YouTube and CBS content deal falls apart

No legitimate David Letterman for YouTube

21 February 2007 14:18 GMT / By Amber Maitland

Although Google and US television network CBS had been close to a deal to put CBS TV shows on YouTube.com, the negotiations have fallen apart.

According to the Wall Street Journal, insiders say that the deal was for several years, and involved deals to market CBS radio ads to Google advertisers.

However, the agreement fell apart when the two could not come to a satisfactory conclusion about how many years the deal should last.

The two companies have decided to focus on smaller deals.

According to the WSJ, Google is also in talks with the BBC about bringing content to YouTube.

These content deals mark the way in which YouTube is being taken more seriously by traditional media outlets, some of whom have complained in the past about users posting their copyrighted material illegally to the site.

YouTube is developing technology that will find copyrighted clips and alert the copyright holder to their presence online.