In an effort to recover advertising revenues from Google and YouTube, the a number of television network and entertainment giants are said to be working to form a competitive service. According to a New York Times report in today’s Toronto Star, written by Richard Siklos and Bill Carter, NBC Universal, News Corp, Viacom and CBS are said to be meeting to build a better mousetrap, one they hope the viewing public will tune into instead of YouTube.

Though serious obstacles still stand in the way of success, executives from the firms mentioned in the article have been had a sense of urgency to their meetings since Google announced it would purchase YouTube for $1.65Billion in October 2006.

“…each partner in the proposed YouTube competitor brings its own agenda and potential conflicts. For instance, News Corp. also owns both the Fox television network and the popular MySpace social-networking Web site,” wrote Siklos and Carter.

Along with specific agendas, each of the corporations meeting currently have separate deals with Google. As an example, MySpace has an advertising and search deal with Google while CBS is in negotiations with Google surrounding the sale of radio advertising.

A more important decision for each of the firms involved to make is which is the best way to deal with Google, as a competing consortium or as individual distributors of Google’s YouTube product.

“The executives at Fox and NBC who were driving the deal anticipated moves by Google – and indeed the executive involved in the talks said Google has hinted of offers to the participants, some of which might generate a fast infusion of several hundred million dollars.

“I think people have been trying to figure out: `Do we take a cheque from Google, or do we create our own game?’” said another executive who has been involved in the negotiations. “The other option is to create something that is capable of becoming a big asset and controlling our own game.””

This is sure to be one of the more interesting stories to follow in 2007.