YouTube and MGM in movie and TV show deal

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 10 November 2008 16:57

Opinion and Analysis

There’s no official word on YouTube’s official blog yet, but the news has come through that MGM will show full-length movies and TV shows in partnership with YouTube and in competition with TV network owned by News Corp and NBC Universal. MGM will display ads “alongside” the video to monetise its content.

With YouTube still facing a $1b lawsuit from Viacom, a TV network owned Hulu site that shows full length TV programming and most of its content in lengths of less than 10 minutes, YouTube is fighting back.

Not only has it started offering full length TV episodes of shows from CBS such as Star Trek, MacGyver and the original Beverley Hills 90210, among others, YouTube is set to announce on Monday that MGM will air its TV shows and movies through its own channel on the YouTube “network”.

CBS is working with both YouTube and Hulu, maximising its revenue and viewer potential, and MGM joining a company one of its competitors is suing sends a strong signal to all and questioning the viability of Viacom’s $1b lawsuit.

The news comes courtesy of Reuters, who were tipped off by MGM themselves ahead of any official YouTube announcement.

It’s yet another milestone on the road to all existing TV shows and movies being available at standard or high resolutions to anyone on the planet with a broadband Internet connection and a large monthly download limit, although we’re certainly not there yet.

While there is no word yet from YouTube's US blog (although clicking that link will likely take you to your local YouTube blog unless you specify the "Worldwide YouTube" pages or live in the US) as I publish on whether MGM content will also be limited to US viewers, it sadly seems a given, just as BBC content on iPlayer is limited to UK viewers and ABC’s iView, which uses the BBC iPlayer technology, is limited to Australian viewers.

Update: I was sure I'd read that the ABC's iView technology was derived from iPlayer, but since publishing this story yesterday I've received an email from the ABC which states that iView was completely developed inhouse at a much lower cost than iPlayer, so whoever initially misrepresented iView as being an iPlayer derivative was wrong - a follow up article will explore what the ABC says it has in store for iView in 2009.

iTWire’s colleague Adam Turner has written an article called “Bypass Australia’s Internet filters for free”, which shows free and paid ways to bypass national and geographic filters to allow anyone to watch MGM, YouTube and Hulu “US only” programming, wherever they are in the world, so the restriction is more annoying than anything else.

Those tips should also work for any Internet users anywhere, not just for Australian Internet users, so if you’re curious to see what content is out there that you can’t watch, now you have a way!

So what about that advertising, and when might TV shows and video legitimately go global on online services like YouTube and Hulu, instead of primarily services like Joost? Please read on to page 2.