YouTube To Air Full-Length CBS Shows

Users will be able to watch full-length episodes of "Star Trek," the original "Beverly Hills 90210," and soap opera, "The Young And The Restless."

Before this deal with CBS, YouTube primarily displayed shorter clips of 10 minutes or less of television shows, although YouTube had been airing some few full-length shows from HBO and ShowTime in recent months.

According to YouTube, the CBS archive shows will display a full-length badge to differentiate them from the shorter clips, and will also be shown in a new theater mode, Reuters reported.

Google-owned YouTube told Reuters on Friday that YouTube was looking to broker similar agreements with other TV networks to show their archived television shows.

This partnership is both an attempt by YouTube to boost ad revenue, and to compete with video-sharing Web site Hulu.com. Hulu features full length episodes of currently airing shows from Fox, NBC and CBS. However, YouTube has a much larger viewer-base that Hulu, with 330 million viewers as compared to Hulu's 3.3 million viewers.

CBS will sell the ads on YouTube around the CBS archived shows, YouTube execs told Reuters. CBS and YouTube will share the ad revenue.

"It's all about advertisers maximizing their reach and using the most effective ad format for where the user might be situated," Shiva Rajaraman, a senior product manager for YouTube, said in an interview, Reuters reported.