Tag team tumult brewing

News Corp. and NBC Universal are about to announce that they're double-teaming Google's YouTube with the creation of an online video site chock-full of TV shows, movies and clips that users can modify and share, writes the Los Angeles Times.

The media giants are apparently getting help from Google's biggest rivals, including Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and News Corp.'s MySpace, to offer the videos to their vast audiences. Google, meanwhile, is not impressed; its execs apparently refer to the venture as Clown Co.

The new undertaking could launch this summer and is being seen as an advertiser-friendly destination that will offer hit shows such as NBC's Heroes and The Office, and Fox's Family Guy and 24. Downloads of Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox movies will also be sold.

The media companies are also offering their material to Yahoo and other sites.

"You're just pooling resources in the face of the most disruptive force your business has seen ever," Eric Garland, chief executive of market research firm BigChampagne, is quoted as saying.