A group of US media giants including
Fox,
Viacom,
NBC and
CBS are reportedly
in negotiations to launch a video site to compete with
YouTube.
The companies have reopened talks to form a joint venture that would feature
video content from all four networks, according to a report in
The
Wall Street Journal.
News of the talks comes only a few days after
Yahoo
confirmed that it will be severing ties with
Current
TV, with which it had been partnering on another
YouTube
competitor.
The venture is reportedly an effort by the four media giants to gain online
advertising revenue from internet postings of TV shows, something that media
groups have been accusing YouTube of doing since its launch.
With more than 100 million videos served daily, YouTube is the top video
sharing site on the internet.
The company has a policy of removing any copyrighted materials at the request
of the owner. But clips, and in some cases entire episodes, of dozens of popular
TV shows are uploaded by users daily and can easily be found on the site.
YouTube has avoided legal action on several occasions in the past year either
by striking deals
with media outlets or
removing copyrighted
clips.
The video sharing site was
acquired by
Google in October for $1.8bn in stock.
Google also
has video-sharing deals with several major studios.
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