The latest news from YouTube is that they have announced a deal last Monday November 10th, 2008 with MGM to host some of the studio’s content. This new move is the latest effort by Google’s YouTube to position itself as the player to be used for commercial online video space.
The initial offers by MGM library have been pretty disappointing. It will feature such videos as episodes of “American Gladiators” and clips from “Legally Blonde.”
Even though the initial offers aren’t great this is the step in the right direction for YouTube since it already dominates the user-generated content market. If they can get into Hollywood and get majority of this content as well it would be a great step for Google’s YouTube.
Even though YouTube is dominating the user-generated content videos it still has stiff competition with the likes of Hulu which has had 6.3 million visitors in September (according to Nielsen) and more than 100 sponsors. So if YouTube wants to get into this market of Hollywood they will definitely need to work at it to beat the competition.
This latest deal with MGM is just one of the many deals YouTube has made in the recent past. YouTube has already made deals with both Lionsgate and CBS, and the independent film “The Princess of Nebraska”. On this indepedent films website they showcased new features such as “Theater View” and “Lights Out” mode for longer films.
There however may be some issues standing in the way of YouTube and its success in Hollywood. Google is in the middle of a $1 billion copyright lawsuit with Viacom. Basically what Viacom is claiming is that YouTube’s business model is a criminal enterprise.
YouTube will provide services using its VideoID technology to find MGM content that may be up illegally and let the studio decide if they want to remove it or put advertising on it.
In addition, MGM still does not fully trust YouTube as a full-fledged distributor but this may change in time.
MGM co-president Jim Packer says he feels that YouTube’s platform isn’t ideal for having 30 to 40 movies up at once and feels more comfortable having a site such as Hulu have all those movies up at once. Note that Hulu currently only supports the US where YouTube supports global traffic.
Source: MGM to Post Full Films on YouTube [The New York Times]
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