While Viacom's strategy toward YouTube has been to sue the online video company for copyright infringement, NBC and News Corp (parent company of Fox) are trying to beat YouTube at its own game.

The LA Times reports the two companies are preparing a new site that will feature clips of NBC and Fox programs, including Heroes, 24, The Office, and Family Guy. Clips would be available through the site and would also be available for distribution by Yahoo!, AOL, MySpace, and Microsoft. The companies also plan to sell downloaded content from Fox and Universal Pictures. There's also a possibility that other content owners could jump on the bandwagon.

The big question will be whether this strategy can put a dent in Google/YouTube's dominance of online video. If the networks were simply setting up their own site, we'd be dubious. But partnering with companies like Yahoo! and AOL makes a lot of sense. While trying to drive traffic to a new site is tough, providing content to sites that are already popular is a great way to control the distribution of your material.

[via Tech Crunch]