Craig McCaw is mainly known for placing big bets in telecommunications. So why is the press-shy billionaire backing a Kirkland online media startup that has more in common with YouTube and Hulu than the wireless networks he helped conceive?

The answer to that question in a moment. But, first, here's what 1Cast is all about. The company is introducing a new Internet and iPhone application today that allows consumers to pre-select specific news content areas -- say Barack Obama, oil prices or the Seattle Seahawks -- and then receive short online video news bursts related to those topics. 1Cast dubs these personalized news programs "microcasts."

In development for two years and launching today in a private beta, 1Cast currently includes video content from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, CBC, CNBC and Reuters. By early next year, it hopes to have a number of other national news partners signed up as well as a major sports news network.

"This is not a situation where we are simply scraping the Web of someone else's content," said President Anthony Bontrager. "This is content that is delivered to us directly from the programmer."  That's a reference to online video clip service RedLasso, which shut down earlier this year after the networks sued it for copyright infringement.

Content creators provide specified news clips or an entire news feed to 1Cast, with the company's technology parsing that video content into bite-sized chunks of information on specific topics. It uses the closed captioning system along with speech recognition and other technologies to discern different topic areas in the video feed.

"Through the algorithms that we have built within this software platform, it goes through and actually creates the clips from those news feeds," said Bontrager, adding that the feeds are boiled down into 1-minute to 5-minute clips.

That allows a user to receive video content only related to Microsoft or automobiles or any other topic they select. And that segmenting of the audience leads to more targeted advertising opportunities.

1Cast plans to share revenue with the video programmers, but Bontrager declined to disclose the split. In addition to getting a piece of the advertising revenue, Bontrager said some content producers want to be assured that their programs are presented in a professional manner.

"They don't want to have their key asset, for lack of a better word, bastardized out there, which is what some companies have been known to do," he said. "They want it presented in a compelling way that enhances their brand and creates that affinity with their user base."

In that regard, Bontrager said that some media companies have objected to content being displayed on YouTube and other online video sites. And he noted that finding content on sites such as YouTube and Hulu can be tough.

"They are still kind of a hunt and peck thing," he said. "We have moved past search and we are more of a discovery based play."

So, back to the original question. Why is McCaw, who bankrolled Clearwire, Teledesic, RadioFrame Networks and others, pumping cash into an online video play

"Craig is Mr. Telecom, he has created some of the leading companies in the telecom industry," said Bontrager. "But over time, you have to have something to push over those telecom pipes beyond just voice and data. And video continues to be that killer application."