NBC, News Corp. to launch video-sharing site

News Corp. the company that owns MySpace and U.S. media giant NBC Universal are joining forces to launch a video-sharing service to compete with Google Inc.-owned YouTube.

News Corp. and NBC announced Thursday that they are developing an internet video site that would include TV shows and movies, as well as clips that visitors could incorporate into their own videos and share with others.

The companies are using their partnerships with other media and technology companies, such as Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, Time Warner Inc.'s AOLand News Corp.-owned MySpace, in a bid to reach an audience that would rival YouTube's.

Alliance would connect audience, advertisers

The size of the audience would be critical to the business, which the companies hope will allow them to regain some of the advertising revenue that has been flowing to the internet.

The site would follow an ad-funded business model, serving up commercial notices to site visitors viewing and sharing the videos for free. The partners also plan to distribute their videos as a bundle that they would send to websites that already have large online audiences.

Cadbury Schweppes PLC, Cisco Systems Inc., Esurance Inc., Intel Corp. and General Motors Corp. are to be the service's first advertisers.

Companies seek control of content

The site is expected to launch in the summer, featuring popular TV shows such as NBC's Heroes and The Office, and The Family Guy and 24 from News Corp.-owned Fox. Movie downloads would be supplied by the Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox studios.

The service would support personalized video playlists, "mashups" or audience-created remixes, online communities and video searches, the companies said.

Yahoo, MSN, AOL and MySpace will be able to stream video from the site through a player embedded in a web page.

The companies hope that by launching their own service, they will gain greater control over content they own. Copyrighted material such as clips from NBC's Saturday Night Live sketch comedy show have appeared on YouTube after being uploaded by fans.

Viacom Inc. launched a lawsuit against Google a week ago for failing to keep its TV shows from being uploaded to YouTube.

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion US in November 2006.