The national LGBT website network, Edge, is now carrying video news content from CBS in an effort to expand both the websites’ content and the reach of CBS video content.
The relationship began in April as part of an “informal test” by CBS to find a way to more broadly distribute the LGBT-focused content on CBSnews.com provided by the network, affiliates, locally owned stations, and international news providers, a CBS insider explained.
This isn’t the first time CBS has provided news content to the LGBT media. IN 2005, CBS News had a relationship with the gay channel LOGO which included news clips during programs and later a half-hour weekly newscast.
In March, we reported Regent Media and NBC had entered into a similar agreement for The Advocate and Here!.
Update: Thanks to Edge’s David Foucher for sending his views on the new relationship with CBS
CBS actually approached us and suggested we find a way to work together; we were thrilled to consider new ways to increase exposure to both of our brands. CBS, as it turns out, is a large broadcasting company that thinks entrepreneurially. They’ve got a huge wealth of content that’s applicable to the LGBT community and that is complementary to EDGE’s written stories. And since EDGE’s primary goal is to aggregate content that’s of interest to our readers, working with CBS seemed a natural, and exiting, fit.Our readers tend to be quite vocal; they’ve loved the new service thus far. We’re still experimenting with their guidance; for instance, next week we’ll be launching a new video channel that permits viewers to comment and share CBS videos across social networks – that’s the direct result of our readership passing these videos around those networks without our assistance. We’ve noticed these videos start to fly around Facebook and Twitter – so it seems clear that the content is of value to them.Our audience is normally 600k/month nationally or so, but in June (of course) that spikes 40% or so. We’ve placed these videos on our homepages and integrated them into our primary content channels, so it’s not unusual for one of the videos to make our “Top Ten” list for the day: 5k unique viewers is usually the minimum a story needs to reach to get on that list. So they’re doing quite well.
