YouTube Steps On Hulu’s Toes; Streaming Full CBS TV Shows
Amit Chowdhry | Friday October 10, 2008 | 2,745 views| 2 Comments
CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS) has made an agreement to put full TV shows on Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) subsidiary, YouTube. Google has been selling many TV shows on Google Video for a price in the last few years. When that model didn’t work out, they bought out YouTube. Now that TV shows are streaming for free on Hulu already, YouTube decided to match that service. Problem is that YouTube’s video quality is terrible compared to Hulu. YouTube even copied the Lights On/Off and Theater View feature from Hulu [screenshot below].
Some of the shows that will be played on YouTube will include full episodes of Star Trek, Young and the Restless, Beverly Hills 90210, and MacGuyver. As you can tell by the yellow lines in the play video bar above, YouTube will be advertising like crazy throughout each episode. All full length TV episodes will have this icon next to them: 
Hopefully YouTube will start rolling out the archives of some of the newer hit show on CBS such as CSI, Survivor, How I Met Your Mother, The Unit, and Big Brother. If YouTube and CBS are worried whether this idea will affect DVD sales, they could always use the music approach: link to the DVD purchase link through Amazon.com.
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