When an important deal like the YouTube/BBC one comes around, we feel we want to find out that little bit extra about it. Sadly neither of the press departments have been given the go ahead to provide journalists any further clues as to how the deal went down.
Given that frustration, we thought we’d apply a little lateral thinking to the situation and have a sniff around in a few places online to see if we can dig up some more.
Lots of investigation drew a blank, but realising that the address of the BBCWorld YouTube Channel hadn’t been given when the press information had been distributed at the announcement, we made a couple of guesses what it might be and it ended up being the obvious one.
One of the questions that we had was how long the deal had taken to negotiate. As mentioned there was no official word on it, but YouTube.com/BBCWorld reveals that a channel has been previously setup. The question is, is this an official BBC channel – setup over 9 months ago, or is there a 24 year old Australian squatting the BBC’s channel name.
If it is a BBC channel, it shows that there’s been a very long period of negotiation – 9 months – between the BBC and YouTube to get to the point of them announcing the deal.
If it isn’t, it will be interesting to see what YouTube’s approach will be to an individual registering a name that their largest content partner owns.
Keep your eyes on YouTube.com/BBCWorld to find out the answer.