YouTube follows up NBA with BBC

Stan Beer
Saturday, 03 March 2007 15:44

Your IT - Home IT

Video social networking site YouTube has followed up its recent coup with the US NBA by signing an agreement with the BBC. Under the agreement, the BBC will show clips and trailers each day across three separate channels, covering news, documentaries and entertainment according to an Associated Press report.

The move is being widely seen as an attempt by the UK Government subsidised BBC to reach a wider audience and to bring in commercial revenues.

As far as YouTube is concerned, the BBC deal, like deals with other traditional media organizations, and the deal last week with the massively popular NBA, lends further credibility to the popular video sharing site.

The news of the YouTube deal comes almost simultaneously to an announcement from new online Internet TV peer-to-peer TV service Joost that it has signed a deal with global TV distribution service JumpTV.

Joost, founded by Skype and Kazaa founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, has been touted by many segments of the media as a competitor to YouTube. It also has the support of traditional content producers which have shunned YouTube because of alleged copyright violations, such as Viacom.

However, the operation and functions of YouTube and Joost are different. YouTube is a video sharing site, which allows users to post content and interact in a social networking setting, while Joost is an Internet based TV distribution channel.