 "Joost Strikes Turner, Sony Program Deal")
Online video network Joost landed programming deals with Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Sony Pictures Television and Hasbro Inc., as it prepares to launch to the public later this month.
The service, founded by the creators of Internet phone service Skype and file-sharing service Kazaa, aims to be for the Internet what cable television is to living rooms by offering feature-length, higher-quality videos.
Joost differs from the snack-sized fare of video clips uploaded by users of top online video service, Google Inc.’s YouTube, which streams some 100 million videos over the Web on a daily basis.
“There’s a huge hunger for long-form, high-quality online entertainment content,” Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, executive vice president of content strategy at Joost, said.
Turner, a division of the world’s largest media company Time Warner Inc., will offer Joost shows from news network CNN and Adult Swim.
Sony Pictures Television, a unit of electronics maker Sony Corp., will offer vintage shows from its archives including episodes of “Charlie’s Angels,” “Spiderman,” “Starsky & Hutch” and “NewsRadio.”
The announcement of more programming partners comes a day after Google responded to a $1 billion lawsuit brought on by Viacom Inc., charging the company with willfully infringing on its copyrights.
Google on Monday denied nearly all of Viacom’s claims and pushed for a jury trial.
Since Viacom’s suit in March, some big media companies have held off on signing broader distribution deals with YouTube as they weigh the merits of pursuing a deal or taking legal action, while eyeing Google’s growing clout in the advertising world.
Meanwhile, media companies have forged their own plans to find distribution on the Internet and are flocking to offer their programming to services that market its copyright protection systems.
Viacom announced a distribution deal with Joost shortly after suing Google.
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