Feb 11, 2011 11:56 GMT  ·  By

Google, or rather YouTube, is reportedly close to buying Next New Networks, a company producing original web video content as well as distributing videos created by others. NNN is responsible for some of the most popular regular series in YouTube and some of the more popular individual videos.

YouTube wants to encourage more and more people to create video content for the web, especially in a steady, serialized fashion and NNN has the experience in doing just that.

Talks are in the late-stage, according to the Wall Street Journal, but there are no financial details. Despite having more than one billion views on YouTube, the company hasn't been a great success financially, so Google could snatch it up on the cheap.

Next New Network was founded in 2006 as an online video production company. It started with several shows, but later began working with others, helping them create, distribute and monetize videos for the web.

Among the shows it owns is Key of Awesome, one of the most popular on YouTube, but plenty of others you've probably stumbled upon on the video site. It also has tens of shows from partners, like the hugely popular Auto-Tune the News.

The company has gotten a reputation for helping shows and their creators find just the right audience and also for spotting content that is worth watching.

Google doesn't really want to get into the content creation business any time soon, AOL and Yahoo chasing that market is enough, but it does want YouTube to become much more than just the place you land on when you find a funny video on a blog.

It wants people coming back regularly, it wants them to subscribe to shows, it wants them watching on their TVs. Regular shows help a lot with that and YouTube already has several programs to fund and help creators. With NNN it could take it one step further and have a team dedicated to spotting talent and helping video makers find the audience they're looking for.