YouTube Goes Long Format, - Offers CBS Shows

On Friday YouTube announced that it would start offering full-length episodes of TV series like “Dexter,” “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Star Trek” through a deal with CBS. The catch for users of the site is that these longer videos will include preroll, midroll and postroll ads in each episode. Senior product manager for YouTube, Shiva Rajaraman, said the company is trying to match “the right ad format for the right content experience.” NYTimes article.

CNET To Be Acquired By CBS

It's not quite Microsoft / Yahoo! but it's the largest acquisition of a web company in some time. CBS announced Thursday that it would pay $11.50 a share in an all-cash tender offer for CNET. The deal is worth $1.8 billion and vaults the company forward in it's vision of becoming a bigger Web player. "There are very few opportunities to acquire a profitable, growing, well-managed Internet company like CNET Networks," CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said in an interview. The deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year. The LA Times has more here.

Star Trek Fans Rejoice - Original Series Free Online (With US IP Address)

CBS has put the entire original Star Trek series online, 3 seasons (1966 - 1969), for free viewing. It would appear however that you require a US ip address as I am unable to see any of the content. Interestingly, when I click to play the shows I get a Star Trek like computer voice telling me that "This content is currently unavailable." Come on CBS, all I wanted was a Sunday morning matinee of "The Trouble With Tribbles"!

CBS Mobile & Loopt Bring Location Based Ads to Cell Phones

The New York Times is reporting this morning that CBS will announce the introduction of a new location based ad campaign customized for a person’s location and delivered to their cell phone via CBS Mobile News and CBS Mobile Sports web sites. “Mobile phone users already see ads on Web pages. But with the CBS service, instead of a more or less random banner popping up on the screen, people who have chosen to participate might see an ad from a business in the neighborhood, even one within a block or two.” The experiment is, for now, limited to two carriers that Loopt has signed deals with, Sprint Nextel and Boost Mobile. If it's an opt in service, and the result is no more ads than would normally be displayed, I really wouldn't have objections. Then again, I live in a very small market and it will probably be a very long time before this type of service makes it way here. I also don't subscribe to the privacy concerns of many... I just don't think that anyone is going to be that interested in where I am at any given time.

RealNetworks pays bloggers to create buzz for Big Brother

Wired has an interesting story about RealNetworks and its stealth bloggers. RealNetworks serves up the live feeds from CBS's Big Brother House and apparently pays bloggers to write about what they see. According to the Wired article, Real pays 3 independent bloggers to write about the antics seen on the pay only feed and has an in house blogger. Lori, the author of Silly Hamsters blog, said Real "pay(s) me a certain amount of money to cover the live feeds, and I can write what I want to write. I'm not told what to write; my opinion is my opinion only,". She was approached by RealNetworks after having posted a series of posts on her personal blog. I find the practice a little deceptive if the bloggers aren't disclosing their association openly on their blog, even if they were open in response to the wired questions.