Nick Denton Rings Up $118000 Bill For Gawker’s Tom Cruise Scientology Video

The monetization of online video is a huge topic of conversation in the blogosphere as the preferred communication medium within the intertubes is video rather than text.  What happens when you post a video on the web that registers 3 million hits in two months?  You would think that would translate into big bucks.  But the bandwidth required to transmit all of those video views can get pricey.  How pricey?  Well, rumor has it that Nick Denton received a $118, 000 bill from broadband provider Panther for the Tom Cruise Scientology video that has registered 3 million hits on his Gawker blog.  He apparently talked it down to $10, 000, but the point is that maybe monetization shouldn’t be the problem to be solved in the world of online video.  Maybe, before online video is a business model with high profit potential, we need to get the cost of data transmission down.  Food for thought.