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By 8 March 2011 | Categories: news

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Are you a daily YouTube watcher? Do you find yourself yearning for better quality videos from time to time? Well, YouTube viewers around the world may be in luck, as the video sharing website recently announced its acquisition of Next New Networks, a web video production company.

According to the New York Times, the company will be lending its skills to help produce some high quality YouTube programming in the future. YouTube however has always been a portal to ‘whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-see’, and both companies stated that creating unique programming will be kept to a minimum.

“We want to make as clean a line as possible for us to build the platform on YouTube and then let the content production happen with our partners,” said Tom Pickett, director of global content operation at YouTube.

Both companies declined to comment on the costs of the deal, but two people briefed on the terms of the deal told The New York Times that Google (owners of YouTube) will pay less than $50 million for the company.

And while YouTube can be the perfect portal to random video, the company is planning to introduce some more professional programming that viewers can watch for longer time periods, addressing competition from Hulu and Netflix.

“There's still a lot of YouTube that's about the single video experience right now,” said Mr. Pickett. “We want to thin about sets of videos and program experiences. That's where we're heading and we think this team is going to help us get there.”

Google also announced the creation of YouTube Next, a new program that will work side by side with YouTube partners to produce more professional content by giving them grants and training. Next New Networks compares itself to cable networks, not owning all their programming, but rather helping video creators with things like distribution, advertising and building an audience.  

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