Contentinople - Ryan Lawler - News Bits: YouTube Gets More Professional

Written by Ryan Lawler

Friday, April 17. 2009 at 11:20 AM EDT 1 comment

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YouTube Inc. has stepped up its commitment to professionally produced content, rolling out a slight redesign and a new "Shows" tab to highlight full-length TV shows and movies produced by major media companies.

With the new design, the Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)-owned online video portal will feature long-form television and movie content from Sony Pictures Digital Inc. 's Crackle, CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS), Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: LGF), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. , and Starz Entertainment LLC . With the availability of more long-form content, YouTube will also be rolling out more in-stream ads to run against those videos.

Having more professional content -- and having a section that separates it from YouTube's large base of user-generated content (UGC) -- should help increase profitability at the video site, which some analysts estimate loses $470 million a year for Google.

Of course, putting more long-form video on the site will also put YouTube in direct competition with Hulu LLC , NBC Universal , and Fox Broadcasting Co. 's online video joint venture. While YouTube is the clear No. 1 in the online video space, Hulu is growing up fast -- taking second place among online video destinations, according to recent data from Nielsen Online.

In other news:

The founders of peer-to-peer file-sharing site The Pirate Bay were found guilty of copyright infringement by a Swedish court today. Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Carl Lundström were each sentenced to a year in prison and a $905,000 fine.

Although the damages awarded entertainment companies such as Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures were substantial, the amount fell short of the $17.5 million in damages the firms were seeking. And there's little evidence to suggest that the convicted parties could pay the fine even if they wanted to.

In an online press conference after the decision was passed down, Sunde said, "We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."

So much for the video game industry being a recessionary safe haven: Research firm NPD Group Inc. reported that U.S. video game sales fell a whopping 17 percent in March. First-quarter sales in the gaming sector were flat year-over-year, but console sales were lower than expected, with Microsoft's Xbox 360 being the only console to show any growth.