Joost takes charge with online tv content

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Joost, the Internet TV platform being developed by the influential creators of Skype and Kazaa, said Tuesday it had signed several new content distribution agreements, including one to show CNN programs.

The company also planned to expand availability by the end of the month, letting "beta" testers invite anyone else to download the software from its Web site and view programs on Joost as well.

"This is the way you normally ramp up peer-to-peer software ... and it's a way to give our (beta tester) friends a little bit of a scoop," said Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, the company's top executive for content acquisition.

Joost — pronounced "juiced" — was co-founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the entrepreneurs who upset the music industry with the Kazaa file-sharing service and then developed Skype, the Internet telephone system that was bought by eBay Inc. for at least $2.6 billion in 2005.

Joost operates by distributing streaming video of shows "peer-to-peer," or user-to-user, over the Internet. Consumers choose a channel via a software interface on their desktop that resembles a remote control. Like regular TV, it is free for viewers, and aims to be ad-supported.

In Tuesday's deal with Time Warner Inc.'s Turner Broadcasting System, Joost said it would air episodes of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and "Robot Chicken" from Turner's Adult Swim network along with "Larry King Live" and other CNN news and interview programs.

Joost is seen as one of the many candidates to become a primary distributor of television and video to the Internet, competing against Google Inc.'s YouTube, Revver Inc., broadcasters' own Web sites, an as-yet unnamed cooperation between General Electric Co.'s NBC and News Corp., and file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent, among others.