NBC has news for MySpace
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC News and MSNBC.com will provide political news and other content to social networking site MySpace.
Terms of the deal weren't announced Monday. But NBC, MSNBC and MSNBC.com's text and video will populate the "Decision '08" section of the site that includes video from NBC's Brian Williams, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews, among others. A short video from Williams to announce the partnership greeted MySpace users beginning Monday afternoon.
What it won't include is content from fellow News Corp. subsidiaries Fox News, The Wall Street Journal or the New York Post. Lee Brenner, director of IMPACT and executive producer of political programming at MySpace, said that the company saw "quite a bit of synergy" among MySpace and NBC and MSNBC. He said there was nothing unusual about MySpace not going with Fox News.
"We work with companies that are in family and out of family all the time," Brenner said. But the decision was sure to raise eyebrows, although NBC News vp Mark Lukasiewicz declined to comment. He said that the MySpace audience was very valuable to NBC News.
"Social networking is a huge phenomenon," he said. "It's a big place where people spend a specific amount of time and it's an age group that is getting more and more involved in the political process."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
