ABC to collaborate with Yahoo

ABC News declared Oct. 3  it is teaming up with Yahoo News to collaborate on news content, reporting materials and authentic videos.

Announced on Good Morning America and at a New York City press conference, the partnership revolves mainly around original video and is expected to reach 100 million people per month.

Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos aired the new video series “Newsmakers” on Monday afternoon with an interview with President Obama. The interview streamed on both ABCNews.com and Yahoo.com. Other online series for the two companies that launched Monday include “Around the World with Christiane Amanpour” and “This Could Be Big,” hosted by Bill Weir.

The deal also addresses the method in which news is gathered. Though Yahoo News is the No. 1 online news site, its main news provider will be ABC News. Major news events and big projects will be covered by editorial teams of both companies however in order to maintain editorial control of their particular site.

Also joining forces are the ad sale teams of the two companies that will sell online video advertising. According to CNN.com, ABC will lead sales efforts during the busy “upfront” selling season and Yahoo will manage sales the rest of the year.

The alliance comes at at time when Yahoo is struggling to increase advertising revenue due to competition from Facebook and Google. It is currently searching for a successor to former Chief Executive Carol Bartz, who was fired last month. Yahoo is contemplating whether to sell all or least part of the company, but doing so would not affect its partnership with ABC News.