Yahoo! coup as BBC agrees to provide its news service

Yahoo! and BBC News Online, two of the most powerful brands on the Internet, are joining forces.

From this week, BBC News Online, the Net news service of the BBC, is providing a schedule of top news stories for Yahoo! UK & Ireland News. This is the first time that BBC News Online’s content has been supplied to an external online news provider.

Under the terms of the agreement, BBC News Online will deliver a regularly updated news service for Yahoo!. This includes the top five stories from the six main sections of BBC News Online’s award winning service: UK, world, politics, business, science and technology and sport. The news feed will be updated every five minutes.

Because of the BBC’s special status as a public service broadcaster, Yahoo! is presenting the new service in a way that, it claims, supports this public service remit, and ensures editorial independence. In particular, the pages that host the BBC news stories will not carry any advertising.

According to the latest ABC figures for March 2000, Yahoo! UK & Ireland has over 253 million page views per month, and BBC News Online attracts 75 million.

Yahoo! UK & Ireland managing director Martina King says: “This represents further progress in Yahoo!’s commitment to providing our users with quality, independent content.”

BBC News head of New Media Richard Deverell says the venture “brings together two of the key elements in Web development – content and the portal. We are now able to deliver the best of BBC News to the Yahoo! portal and increase our reach.”