YouTube signs Sony, preps site for studio content
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.
Some of YouTube's most-watched contributors will get some competition from the likes of Sony Pictures.
(Credit: YouTube)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.
Representatives from Sony Pictures declined to comment.
Movies from Sony Pictures will only trickle on to YouTube, at least initially. YouTube has agreed to display the films using a video player from Crackle, Sony Pictures' own video site. The studio will control all the advertising for the films and Crackle will also get credit for the traffic.
Also on Thursday afternoon, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, suggested during a conference call about the company's earnings that YouTube could someday charge fees.
"With respect to how it'll get monetized, our first priority is on the advertising side," Schmidt said. "We do expect over time to see micropayments and other forms of subscription models coming as well, but our initial focus is on advertising."
YouTube, acquired by Google in 2006, also announced it is launching a test version of Google TV Ads Online. Advertisers will be enabled to insert their advertisements into the ad breaks within TV shows displayed online. But to do this, advertisers must first enter bids for the shows it wants.
YouTube said pre-roll and post-roll ads may also be bid on.
While most of the TV shows and films YouTube acquired are at least several years old, the Sony news marks YouTube's most significant Hollywood deal yet. YouTube was once called a "rogue" by Viacom executives, who claimed in a 2007 lawsuit that the company encouraged the posting of unauthorized copies of its material to the site.
The feeling by many in Hollywood was that YouTube was hostile to content creators. But over the past year, Google and YouTube have made the service more attractive to big movie and TV companies. The site has upgraded the quality of its streaming video and began filtering content to eliminate pirated material.
Another concern was that the site offered no copy protections on its streams, according to film industry insiders. YouTube solved that problem with Sony Pictures at least, by using the studio's own video player.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
Making the process as seamless as possible is the most important thing.
Not sure if i am totally behind the whole Sony Crackle player thing, since it is sort of split from Youtube player, but it could be a positive, depends how it will be done.
Also, copyright issues again? Are they serious?
Few examples of ripping content from Youtubes:
1) screen recorders
2) download interceptors
3) connection monitors and downloaders. (download Helper and Orbit being good examples)
Quite simply, anything they do will be ripped apart, with time.
These tips will spread all over, we, "the internet", will make tools, Google change encryption, we update, etc.
They'd be better off just shoving some random crappy encryption layer on it and say "there, it is protected", but it will always be a lie because nothing will be 100% secure if it is to be decrypted to be displayed.
The only way would be encryption hardware on every computer, encrypted memory spaces, etc.
The chances of that happening are basically zero, hell, null.
There are thousands of people who rely on the user-generated content for their YouTube experience.
The 'little guy' isn't considered in this situation, and in the end they will not use youTube anymore.
When I go to http://www.youtube.com/shows I get a 500 server error. I guess the launch is a bit bumpy.
A more impressive, relevant deal signing would've been one that means YouTube will stop deleting/muting videos that supposedly contain Sony's work.
Like every great online phenomenon; It stats off small, grass roots. It gains an underground type following. It blows up, becomes huge. Then the banner ads get bigger. Then they get bought by a big corp ( i would say evil corp, but that would be redundant ). It looses what made it great in the first place. It dies ( though by now it's too dumb to fall over)
then something better crops up from the ashes!!!
It's the DotCom circle of life !!!!!
Youtube....i'll miss you.
- by April 18, 2009 7:58 AM PDT
- Exciting news, especially the way Greg Sandoval writes it up!
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