YouTube to offer local TV
Say wha’? Yep, you heard it right. YouTube has entered into an agreement with Hearst-Argyle Television to add weather, news, and entertainment videos from five local markets. These TV stations include Pittsburgh, Manchester N.H., Boston, Baltimore, and Maryland. The new additions will be dedicated channels on YouTube and marks the first distribution agreement between independant television broadcasters and YouTube. Jordan Hoffner, head of premium content partnerships for YouTube said that they are, "constantly looking at innovative ways to not only bring the YouTube community the best content out there, but also to find ways to bring them the most relevant programming”. While it’s great YouTube is expanding their online videos we’re not sure how relavant this programming is to the average person looking at some poor kids throwing up on roller coasters on YouTube. On the different side of the spectrum, YouTube has actually started to feature EMI music videos and performances which should appeal more to the general and occasional video watcher. Whatcha’ think guys, are you interested?
As long as its better quality then half their videos I think its a great idea. Wish it was local to me tho too…
For some reason when I read this, I thought this is how Apple, Google (YouTube), and TV Stations will bridge the gap and truly turn the AppleTV into “DVR”. Especially with YouTube encoding in the new H264 format, you can imagine getting local news pushed directly to your AppleTV while you are able to download TV shows or movies from iTunes a la carte! …I can dream anyways.
Could this be setting the stage to bump off the need for cable TV and to make it easierto bridge the gap with handsets getting TV through ‘Tinytube’?
Liama I could nto agree more. I guess I can dream as well but with youtube re-encoding their stuff for appltv and geting some legit commercial content it makes the appletv look better and better. I’m curious to see where these agreements lead, seems they are working hard behind the scenes at google to get get more and more content other than the user generated.
Wow: Baltimore AND Maryland.
Oh. Markets.
I’m just curious. . . How Many More Years Until Google Rules The World?