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Typically in the media spotlight for contentiously hosting copyrighted movie and television clips, Google-owned video-sharing Web site YouTube has announced a new deal with American broadcaster CBS that will bring full-length episodes of popular television shows to the hugely popular online service.
YouTube partners with CBS to provide online streams of Dexter, Californication, Star Trek and more. Image: Annie Mole/Flickr.
Revealed this past Friday on the its official blog, YouTube has partnered with CBS Corp. to provide full-length streams of both new and classic television shows such as Dexter, Californication, McGyver and the original Beverly Hills 90210 and Star Trek.
“This is about giving the community what they want,” Hoffner said in a Hollywood Reporter article. “Plus, we’re not blind to the growth of long form on other sites.”
The content deal is a business move designed to generate more advertising revenue through YouTube, which has often proved to be off putting for advertisers due to the brief play time of most of the site’s user-generated video clips. In order to help garner that revenue, CBS will sell advert space that will be included throughout the content streaming.
Access to newer and classic TV shows is by no means an industry first for YouTube, with the likes of NBC Universal and News Corp’s Hulu.com, and also Warner Bros-owned WB.com, providing full episodes accompanied by streamed advertising.
However, streamed content coupled with the massive demographic appeal of YouTube could finally see advertisers flocking to the site. Specifically, according to the number crunchers at comScore, YouTube viewers watched around 5 billion videos during July, while only around 119 million videos were watched through Hulu.com.
Google hopes to follow its CBS streaming deal with progressively more television shows and feature films provided by various other networks and media distributors.
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