The BBC gets friendly with MySpace

The BBC and MySpace announced Thursday that they have reached agreement that will allow clips from many of the BBC’s popular shows being made available on the social networking giant.

This will be the first time that, MySpace has entered into a partnership with a broadcaster; this is part of a strategy to make available, more video content for users.

This deal with Rupert Murdoch’s, huge media corporation, and the UK national broadcaster will be expected to bring negative comments but both companies’ were playing this down.

BBC Worldwide director of digital media, Simon Danker dismissed previous problems with Murdoch’s, News Corp, that include a decision to remove BBC World Service broadcasts from News Corps, Chinese satellite station which was part of an effort to curry favor with the Chinese government.

“I can’t comment on that but this [deal] speaks for itself. You are bringing the largest social network together with one of the largest providers of video which is popular all over the world, so it’s just a really good partnership.” Mr. Danker said.

MySpace managing director Travis Katz, states, “We have a very positive relationship, very similar ideas of what we want to get out of this. I think it’s a deal we are quite excited about and don’t anticipate any conflict, frankly.”

The “Beeb” already has a deal with YouTube, video sharing site, but Mr. Danker said that the BBC’s content would be used in a different way on MySpace.

He claimed that: “People spend so much time living on their profile pages and that’s where they will do most of the viewing and sharing of our content,”

According to the deal, three minute clips from shows such as Doctor Who and the highly rated, Top Gear would appear on MySpace. The companies will then split any advertising income no financial details were released.

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