Apparently, YouTube's been quite busy behind the scenes, despite being shunned by Viacom. The NYT reports that they've managed to line up over 1,000 partnerships with content providers at a pace of 200 a quarter, most of them smaller, independent outlets.

The big fish in the growing pond though is the BBC, which YouTube has locked up for a multi-year deal to create two entertainment channels and a news channel. Interestingly, the news and one of the entertainment channels will have ads placed by AdSense. According to the BBC, there will "possibly pre-roll adverts (shown as part of the video clip) as well." On top of that, because of the ads, the news channel will be off-limits to UKers because it's ad-supported.

I'm suddenly not as psyched as I was when I first read the headline... – Matt Buchanan

Google Courts Small YouTube Deals, and Very Soon, a Larger One [NYT]
BBC strikes Google-YouTube deal [BBC]

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