STV and Google MDs discuss YouTube partnership deal
Matt Brittin, managing director of Google UK, and Bobby Hain, managing director of STV, discuss the commercial deal which will see the Scottish broadcaster share 2,500 hours of its production content and programme archive with YouTube.
At yesterday's announcement of the deal it was disclosed that STV content would begin to be made available through YouTube by 'late summer' which would be advertised against by both companies.
The partnership will mean that STV is able to grow its international audience, allowing Scottish content to be made available to a wider audience, while Hain explained that he also hoped it would open up access to amatuer creative content being created for the channel online as well.
Content will range from drama to factual and include classic Scottish football moments too.
"YouTube will become a very easy place to access STV material going forward. Crucially we will also benefit commercially from that operation and in the same way that our television business has been advertiser funded for fifty plus years, so too is our business model with YouTube where both STV and YouTube will sell commercials and people watching content, whether it is 15 minutes or half an hour, will watch commercials just like they do on TV. That will enable us to continue to invest in high quality content going forward," explained Hain.
Brittin added that he was pleased to have agreed the deal, similar to those already in place with Channel 4 and Five, that allows STV's content to be delivered through YouTube.
He continued: "It is very clear that there is a community and an audience there that are watching video and discovering new types of video and commercially we can take this content to a new audience. The benefit to STV is that we can find it a new audience for some of its archive content and by both selling advertising against that content, with STV taking the majority share of that revenue it’s helping to invest in a new generation of STV content."