'60 Minutes' Goes Online With Yahoo!
CBS and Yahoo! Inc. on Thursday announced a partnership to bring 60 Minutes video content and news packages to Yahoo!'s media properties.
The full offering of the content will become available this fall when the show, the most-watched broadcast program in television history, begins its 39th season. A special preview of the free video programming on Yahoo! will be available starting this Sunday, March 26, and will feature a rare interview with golfer Tiger Woods.
When the full service launches, users will have access to 60 Minutes content throughout Yahoo!, including on the News, Sports and Entertainment sites, as well as on a newly created "microsite" on Yahoo! that will be dedicated solely to the program's content.
"This deal with Yahoo! will bring the rich storytelling of television's Number One news magazine to a new and younger audience while offering loyal viewers extended features and content online," CBS News president Sean McManus said in a statement. "We believe this is an important step toward establishing 60 Minutes as the news magazine of the future."
"With the addition of 60 Minutes video to Yahoo!, our users will have access to one of the most respected news franchises, programmed and edited with Yahoo!'s audience in mind," said Lloyd Braun, head of the Yahoo! Media Group.
Each week following the Sunday night broadcast of 60 Minutes, the microsite will be updated with two news packages. One will expand on a segment featured that week on the TV broadcast of 60 Minutes. The second will be based on a topical news theme for that particular week.
Both offerings will include never-before-seen video footage, as well as interactive elements such as maps, a reporter's notebook, blogs and photo galleries. Most packages will be a combination of new video footage and video content pulled from the archives of 60 Minutes.
60 Minutes content will continue to be available at CBSNews.com.
"We are thrilled to be bringing '60 Minutes' to an Internet powerhouse like Yahoo!," said Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media. "This offering underscores our strategy of bringing our best content, whether it's news, sports or entertainment, to every possible platform. Working with Yahoo! to create a robust and unique microsite exposes our news content to a broader audience of online users."
In addition to the two weekly news packages, the microsite also will include previews of the upcoming Sunday night program. All content made available on Yahoo! will be archived on the site to ensure users can view the packages at their leisure.
This is the second online partnership between Yahoo! and CBS. In December, Yahoo! streamed full episodes of CBS comedies "Two And A Half Men" and "How I Met Your Mother."