• Reuters/Adweek, Thursday, July 17, 2008 11 AM

Google confirmed a pair of new deals for its YouTube video-sharing site on Wednesday. The company first reached a deal to feature clips from Lions Gate Entertainment Inc on YouTube. The deal gives viewers access to scenes from Lions Gate movies, accompanied by ads and a link to an electronic sell-through. Some heralded the move as the first big step taken by Google in recent years to sign on a major traditional media company as a YouTube partner.

"There are things in our library like 'Dirty Dancing' that have been watched tens of millions of times and it will be nice to get paid for that and to set viewers in the direction of buying movies," Lions Gate Vice Chairman Michael Burns told Reuters.

Separately, Adweek reports that Google will now offer YouTube clips as a service to TiVo subscribers, beginning Thursday. The partnership gives TiVo owners the ability to stream online video clips directly to their set-top box. This is the first such streaming deal for TiVo, despite the company's content distribution partnerships with more than 60 Internet sites. According to TiVo, users have downloaded more than 27 million pieces of content, but executives believe the YouTube deal will quickly outpace the other partnerships in terms of usage. "Will there be a time when people turn on their TV sets and watch YouTube videos instead of TV shows? Time will tell," said one TiVo exec.

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