JumpTV, which offers "ethnic" television on the Net, said it will announce a deal Friday to offer some shows for free on online video service Joost. As expected, JumpTV will appear on Joost--initially with Spanish-language series from Colombia, Chile and Peru, and an Arabic-language comedy, the company said.
Canada-based JumpTV offers 270 channels of programming from 70 countries, including Albania, Bahrain, Pakistan and Korea on a subscription and a free basis.
Joost, which uses the same peer-to-peer filing sharing technology that has upset the music industry, was launched by the founders of Skype and Kazaa in January as an ad-supported Internet television network.
A deal to distribute programming from Viacom's MTV Networks and Paramount movies studio has helped boost Joost's profile.
Channels in other languages from JumpTV currently slated to launch on Joost include Romanian, Turkish, Russian and Bengali.
