News Corp. and NBC Universal will distribute TV programs and movie clips through the Web sites of cable giant Comcast, the companies said Monday.
The distribution deal builds on the recently announced joint venture between News Corp. and NBC that aims to take on Google's YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing site that often features unauthorized programming from the two media powerhouses.
The NBC/News Corp. venture plans to launch a video site this summer that will showcase thousands of hours of TV shows and movies. In addition to Comcast, that content will be also distributed by AOL, MSN, Yahoo and News Corp.'s MySpace.com.
"Comcast's participation is yet another affirmation of our strategy to place top-quality, protected content in as many places as possible," NBC CEO Jeff Zucker said in a statement.
Under Monday's agreement, Comcast said it will feature NBC and News Corp. programming on its upcoming video site Fancast.net, as well as on Comcast.net. In turn, Comcast will distribute its own video content, such as from E! and the Golf Channel, onto the joint video site of News Corp. and NBC. As part of the deal, the two companies plan to use video distribution and media management technology from ThePlatform, which is owned by Comcast.
