ABC News, Yahoo Announce Content-Sharing Deal

Joint alliance will put ABC's original Web video on Yahoo!; reach 100M monthly users

By Andrea Morabito -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/3/2011 8:46:59 AM

ABC News and Yahoo! have announced a content-sharing deal that will make ABC News the premier news provider on Yahoo! News, allowing the two companies to reach a combined audience of more than 100 million U.S. visitors monthly.

The agreement, announced Monday on Good Morning America, will see ABC News create original video content for Yahoo!, which reaches more unique visitors than any other news site. Prior to Monday's announcement, ABC News already provided about 25 percent of Yahoo's video streams through an existing content-licensing deal.

At a press conference Monday morning, ABC News President Ben Sherwood called the partnership "game-changing" and stressed that the Web programs, three of which rolled out Monday, would be tailor-made for the Yahoo audience with anchors branching out from what they already cover on television.

On Monday, GoodMorningAmerica.com launched on Yahoo! and the first of the three original video series, Newsmakers, will debut Monday afternoon as GMA anchor George Stephanopoulos interviews President Obama live at the White House. The interview will stream live on ABCNews.com and Yahoo.com.

Other original video series premiering Monday are Around the World with Christiane Amanpour, which will cover international stories, and This Could Be Big featuring Nightline anchor Bill Weir covering stories about the future of innovation. Additional programs will be added this fall and into 2012.

Ross Levinsohn, executive VP of Americas at Yahoo!, totuted the unique opportunities afforded by the partnership for advertisers.

"With the combined breadth and depth and experience and incredible talent at ABC, we think we can revolutionize the online and digital news landscape," he said. "The scale that we have together with premium content I think gives us an innovative way to go to market right now with digital and traditional advertisers."

While the deal is not a merger of the two companies and both ABC News and Yahoo! will maintain editorial control of their respective sites, they will collaborate on branded content to appear on both sites. They will co-produce coverage of major news events and have integrated bureaus in New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles as part of the news alliance.