Yahoo announced today that it has signed a deal with CBS Television which will bring video content from CBS’s celebrity gossip and entertainment news The Insider to its celeb-focused online property known as omg! (No, we’re not super! excited! about! the! news!, it’s just that “omg!” has an exclamation point on the end of its name). Following the integration, omg! will be rebranded as omg! Insider, Yahoo says.
In case you’re not familiar with omg!, the website is an online portal which serves up tabloid-esque entertainment news, celebrity interviews, photo galleries and more. It’s a lot of fluff, really, but fluff is popular on the Internet – omg! see 30 million visitors per month. With the CBS deal, the omg! site will transition to become the official home for video highlights from a new omg! Insider show, which will be hosted by current The Insider TV hosts, Kevin Frazier and Brooke Anderson. They will also be joined by Yahoo’s Kristen Aldridge (omg! NOW) and Michael Yo (The Yo Show on Yahoo!).
The site, which will relaunch in early 2013, will feature in-studio celebrity interviews, and other conversations around the day’s hottest celeb news and trends. Yahoo describes the show as a “true web and on-air collaboration” between the two companies, which “aims to reinvent how consumers access entertainment news across screens.”
In a statement posted to Yahoo’s company blog this morning, CEO Marissa Mayer talked about how the deal helps expand Yahoo’s goal of hosting more original programming. “We’re thrilled to bring together two of today’s most popular entertainment news brands to create an ‘always-on’ content experience across TV, the Web and beyond,” Mayer said. “Yahoo! is focused on bringing the most personalized and relevant information to our users. Original video content and branded multi-screen programming help us to deliver on that promise. We’re proud to collaborate with CBS Television Distribution to bring omg! Insider to millions of viewers in such a unique and exciting way.”
This is not Yahoo’s first time partnering with a company on web video. Notably, Yahoo also announced a partnership with ABC News in October 2011, which has ABC News launching several web-first video series on Yahoo. Outside of partnership deals, Yahoo also announced in March its plans to debut several original comedy series.