its appeal by expanding to sun belt cities, curtailing brawls, and adding gimmicks like the shootout. In the process, however, they may have alienated the hardcore fan that still supplies the core of their revenue and remembers fondly the days of rock ‘em, sock ‘em, old time hockey.

With the launch of NHL.tv, the league has got something for the true hockey fanatic: a seven channel digital network featuring original content, highlights, updates, interviews, news conferences, and more. Channels include “The Hockey Show”, “Livewire”, and “The Playoff Channel”, in addition to channels featuring oldies and archival footage. Advertisers include Bud Light, Cisco, and Dodge.

Check out this article from the NY Times for more info.

Another recent article in the Times talks about how “lunchtime has become the new prime time” for web video. With millions of office workers around the country looking for a mid-day diversion, sites that feature video have been seeing massive traffic spikes when employees take a break for their afternoon sandwich.

What’s interesting is that media companies are now responding to the trend by actually releasing new content and webisodes to leverage the natural tendency for traffic to spike at noon. In addition, producers are now charging higher advertising fees for programs that launch at lunch, thereby turning the time slot into a web-version of prime time.

The subject of a recent article in the New York Times, Crescent Heights is the new web series put out by Procter & Gamble to promote their Tide brand. I think the content on this one is a bit flimsy (or maybe I’m just the wrong demographic), but it’s interesting and inspiring to see a consumer goods giant like P&G experimenting in this space. Could we be going back to the golden days of television, when literal soap operas ruled the airwaves?

Here’s an interesting post from Silicon Alley Insider talking about the various ways that different web video properties count a “view”. The big question that companies are still trying to work out is whether a view is counted every time a video is launched, or whether to count only one view per IP address. The problem with the former is over counting, as a view can be registered each time a single person watches the same clip. The problem with the latter is undercounting, as often times many people can share a single IP.

It’ll be interesting to watch how this gets sorted out over the coming months and years.

To kick off the blog, I thought it’d be great to start with a series of posts focusing on companies that have had their businesses transformed by web video.

First let’s talk about fordmodels.tv. This site was recently covered by a great article in the February 2008 issue of Inc. Magazine, which focused on the “New Basics of Marketing”.

Most people know the basic story of Ford Models – for roughly sixty years they’ve been one of the most prominent modeling agencies in the world. They’ve traditionally made their money by providing pretty faces for fashion shows, magazines, etc. Over the last couple of years, however, they’ve created and posted more than 1,000 videos on fordmodels.tv, and in the process have transformed themselves into a media company as well. Some of the videos have been viewed more than a million times, and advertisers now clamor for a chance to sponsor the content. Revenue is up 140% over the last five years, and they’ve managed to attract further investment from a high-flying private equity firm. And at the same time, they’ve managed to further extend their brand in a powerful and effective way.