NBC Universal and News Corporation today unveiled a joint assault on the online video market, announcing a new internet service that will take on Google's YouTube.

From this summer, the new venture will provide access to content owned by NBC and News Corp, including clips and full episodes of TV shows including The Simpsons, 24 and House, and films such as Borat and Little Miss Sunshine.

Viewers will not be charged for access and income will come from advertising. The two companies said that a string of distribution deals with groups including Microsoft and Yahoo!, Google's biggest rivals on the web, would bring the new service to 96 per cent of the US internet audience.

News Corp is owned by News Corporation, the parent company of Times Online.

The tie-up could shape up to be the most serious rival to YouTube to emerge so far in a rapidly expanding market and comes as content owners strive to reassert control over advertising revenues.

According to EMarketer, the research group, Google will account for nearly a third of all online advertising revenue this year. Content owners are keen to blunt Google's growth in an effort to maintain some influence over the channels through which consumers access their programming.

Others set to enter online video this year include Joost, a peer-to-peer TV service founded by the inventors of Skype, the internet telephony group.

Google, the leader in online search and advertising, bought YouTube last year for $1.65 billion in stock. Last week it was hit by a $1 billion lawsuit from Viacom, the media conglomerate, for alleged copyright infringement.

Distribution partners for the NBC-News Corp site will include Time Warner’s AOL division, Microsoft’s MSN portal and Yahoo!. News Corporation will also make the service available through MySpace, its social networking site.

Advertisers signed up include Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco, Esurance, Intel and General Motors.

Jeff Zucker, the president and chief executive of NBC Universal, told staff in an internal memo: “This venture is unprecedented in its scale and its concept. Every media company has been talking about delivering content to consumers whenever and wherever they are. This means being digital, and it means being platform-agnostic.”

Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp called the new alliance “a game changer for internet video”.

He said: “We’ll have access to just about the entire US internet audience at launch. And for the first time, consumers will get what they want - professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live."

NBC and News Corp added that they will also consider producing and licensing original programming for the new site.

Industry watchers suggested one of the main question marks over the new venture would be how effectively NBC and News Corp can work together.

Michael Arrington, of the closely-read Techcrunch blog, said: “Joint ventures are notoriously difficult to manage, and adding third party distribution partners to the mix will add complexity.”

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