The news story just broke that CBS News is going to be phasing most of its enormous video library to the online market, where consumers will be able to create custom DVDs from the network's archives of news video. The effort brings together a partnership between CBS and the joint venture of Amazon and CustomFlix, which allows anyone to create their own professional DVDs.

Effective immediately, content from 2000 and more recent is already available for purchase, and video from as far back as the 1950's (when CBS entered the TV business) will be added later. So far plans have only been confirmed for clips from the CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes, though I imagine almost all of CBS's news video has been featured in those shows throughout the years. Of course, due to copyright issues, and probably also to fit the politically correct climate of today, there are some clips from these shows that will never make it to the public market.

While many other networks like NBC, ABC, and FOX have offered on-demand versions of their programming through outlets like iTunes and YouTube, in addition to their own websites, CBS has been slow to enter the fray, especially with their news content, which makes it surprising to see them all of the suddent decide to offer so much of their content to the public in an on-demand format.

When all is said and done, you could have your pick of thousands of hours of CBS News footage (or, to boggle the mind even more, that's about half a year of video. The wire story says that CBS's heralded coverage of breaking events like the JFK assassination and 9/11, which would probably draw the most interest, is "possible but further down the line, if at all."

You can already make your own custom DVDs at the CBS CustomFlix beta page

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Report Published by: Mark Raby