14 DAY TRIAL // Google and its online video sharing service YouTube recently signed a deal with Hearst-Argyle Television to create five new channels for five cities where the partner company is currently broadcasting: Boston, Manchester, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. According to Ars Technica, the agreement will bring some new channels hosted by YouTube, all of them offering weather, news, entertainment clips, local high school sports and some other videos uploaded by the local community.
"We have invested significant resources in our growing digital media efforts," Terry Mackin, executive VP of Heart-Argyle Television said according to the same source. "With Google and YouTube, we can now better engage users and advertisers with our award-winning local video content and with new user-generated content while further broadening our reach beyond the boundaries of our media markets," he added.
Of course, the agreement is not so important, as the online video sharing service is currently owning more than 1000 partnerships. The number was confirmed after the Viacom removal evolved into a lawsuit and was meant to struggle against the enemies of the service. Obviously, the number was increased with an impressive amount of deals signed by the parent company Google, most of them being meant to add more content to YouTube.
However, the partnership with Hearst-Argyle Television shows us that YouTube tends to replace the traditional media and become a real television because most of the content available on the old-fashioned box is now published on the online video sharing website. The differences are many but in time, YouTube managed to reach its goal and to attract all kinds of clips, including sports, movies, trailers and the most important, the user-generated videos. As you might know, the YouTube officials sustained the number of visitors was boosted just after the Viacom removal due to a considerable amount of homemade clips.