Last year, I attended a trade show in Vegas and we were among only a handful of companies acquiring video content. This year was different.

There were ten times as many doing documentaries, news coverage, or reality television. Most were all doing this for the Internet. Of course, ESPN and SPEED were there (I am involved with the automotive industry and this was the biggest aftermarket trade show).

I have more info I need to get up on the site so you can read some of the latest headlines and some .tv sightings that will be of interest to the .tv community here. I continue to learn of new Internet TV operations that have $XX million dollar budgets when I attend events like this and speak to other directors and producers. 

This rant is dedicated to all the naysayers.

If you do not have the pocketbook or the balls to pony up money and invest in a .tv name, do not attempt to pollute the .tv forum of NamePros with your unsupported assertions that the .tv extension is a joke.

If you feel this way, you probably feel an intense dislike for the extension because Verisign saw a future in the .tv extension and invested upwards of $45+ million to buy the entire extension from that little, disappearing island called Tuvalu. Or maybe it is the $50 cost of non-premium domain names, the cost of premium domain names, or the renewal fees of any of those. Now, I cannot say I agree that news.tv or business.tv is worth anything close to what the dot tv corporation is asking, but I know that certain premium registrations are a bargain. 

I know this is in the News category, but its 100% unofficial until confirmed in an official press release.

Its not much to report, but I inquired recently over at the .tv Corporation to get some more information about the direction the company will be going with the recent departure of a key exec. In the process, I learned the number of .tv registrations in 2006 is up sharply over the number of .tv domains registered in 2005.  Thought I would share it with .tv enthusiasts worldwide.

Ok, I confess. I do not have 1,000 .tv names, but I feel that I have come to a point where acquiring more .tv names is not going to help me. I know feel the need to come up with a strategy for those names. The site development teams that I used in the past are tapped out and I have not found a team that is as effective in terms of design ideas and price. In other words, they cost too much and many believe they are better than they actually are.

Alternatively, I could try to monitize them through parking services, but they will never generate the potential that is there. So I am curious, how we find development teams that are open to a piece of the action in exchange for site development? Have any of you worked out something similar to this for your sites?

One last option that I feel I have is to offer the domains for lease. Any serious thoughts on this? Any of us actually successfully pulled off a business model based on leasing domain names?

Thank you for any input or comments you add.

Of course, the last issue is if we develop a .tv site with streaming video, where are you finding reliable video server hosting? We have bounced between services as of late but most of these guys have been unreliable. I have to assume video server hosting can rake in big bucks, especially if it is reliable and offers great customer service.

I attended a dinner party that I almost did not make because I really was not interested in going. In fact, I pulled off the freeway and thought about saving myself the half an hour I would sit in traffic; I wanted to meet up with some friends who I had not seen for almost 8 years. Something in me said to go so I pulled back onto the freeway, fought traffic, and attended the party.

Keep in mind, most people at this party either have no experience in the Internet world or they have experience with real property and no experience in the Internet world. Consequently, they do not truly understand the state of the Internet and the direction it is going.

Back to the story: I was introduced to a man in his mid to late forties. He used to develop Internet properties for other companies, he was offered jobs at some of the major price comparison companies that you see on the Internet, and he now works closely with video game companies. Nevertheless, we enter an engaging discussion about the Internet and online domains as property, like real estate. Meanwhile, nobody around can believe we are nerding out on this and they cannot fully grasp the depth of the conversation.