YouTube goes boob tube

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YouTube surfers weary of webcam rants and lo-fi homemade dance routines will now be able to watch real celebrities in professionally produced shows on the popular Google Inc.-owned video site.

Partnering with CBS Corp., YouTube announced on its blog today that it would post full-length episodes of old fan favorites like “MacGyver” and the original “Beverly Hills 90210” along with newer hits like “Dexter” and “Californication” in a bid to bring more advertisers to its highly trafficked site. YouTube is also in talks to add shows from other networks and feature-length films.

Advertisers haven’t always been comfortable linking their products to YouTube content, much of which is user-generated and only a few minutes long, notes Jupiter Research analyst James McQuivey.

For YouTube, that meant running relatively few ads in unobtrusive places for fairly low prices. The site’s revenue is expected to be about $200 million this year, notes Times staffer Jessica Guynn. Google bought the YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006.

But, McQuivey notes, advertisers aren’t squeamish about old-fashioned TV. “Advertisers understand those shows and are happy to sponsor them,” McQuivey says in an e-mail.

The full-length episodes will include streaming ads sold by CBS, which will share revenue with Google.

Most of YouTube’s rivals in the full-episode space have similarly placed ads. Television episodes aren’t hard to find online, thanks to sites like the NBC Universal and News Corp.-owned Hulu.com, theWB.com -- which resurrects the now-defunct teen-friendly network -- and websites for networks themselves, including CBS.

Better late than never. “YouTube comes at it at a large disadvantage,” McQuivey says. “But it has one thing that no one else has: millions of viewers a day.”

This is YouTube’s first attempt to enter the TV-on-demand game since its Wild West days back in 2006, when users freely posted their recordings of televised content. YouTube fell under harsh lawyerly scrutiny while simultaneously raking in viewers, many of whom came for the bootlegged “Daily Show” but stayed for “Evolution of Dance.” It’s still fighting off a billion-dollar lawsuit from Viacom Inc., owner of Paramount Pictures, MTV and Comedy Central, which sued Google claiming copyright infringement.

YouTube, howver, hasn’t been all video snippets. The site has featured some longer-form content, like a pre-broadcast second season premiere of “The Tudors” and some independent films.

In July, YouTube viewers watched about 5 billion videos, according to comScore Video Metrix (the world’s population is about 6.7 billion). That’s 10 times greater than videos available through runner-up Fox Interactive Media. Hulu came in eighth with 119 million videos watched.

Of course, YouTube viewers go to the site for clips, not shows -- as YouTube product manager Shiva Rajaraman acknowledges. “It’s like walking into two different department stores,” he says. “You have different expectations, and you act differently.”

But, Rajaraman notes, reaction has been positive to previously posted long-form content like “The Tudors,” and full-length videos will bring YouTube closer to becoming a clearinghouse for all forms of video. Also, users might be drawn to YouTube for its comments section, absent from most other online TV streaming sites.

‘Participation is merited, and users have an audience for whatever they contribute,’ Rajaraman says.

For now, only a selection of episodes from each show is available (par for the course for online TV), and they’re somewhat hard to find. The episodes aren’t currently hyped on YouTube’s home page (which might explain the relatively low view counts), as YouTube studies its users’ reactions and explores how best to promote full episodes on the site.

Google gained $3.02 or .92% today to $332 in Nasdaq trading.

--Swati Pandey