TVSquad

The YouTube phenomenon is certainly making for some interesting business arrangements. It seems like every "old guard" media company is either striking deals with YT to make sure their content is legally shown on the service. But now that Google is in the picture, it seems like companies are banding together to fight the online behemoth and create their own product. Some companies have done both.

Take NBC, for example. Last year they struck a deal with YT to create a channel for them to place legal clips of their shows on the service. But now, they've decided to join forces with News Corp., the owner of the FOX network, to create an online video site to show TV shows and movies from both companies. The networks will leverage their content partnership deals with Yahoo, MySpace (owned by News Corp.) and our corporate benefactors at AOL to distribute and link to the videos. This LA Times article goes into the details.

The most interesting part of this article is the fact that NBC and News Corp. waited to strike the deal because they wanted to bring Viacom in on the agreement, as well. But when Viacom decided to sue Google instead, the remaining two companies went ahead and made the deal (I guess Disney wasn't interested). It's interesting because none of these moves -- the lawsuits and the deal-striking -- were made until Google bought YouTube. This makes perfect sense; why spend money and resources to go after a little company with no money? But now that YT is part of the Google machine, all bets are off.

I wonder if the folks at Google knew this was going to happen when they decided to by YT. I'd imagine they did; this is a company that is so thought out that none of their products ever go out of Beta mode (if I ever see an official release of Gmail, I'll pass out from the surprise), so I think they probably realize the old media would have it out for them as soon as the transaction went through. Which means they're ready for anything, including billion-dollar lawsuits or mega-sized competitors. This is going to be fun to watch.

[via Mediabistro]