11 December 2006

Media partnership discusses rival to YouTube

Hot on the heels of the announcement that British Sky Broadcasting (BskyB) are to team up with Google in order to provide enhanced content to their broadband customers, comes the news that four of the largest media companies in the US may be embarking on a joint venture to grab a slice of the YouTube pie.

The Wall Street journal has reported that the media companies in question - Fox, Viacom Inc, CBS Corp, and NBC Universal - have recently held preliminary discussions to investigate the possibility of creating and implementing a video website to rival the popular YouTube service, which was recently bought over by Google for $1.65bn. YouTube is currently the most popular online video-sharing website and boasts in excess of 100 million views each day.

Although initial discussions into the venture are said to have been ongoing since the beginning of the year, any such deal is reported to be very much in an embryonic stage. The companies involved are interested in joint ownership of a service that would provide video clips taken from their respective television networks. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the companies are aiming to build a web video player - another way to cash in on the burgeoning market of web video advertising.

In addition, the Journal reported that ABC network owners, the Walt Disney Corporation, had declined to join the talks, citing the reason that it would prefer to concentrate on the strength of its own brands instead.

While the vast majority of clips available for viewing on YouTube are videos that have been made and uploaded by the website's users, there have been numerous concerns regarding the fact that some of the most popular content comes from pirated TV clips. This has led to some media companies threatening legal action towards YouTube for copyright infringement. And instead of seeking legal recompense, other companies have negotiated licensing deals with the site.

Interestingly, the Fox network, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp who also own a 39 per cent share in BSkyB, recently reached an agreement with Google whereby the search giant would provide BSkyB broadband customers with a suite of search, advertising and video tools, in order to improve and enhance the service they provide to customers. News Corp had previously linked up with Google when the two companies brokered a deal through which Google would provide advertising for the social networking site MySpace, and other Fox media sites. MySpace was bought by News Corp. in July 2005.

Home | Careers | RSS | Contact Us | Newsletter

International sites: