CBS this week announced several deals to make more of its content available online.
The Tiffany network inked a video syndication agreement with Yahoo! Inc. to make local news video from 16 of CBS O&Os available on popular Internet portal. The two will share revenue from advertising sold adjacent to CBS Stations' content on the site.
Yahoo! News users will have access to 10 to 20 local news video stories per day, from each of the 16 major markets. Yahoo! will highlight the local video to users who select a city or ZIP code within a CBS owned station market. The video will be station-branded and can be found on the Yahoo! homepage and throughout Yahoo! News. CBS will be the exclusive provider of local news video from its markets to Yahoo! News.
"This is the first of its kind for a local TV station group--our local TV station video will now be available to millions of Yahoo! News' users everyday, providing them with our CBS Station's extraordinary local news coverage from every one of our markets," said Jonathan Leess, president of CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group.
Yahoo! also made an agreement with Showtime Networks, a CBS Company, to provide free previews of Showtime programs on the Yahoo! TV site. From Oct. 6-13, Yahoo! TV featured select episodes of Showtime's original series, including "Dexter," "Sleeper Cell" and "The L Word."
CBS said these same shows would also be featured on a new Brand Channel it launched on YouTube Inc. The channel is part of content and advertising partnership the companies announced in October. The channel can be found at www.youtube.com/cbs.
The initial run of content available on the CBS Brand Channel includes clips from "Late Show with Dave Letterman," "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," "NCIS" and "CSI: Miami," as well as archival sports footage such as great finishes and upsets from NCAA's March Madness and "CBS News First Look with Katie Couric."
CBS said it would soon build on the initial run of content on the CBS Brand Channel to include additional and daily contributions from CBS Entertainment, CBS News, CBS Sports and Showtime Networks.
