YouTube (GOOG) Licenses Content No One Wants

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Google’s (GOOG) YouTube has cut a deal with Digital Music Group (DMGI) to license 4,000 hours of video content from the golden age of TV. DMGI will receive revenue from the advertising that runs on pages showing the content.

YouTube has not been able to license video content from major studios or TV networks, but the move is a poor alternative. The arrangement will allow YouTube viewers to watch classic shows like "I Spy" and "Gumby".

AOL launched a similar service several months ago. "In2TV" does not seem to have created much buzz or audience for the web portal which has not said anything about the traffic for the service.

The core issue remains that many consumers would rather watch pirated premium content from file sharing services and from sites like YouTube and News Corp (NWS) MySpace than oldies content which is available legally. This vexes both the content owners and the video sites, but their is a reason "Gumby" is not longer on TV. No one wants to watch it.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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