According to YNet, Metacafe - one of the more popular video sharing services not called YouTube - has been acquired for $200-million. So who's next? Who's going to be left without a seat when the music stops playing?

The Financial Post's Sean Silcoff has an interesting column looking at how Canada's private radio industry is thriving at a time when other media - newspapers, television, magazines - are struggling with the Internet's growing popularity. Silcoff points out radio listenership has remained steady at 532 million hours over the past six years, while sales have climbed by 5.6% a year over the past decade. Meanwhile, operating margins climbed to 21% - 3.5x the level in 1995.

So has commercial radio in Canada managed to thrive at a time when competition has increased from the Web, satellite-radio and the iPod? Maybe, it's the local nature of radio - the fact it provides people with local weather, traffic conditions and news; stuff that the Web and satellite-radio struggle to provide. While local search is all the rage these days as Google and others such as Ask.com look to expand, the job of providing local information has continued to effectively handled by local-based media.

This is something newspapers need to grasp as they look for a new recipe for success. Rather than trying to compete with Google.com or CNN, newspapers should put a lot more resources on local coverage in their print and digital publications. It's this kind of content that will keep them relevant to readers and advertisers. In Toronto, the Toronto Star's efforts to provide even more local coverage has been abundantly evident in recent months. This is a strategy more newspapers will have to embrace going forward.

I was watching a YouTube video (another funny take on Weird Al's Canadian Idiot) last night, which made me wonder how and/or if Google Video and YouTube are going to co-exist.
Let's start with YouTube given it's more popularity (23 million unique visitors a month can't be wrong, right?). Obviously, Google is probably going to implement AdSense throughout YouTube as a way to generate revenue. There will also be high-revenue banner ads to capitalize on the traffic. Then what? Does Google create a YouTube Premium section for people who want to download/buy videos such as TV shows and movies? If so, how would this affect YouTube's image/mojo given it's the place on the Web to access free video, albeit most of them amateur productions that leave much to be desired. If YouTube tried to make money from selling videos, would this potentially drive people away.
Then, there's Google Video, which has been a modest success since its launch. After all, Google would not have bought YouTube if its video strategy didn't need a $1.6-billion jump-start. Does Google stay upstream by mostly focusing on the sale of TV shows and movies, or does it continue to attract user-generated content as well.
Assuming YouTube pursues a premium strategy, and Google moves deeper into the user-generated content world, at what point will the two services start to look the same? If that happens, does it really matter as long as both businesses as thriving?
News: Google has signed a deal with BSkyB that will see Google provide its user-generated video, e-mail, search and targeted advertising tools to customers of BSkyB’s broadband internet service. “This is a really, really big deal for us,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “If it works, it will become our most lucrative deal from the get-go.”

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