Youtube has had hulu envy for while. It has a newly designed desitnation pages for professional content such as TV shows and movies. They anounced licensing deals with sony and others.
Move over Hotforwords, Lonelygirl15, and all the other YouTube stars. The video site is bringing in more professionally made content and plans to make it a marquee product.
The Internet’s largest video site on Thursday announced that it has struck deals with a host of entertainment companies, including Sony Pictures, CBS (parent company of CNET News), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate, Starz, and the BBC, to acquire “thousands” of TV episodes and hundreds of films. The new content will only be available in the United States.
YouTube executives also said during a conference call that they have redesigned part of its Web site to create separate areas for professionally made content. On the site’s front door will be two new tabs.
“The ‘Shows’ tab allows you to browse shows by genre, network, title and popularity,” YouTube said in a statement. “The ‘Subscriptions’ tab will grant logged-in users one-click access to fresh content from their favorite creators.”
At this point, it appears the most significant partnership is with Sony Pictures, one of the largest Hollywood film studios. The studio has agreed to post several full-length feature films and TV shows to YouTube. Some of the TV shows include, “Bewitched,” and “Charlies Angels” and among the films are “Blue Lagoon,” “Single White Female,” and “Nowhere to Run.” CNET reported earlier this month that the companies were in talks about a feature-film deal.