http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6411017.stm

The BBC has struck a content deal with YouTube, the web's most popular video sharing website, owned by Google.

Three YouTube channels – one for news and two for entertainment – will showcase short clips of BBC content.

The BBC hopes that the deal will help it reach YouTube's monthly audience of more than 70 million users and drive extra traffic to its own website.

The corporation will also get a share of the advertising revenue generated by traffic to the new YouTube channels.

Three deals in one

The deal with Google – non-exclusive and set to run for several years – will establish three different YouTube services:

   * BBC: One of the BBC's two entertainment channels will be a "public service" proposition, featuring no advertising.

   It will show clips like trailers and short features that add value – for example, video diaries of David Tennant showing viewers around the set of Dr Who or BBC correspondent Clive Myrie explaining how difficult it is to report from the streets of Baghdad.

   The channel's main purpose is to popularise current programming and drive traffic back to the BBC's own website, and point the audience to the BBC's pages, where they can watch or download programmes in full, once the BBC Trust approves the corporation's catch-up television proposal, called iPlayer.

   screen grab of YouTube partner channel page
   The BBC's channels are on YouTube's partner pages

   * BBC Worldwide: The second entertainment channel will feature self-contained clips – about three to six minutes long – mining popular programmes in the BBC's archive. Excerpts from Top Gear, The Mighty Boosh and nature programmes presented by David Attenborough are top candidates for this channel.

   This YouTube page will carry advertising such as banner adverts, and possibly pre-roll adverts (shown as part of the video clip) as well. Controversially, the BBC Worldwide page – adverts and all – can be seen in the UK.

   BBC Worldwide insists that this is not a new departure, as BBC magazines like Top Gear and channels like BBC World and UK Living already do carry advertising.

   * BBC News: The news channel, which will be launched later this year, will show about 30 news clips per day. It will be advertising funded and similar to deals with Yahoo USA and Real Networks.

   Because of the advertising, these clips can be seen outside the UK only. Any UK users clicking on a link to one of the news clips on YouTube will get a message that they have no access to this clip.

Woo! Legal Doctor Who clips on YouTube! Is this Online now? I'd prefer it if these BBC clips went on GVid as well, but I supose this is better than nothing.

So in the UK you can only get BBC and BBC Worldwide? I'm not that woried about the news but as the BBC is a UK Company it's a bit weird that you can't get all their content in the UK.

I'm in France and I can see the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/BBCWorldwide
http://www.youtube.com/BBC

Cool, they posted Top Gear clips on there. I can see that being very popular all over the world.

For those who've never seen Harry Enfield that is an absolute must watch.

Currently /BBC has 31 videos and /BBCWorldwide has 78. Not sure if there is any overlap of videos though.

Mrrix32 – The reason why they are not showing News on youtube is because they already offer that for free on their website, which UK users have access to.

well done BBC. at least they seem to "get" it, unlike the braindead idiots at Viacom.

Utills – I think that the reason we can't access news content from the UK is that the BBC's mandate (quaint as it may seem to anyone outside this country) does not allow it to mix advertising with news in its UK operations. The BBC is a government-owned corporation with public-service responsibilities, which (believe it or not) collects its own tax to pay for the content that you are now enjoying! But don't thank me: I don't have a TV, so I don't pay the tax.

Anyway, the news is always better quality on the radio: www.bbc.co.uk/radio/