• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 16, 2006

It's clear that TV networks are still experimenting to come up with the best way to place programs on the Web.

This morning, CBS and Yahoo unveiled yet another variation. A new deal between the companies calls for Yahoo to start offering news clips from 16 local CBS affiliates. Each will offer between 10 and 20 news video clips per day, while Yahoo will sell ads and share the revenue with CBS.

This deal marks the latest in a myriad of different strategies TV companies employ to distribute content on the Web. Consider, TV networks now sell entire shows on iTunes, stream programs from their own Web sites, distribute series on social networking sites, debut programs on portals, place short clips on YouTube and cut deals with Google.

As the different models proliferate, it looks like it will take quite a while before a one-size-fits-all approach to distributing video on the Internet emerges--if one ever does. With text-based articles, users can pretty much go to aggregators like Google News or Yahoo News, type in search terms, and call up links to most available stories. But video still is harder to find from central aggregators--though companies like Google, AOL and others recently have vastly improved their video search capabilities.

Yahoo, meanwhile, obviously is continuing to build out its offerings. Despite the bad press the company has received lately based on softening ad sales--not to mention its public failure to land a deal with Facebook--Yahoo still can offer content creators the type of exposure that they can't yet get on their own.