CBS Partners With YouTube

Posted on Oct 13, 2008

Composite by Truthdig

While sister company Viacom is still suing YouTube for $1 billion, CBS is hoping to get some cash out of the Web video mecca a more polite way. The Tiffany Network has had some success online, and currently has one of the more popular YouTube channels, but the eyeball business isn’t as straightforward as it used to be.

Mark Sullivan in PC World:

The CBS shows will play in YouTube’s new “Feature View” format, which, presumably, will be of a much higher quality than the grainy user-generated videos we’re used to seeing at YouTube. In fact, I would guess the new format at YouTube would be closely modelled after Hulu, which has emerged as the standard-setter for long-form web video.

In terms of programming, the really good CBS shows like CSI and Survivor will not appear at YouTube initially, but rather some less popular stuff like Star Trek and Beverly Hills 90210. The big titles might come later.

Fine, but there may be a downside: CBS and Google may now scour the YouTube servers for any and all user-generated CBS video, and either remove or wrap ads around it, says Chad Cooper of OVGuide.com, an online video aggregation site. The former, to me, sounds a lot more likely. So it will be alot harder for you and me to jump on Google and find the latest Katie Couric interview, for example.

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