Google box

The Insider is thoroughly smitten with the news that the BBC has struck a content deal with YouTube, the web’s most popular video-sharing website, owned by Google. As reported on the BBC news website, three YouTube channels—one for news and two for entertainment—will showcase short clips of BBC content. There will be a ‘public service’ channel, featuring no advertising and showing short features that ‘add value’. Apologies for the media babble, but it’s their phraseology—they give as an example, video diaries of BBC correspondent Clive Myrie explaining how difficult it is to report from the streets of Baghdad. They could just put up a slide that says “like getting your head repeatedly stamped on by John Prescott in killer heels while listening to Charlotte Church singing Wagner” but I suppose that would be too obvious.

There will also be a second entertainment channel featuring the likes of Top Gear, from which three- to six-minute clips will be harvested for download. For the record I trust Richard