After Months of Pre-Launch Hype,
Oxygen Quietly Breezes Onto the Web
May 21, 1999
By Pamela Parker
Lots of ink has been spilled, and there has been much whispering and speculation, but, up until this week, the Oxygen Media product has been about as visible as the element for which it's named. You might call it vaporware, pure 0-two in chemical terms. But, on Thursday, the convergence and women-oriented company quietly launched Oxygen.com -- the front door to its network of Web sites -- and a new personal finance destination called ka-Ching. The unveiling shed some light on the ambitions of this somewhat mysterious new Silicon Alley venture, whose Web sites will eventually operate in tandem with a cable TV network that's set to launch in February of 2000.
The whole shebang, of course, will be headed up by the well-connected television executive, Geraldine Laybourne, who is probably best known for bringing Nickelodeon and Nick at Night to prominence in the 1980s. Later, working for Disney as Capital Cities/ABC's head of cable networks, she pushed the idea of spinning off a second cable channel from Lifetime TV (in which Disney owns a 50-percent stake) aimed at younger women. That didn't happen, and, in May of 1998, Laybourne left Cap Cities/ABC to form Oxygen, "a converged online and cable-TV network," in which ABC, along with AOL, was one of the early investors. Oxygen's leadership and financing team also includes the people behind Carsey-Werner Co., the New York-based producers of TV shows like Roseanne, and HARPO Entertainment Group, run by talk show host and actress Oprah Winfrey.
"We're a really gutsy women's network," said Giselle Benatar, executive producer of Oxygen.com. "We want to do great things for women."
The online portion of the network, so far, has been built on the foundation of three sites Oxygen bought from AOL back in September of 1998 -- Thrive, a health and fitness site; Electra, a general interest women's site; and Moms Online, a site about parenting. Ka-Ching adds the personal finance piece, and Oxygen.com ties it all together with links, an Ask Jeeves-powered natural language search engine, and community features. "I think Oxygen.com's relationship to the sub-brands and the definition of the network will evolve," said Benatar. "We're in the stage of really bringing these brands together." At least one step in the evolution has already been planned -- Oprah Online, the Website linked to backer Oprah Winfrey's TV talk show, will join the network later this summer.
The online network will eventually cover more subject areas, say Oxygen execs, although they won't divulge their plans. A look at the URLs Oxygen owns, though, may provide some clues. There's Cultcha.com, which could be developed into an arts and entertainment oriented site. Ladydetective.com sounds like a murder mystery TV show. 02Games pretty much speaks for itself, as do OxygenComedy.com and 02Jobs.com. Oxygen also owns some titles tied to planned TV programs that have been reported on in the last year or so of press coverage -- BoudoirCinema.com, and Working-Lunch.com.
It remains to be seen just what the relationship between the online network and the cable-TV network will be. You get the sense from talking to Oxygen execs that they're really not sure themselves -- that they're feeling their way in the cutting-edge convergence territory. (Not that it's a new project: both CNNfn and MSNBC launched on cable and the Web at the same time more than two years ago). "The best example of convergence," said Hal Brooks, director of special projects for Oxygen, "will be how the TV leads the Internet and how the Internet leads the TV as far as programming." The interactive attributes of the Internet, then, will help Oxygen be in touch with its audience, and each will drive traffic to the other -- hardly a revolutionary idea.
Some of the brands will be cross-platform. Ka-Ching, for example, is thought to be likely to make the leap to TV, but others might not. Then there's the whole question of getting distributed on cable networks when most channels have been allocated -- another big hurdle for Oxygen. So far, TCI cable has agreed to carry the TV network to seven million households. By contrast, Lifetime TV reaches 73 million households via 11,000 cable and satellite systems. Certainly Laybourne's track record, along with the promise of programming from the likes of Oprah and the Carsey-Werner folks, will give the new venture leverage. But getting distribution certainly won't be an easy task, and it's clearly critical to the network's success.
On the TV side, Lifetime is obviously Oxygen's biggest competitor in the fight for women's hearts and pocketbooks. Online, there are dozens of prominent female-targeted sites and networks, most notably Silicon Alley's iVillage and San Francisco-based Women.com. All of these companies declined the opportunity to comment on Oxygen for this story, and, given Oxygen's recent debut as a network, it's difficult to make any meaningful comparisons. Certainly, Oxygen is fuzzier and smaller at this point. It has only four "channels", as opposed to iVillage's 15 and Women.com's 20, and Oxygen lacks a kind of focus and unified sense of mission. Its competitors are taking wait-and-see approach. "This medium is different from the others. It takes time to learn and refine," said Candice Carpenter, co-founder and CEO of iVillage. "We expect Gerry ultimately will get it right."
Conspicuously, Oxygen lacks e-commerce, a revenue stream that most content-centric plays wouldn't be without these days. The company says it's looking at offering shopping and has been talking to possible partners, but the whole bet has been placed on advertising and sponsorship, thus far. Oxygen's VP of creative development, Christina Ohly, says the network is nearly sold out of banner ads through the end of the year. Bigger deals, says Ohly, are in the works, but she's not naming names or giving details. You'd expect the ad sales folks to offer cross-media deals once the cable-TV network is up and running.
Clearly, there's a lot of work ahead for Oxygen and its approximately 120 staffers in New York and San Francisco. There's no question that the venture's leaders are smart, and they certainly have impressive track records. But the challenge of launching a brand-new cable-TV operation could doom the online venture to a dangerous lack of focus. And, yet, if everything falls into place -- or there's enough funding and resolve to correct early mistakes -- Oxygen could become the center of convergence its founders have been touting.
* Pamela Parker (pamela@atnewyork.com) is Associate Editor of @NY.
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