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Yahoo, Current TV Strike Web TV Partnership

Yahoo has struck a forward-thinking alliance with Current TV, Al Gore's cable TV channel. The service will combine professional and user-generated video clips. Current's editors will have control over the content that airs on Yahoo's video site, weeding out videos containing offensive or copyrighted materials. Most clips will be preceded by a 15- or 30-second commercial, marking the first time Yahoo has included ads on user-generated content. It's a counterintuitive partnership for several reasons: For one thing, fierce Yahoo rival Google is a partner and investor in Current TV. For another, you'd think a cable TV show that centers around consumer-generated video would want to strike a partnership with a bigger video site, like YouTube or News Corp.'s MySpace. To the latter point, it seems that Current and Al Gore wanted to go for something a little less chaotic than what's on offer at YouTube and MySpace. The service will be called the Yahoo Current Network, and is set to begin today with four channels: news-related segments, travel, sports and cars. Each will feature one professionally produced segment per day and eight to 10 segments contributed by users. The service will be overseen by former "Daily Show" executive producer Madeleine Smithberg. Indeed, Google has provided content on Current's cable TV channel; its segments have been broadcast twice an hour, and mainly feature videos submitted by Google users. Now, Google's segments will be scaled back to once an hour, and the other slot will belong to Yahoo. "Why wouldn't you want to work with both of these great companies?" said Al Gore. "Yahoo is very different from Google. Yahoo for a long time has been much more in the media space."

Read the whole story at The New York Times »

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