You can now watch full-length episodes of various Disney shows on YouTube, and even embed them on other sites around the Web. Assuming you’re in America and can actually find the content you are looking for.
Google and Disney
and Disney struck a deal at the end of last year which saw the two teaming up to create original programming for YouTube. Disney is one of the 100 partners bringing original content to the site via dedicated channels.
However, the deal also saw Disney movies being made available to rent through YouTube, and now full-length episodes of classic shows have also found their way on to the market-leading online video destination.
Disney Shows On YouTube
As noted by All Things D, 70-plus episodes turned up on YouTube at the beginning on March. The shows featured include Hannah Montana, Lizzie McGuire, Cory In The House, The Suite Life Of Zack and Cody, and Kim Possible.
These are all free, all 23-minutes or so long, and all fully embeddable. Unfortunately it looks like this is a U.S.-only deal, with the rest of us stuck with a “The uploader has not made this video available in your country,” message. Which is nice.
Confusing
This isn’t the only problem. As Gizmodo rightly points out, the YouTube UI really doesn’t cope with the mish-mash of episodes from various different shows well.
They’re mixed in with the Web shorts, and there is no organization or information about which episode is which and how many there are available to watch.
I suspect this is as much Disney’s fault as it is YouTube’s, but regardless of who is to blame, it sucks.
Conclusions
Disney is a big name catch for YouTube, and the mix of classic shows, movies, and Web shorts the two companies have come together to promote suggests a strong partnership. I just wish a little more thought had gone in to how best to deliver this content to the public.
