YouTube has expanded its content licensing deals with Hollywood studios to get more movies and TV episodes on the Google-owned web site.
Youtube.com/shows, a new part of the site that is now live, has content from BBC, CBS, Lionsgate, National Geographic, Starz, PBS, Discovery Networks, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Sony's Crackle, and other similar studios. In addition to TV shows, full-length movies are available from MGM, Starz, Lionsgate and several others.
The new YouTube shows channel is available for U.S. users only at the moment, but will expand to other countries in the future.
"This addition is one of many efforts underway to ensure that we're offering you all the different kinds of video you want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to music videos and full-length films and TV shows," a YouTube blog posting said.
The company has a working agreement with Disney to have ESPN and ABC content sponsored through the site, though the relationship between Hollywood and YouTube remains problematic. YouTube has slowly added more copyrighted professional content to the video sharing site, but copyright holders have been growing tired of YouTube's inability to monetize videos.
Furthermore, YouTube will work with Universal on a new premium music video site, Vevo, that will feature all of Univeral's public music videos, the companies recently announced.
Expect YouTube to announce similar partnership agreements in the future, with the company still looking to add as much premium content as possible. Both text and 15-30 second ads are expected to be added into the site in the future, though it should be interesting to see how carefully it's done.
