This deal (Lost Remote) shows that while Google is getting the YouTubian glory, Yahoo is still paying attention to things that, in the end, will also matter quite a bit. From the release:
CBS Television Stations, a division of CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS) (NYSE:CBS.A), and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced an exclusive video syndication agreement in which local news video from 16 of CBS’s owned stations will be made available on Yahoo! to the Internet’s largest news audience. The relationship, which begins tomorrow, marks the first video agreement between a network-owned television station group and an Internet news provider. CBS and Yahoo will share revenue from advertising sold adjacent to CBS Stations’ content on the site.
Yahoo has moved a lot of chips to Local, and in time I expect that bet to payoff, at least in the marketplace – it remains to be seen if Yahoo wins the table.
(BTW, CBS also pushes feeds of its local videos into Google Maps. And that might be how we get our local news at some point. At some point….)
Yahoo pushes a lot of vids, but to its own users. Youtube is SPREADING. When is the last time you saw an embedded Yahoo video? It’s all about the Youtube in my opinion.
Alexa may suck in a lot of ways, but you can’t argue with this graph:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=1y&size=large&compare_sites=&y=r&url=youtube.com
Five years from now we will look back a shake our heads at the deals made by some very smart companies as they navigate this changing business landscape. This could be one that CBS television stations grow to regret. The best local portal is still up for grabs in the online world. CBS just helped make Yahoo a more attractive local portal and in turn made their own station’s websites less locally relevant. As John accurately points out, it’s not difficult to peer into a future where your favorite local news outlet is http://www.yahoo.com as opposed to KCBS. And by the way, what’s the more profitable business model – content creation or aggregation – yep!