YouTube's new channels to challenge TV

Oct 31, 2011, 18:24 GMT

San Francisco - Let the TV wars begin. Google's YouTube is getting the biggest revamp of its short, but spectacular, life with the web search giant sinking a reputed 100 million dollars into an effort to create 100 professionally produced channels from the likes of Madonna, Ashton Kutcher and the Wall Street Journal.

Google announced the initiative at the weekend, just days after revealing that it was revamping its Google TV technology, which it hopes will marry existing television services with the interactivity and searchability of the internet.

The Google TV platform is included in some televisions from Sony and in set-top boxes from Logitech, and aims to give viewers the ability to find, program and record with ease content from traditional cable and satellite television as well as from YouTube and other web providers such as Netflix.

But Google hopes that its new YouTube initiative will help elevate the world's most-popular video site from a repository of cute home and music videos to the go-to place for filmed entertainment, enabling it to finally attract the levels of advertising that its massive audience warrants.

'Our goal with this channels' expansion is to bring an even broader range of entertainment to YouTube, giving you more reasons to keep coming back again and again,' said Google executive Robert Kyncl in a blog posting.

'And for advertisers, these channels will represent a new way to engage and reach their global consumers.'

YouTube said some of the channels will go online soon, though most will start next year.

Some of the other personalities and media organizations involved in creating new channels include basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal, who will pilot a comedy channel, rapper Jay-Z, skateboard legend Tony Hawk, production company Lionsgate, and news organization Thompson Reuters.

Google is said to have paid the producers an estimated 100 million dollars in advance fees against future advertising revenue. Some of the payments are thought to be a large as 5 million dollars per channel.

News of the new effort comes amid increasing speculation that Google's rival Apple is also reinvigorating its efforts to extend its reach into the living room with a new Apple TV device.

The speculation intensified last week when the biography of the late Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs, quoted him as saying that he had finally cracked the conundrum of how to make a easy-to-use interactive television, and from analyst reports that Apple was ordering TV-related components from suppliers.