The Walt Disney Co said on Monday it had agreed to provide short-form videos from its ABC and ESPN television properties to run on Google Inc’s YouTube under an ad-revenue sharing arrangement.
Disney has yet to announce a deal with YouTube to share full episodes of such programs as Lost or Desperate Housewives, despite the shows being available in full on ABC.com and sites such as Comcast Corp’s Fancast or Time Warner Inc’s AOL.
“This deal provides us with the opportunity to reach a broader online audience, to experiment with different monetization models and to extend the reach of our advertisers,” Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, said in a statement.
Disney will be able to sell ads against the videos in conjunction with its other marketing efforts.
Google has a similar video ad-sharing deal with broadcaster CBS Corp, which provides both short-form and full episodes.
Google remains locked in a legal battle with Viacom Inc, which is suing it for US$1 billion for infringing on copyrights for such shows as Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
The ESPN channel will debut in the middle of next month, while the ABC channel, including videos from ABC Entertainment, ABC News, ABC Family and SOAPnet, will debut in May.
Separately, Google has unveiled a new venture capital fund to back “young companies with truly awesome potential.”
Google Ventures will focus on finding and helping develop “exceptional startups” in industries including software, clean technology, biotechnology, health care and consumer Internet offerings.
“Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will,” Google Ventures managing partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris wrote late on Monday in a message on the US Internet giant’s Web site.
“If anything, we think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the ‘next big thing,’ and we’ll be working hard to find them,” they said.
Miner and Maris said the enterprise would blend the best of top-tier venture capital firms with Google’s “unique technical expertise and brand.”
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
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