The UK’s smallest private terrestrial web Five, recently inked a deal with YouTube to make available 3000 plus hours of content available free on their website.
This move comes in the wake of other such partnerships made recently between YouTube and Channel 4, a British broadcaster.
The second web in the world to have entered a deal of this nature with YouTube, Five will include programmes such as ‘Neighbours’, ‘Home and Away’ and even local hit TV shows like ‘The Hotel Inspector’ and ‘The Gadget Show’. All programmes will be available, however, only in the United Kingdom.
Five’s deal with YouTube is similar to the Channel 4 tie-up, and is non-exclusive, while allowing the web to keep on offering video-on-demand on its own websites as well as other third party websites and services.
Hit fairly badly by the decline in UK advertising, Five’s new deal with YouTube should provide to be a fairly profitable venture – even though critics insist that such partnerships only dilute value of its airtime.
Dawn Airey, Chairman and CEO, Five said: “This is a tremendously important deal for Five because in one fell swoop it extends the reach of our content beyond linear TV and our own existing websites to a new audience of younger, upwardly mobile, and web-savvy individuals — an audience that advertisers are equally desirous of attracting. Importantly, it extends the availability of legally available long-form content online, thereby dealing a blow to web piracy.”