Disney joins forces with YouTube (DIS, GOOG)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Walt Disney Co.  (NYSE: DIS) is joining forces with Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube video-sharing site.

Under the terms of the deal,  YouTube will offer clips from Disney’s ESPN and ABC networks. The ESPN channel will launch mid-April and the ABC in mid-May, according to paidContent.org, which first reported the story.

The agreement is clearly a win for YouTube, which despite generating about $500 million in revenue is not profitable.  The Wall Street Journal notes that Disney will share the revenue with YouTube from ads sold against its content. It will also test preroll ads and feature ESPN’s video player on its channel.

One downside from Google is that Disney is hedging its bets.  The media company is holding talks with Hulu, a rival video site backed by General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) among others about broadcasting ABC shows.  ESPN is not part of those discussions.

YouTube and Disney had held discussions about showing full-length ABC episodes on the video site but the talks went nowhere, according to the Journal.

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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