Google Inc.'s YouTube confirmed a Wall Street Journal story that it has reached a revenue-sharing deal with Hearst-Argyle Television in which local TV stations will be paid when users of the video-sharing site watch their programming. This marks the first time the video-sharing site has paid for local TV content.Under terms of the deal, YouTube will offer programming from stations in Sacramento, Calif., Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Manchester, N.H. The channels will feature news, weather, entertainment, local high school football and basketball content as well as original local programming.
Since Google bought YouTube last October for $1.65 billion, the companies have been bombarded with legal complaints over the use of copyrighted works on the popular video-sharing site and they have been busy signing deals to pre-empt further legal battles
Google struck a deal with EMI Group last week that will allow it to show the record label's collection of music videos and artist performances on YouTube. Before that deal Google had successfully negotiated licensing deals with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, CBS and the BBC making the world's major music companies official YouTube partners.
For Web surfers, this deal will allow YouTube users not only to watch and play authorized professionally produced music videos and recordings from EMI artists, but also to incorporate elements of these videos in YouTube users own user-generated content.
The record label will rely on YouTube's content management tools to track EMI content and compensate its artists and police copyright infringements.
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