BBC announces YouTube partnership

The Beeb has announced a partnership with YouTube which will involve the launch of BBC channels on the video sharing platform, offering YouTube users legitimate access to clips of BBC programmes and some bespoke content generated by the Beeb for the video site. Some of the content will be accompanied by advertising, especially when accessed outside the UK, but some will not (news based content in particular), with YouTube seeing a BBC association more as a traffic generator than a source of revenue. Any revenue generated, however, will be shared with the Corporation. It will be interesting to see how other commercial webcasters respond to the deal - given the opposition in some quarters to the proposals that BBC websites should carry advertising when accessed from out side the UK (the BBC Trust, by the way, has put off making a decision on non-UK BBC advertising). I'm also not entirely sure how the deal will affect the masses of BBC content already uploaded illegitimately on YouTube. We haven't heard of any BBC move to order that content to be removed, which is good news for me, because I'm still only half way through the Yes Prime Minister series someone has kindly uploaded for me to watch. The Beeb, of course, is getting ready to launch its own on demand video service the iPlayer, though that will use a Windows Media Player based download system rather than a YouTube style Flash video streaming service.