Tiger's YouTube Stream Points to Google's Broadcast Ambition

Wired reports: YouTube let the world watch Tiger Woods mark his return to the public stage by streaming his live press statement Friday morning. NBC may not see the value in broadcasting the Olympics live, but YouTube seems to understand that people following major current events want to watch them while they’re still, you know, current.

During his announcement, Woods apologized repeatedly for and confirmed his marital indiscretions, and said he plans to return to golf eventually—perhaps later this year—but only after he has made further progress with therapy and a return to the Buddhist values of his youth, which he hopes will help him resist “a craving for things outside ourselves.”

“I do plan to return to golf one day, I just don’t know when that day will be,” said Woods. “I don’t rule out that it will be this year, but when I do return, I need to make my behavior more respectful of the game.”

Woods remained subdued throughout the speech, in which he also denied the use of performance enhancing drugs and any incidents of domestic violence, including on the night he crashed his SUV. However, he became more animated when lashing out against the media for “stalking” his family.

“My behavior doesn’t make it right for the media to follow my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to school and report the school’s location. They staked out my wife, and they pursued my mom. Whatever my wrongdoings, for the sake of my family, please leave. My wife. And kids. Alone.”

For Google, the move comes in the latest as a series of sneaky, short maneuvers that, taken in total, begins to position YouTube as a broadcaster, and the site is already taking care of the public-service-announcement-type programming the FCC requires from traditional broadcasters. We pressed Google for details about further developments with live video at YouTube, but have yet to hear back.

YouTube featured Woods’ Florida press conference on YouTube.com's CitizenTube channel, originally launched in 2006 to present “YouTube news and politics.” The site has experimented with live video more over the past year, with political debates, a U2 concert, and president Obama’s inauguration, to name a few.

Of course, it’s one thing to stream a presidential inauguration live, and quite another to stream a scandalous chapter from the world’s most famous sportsman’s private life in real time. To date, YouTube has been tremendously successful in providing cached, prerecorded video, and it will no doubt continue to focus on that.

But its main area for expansion would be into live video. Hulu, Livestream, and UStream/CBS also streamed the announcement, but Google’s deep pockets and self-provided bandwidth could give it a boost over traditional media companies and smaller competitors in the live streaming-video market. Things will only get more interesting as Internet TV devices increasingly compete with traditional cable and satellite pipes to deliver video to a wider range of households, as opposed to just early adopters.

YouTube said it is “experimenting” with the concept; if it worked, and millions tuned in, news networks (even ones like TMZ) have another thing to worry about. YouTube could eventually become one of the default channels where we watch live events unfold, in addition to the place where we watch cached video.

As for Tiger Woods, it remains to be seen whether he managed to chip his way out of the biggest sand trap of his career and personal life. After speaking for a little over 13 minutes, he hugged members of his family and left the stage in silence.