Veteran reality TV producer Vin Di Bona is launching Reality.tv, a Web site aiming at offering an advertiser-friendly spin on user-generated content.
The site, being unveiled Tuesday at NATPE, will be powered by Dave Networks social networking and video technology and will allow users to submit home videos to be voted on and viewed by others.
User-generated content and amateur videos have been popular on the Web for several years, most notably on Google’s YouTube, but many advertisers shy away from the genre, finding the content too risky to monetize.
With Reality.tv, Di Bona, the executive producer of ABC’s long-running “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” said his relationships with advertisers combined with a platform from Dave Networks, whose clients include ABC and CBS, will provide an “entertaining, family-friendly and appropriate” platform for marketers.
The destination, which hails from Hollywood Licensing, Di Bona’s company with Tammy Treglia, also will have a section for professional TV and new-media producers to submit videos with an ultimate goal to cross over to TV.
“Being a new-media network, the initial launch is on the Internet,” Treglia said. “Over the next year, as we see more technology which finally facilitates convergence, it will be coming soon to the television set, computer or cell phone nearest you.”
The site will have sections for different videos and also will allow users to have profiles where they can share videos. The videos also will be able to be shared on News Corp.’s MySpace and Facebook.
