In any interesting move today, and I believe the first of its kind, the BBC has announced that it has made a deal with YouTube to distribute its content on three YouTube channels. You can find the full announcement on the BBC website.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that they’ll be scrapping the TV license anytime soon, as it happens it’s only snippets rather than full programmes – in fact, if anything, it really isn’t aimed at a UK audience, as evidenced by the fact that one of the 3 channels will not even be available to UK residents!

The original article terms the as “groundbreaking and controversial” - while I don’t know that it really goes that far, one thing is clear. When an organisation like the BBC decides to employ online and social networking methods to promote their broadcast content, then it is certainly significant and the likelihood is that others will follow. It’s also shows a level of appreciation of the benefits of these different distribution media and, perhaps, a step towards greater mutual cooperation where appropriate in the future.

This also comes hot on the heels of statements released earlier this year that YouTube was intending to share revenues with content providers. It seems that they haven’t wasted much time in putting that into practice in a large way - so let’s see if some of the other major players and smaller contributors follow suit.

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