Google is considering offering a YouTube subscription tier to lure more media companies to license TV shows and movies to the site, a company executive tells Reuters.

Advertising continues to be YouTube’s chief revenue stream. But David Eun, Google’s vice president of content partnerships, said that some full-length shows would not be available to YouTube under its current advertising model. “We’re making some interesting bets on long-form content; not all content is accessible to us with the advertising model,” he said, adding that content partners will be able to choose what works best for them.

Google may have trouble making a subscription model work as multichannel video operators begin embracing new ways to deliver full-length online video content to their subscribers. Comcast stands to gain the biggest hold on this space with its acquisition of NBC Universal, one of the chief stakeholders in the online video venture Hulu. (News Corp. and The Walt Disney Co. are the other partners.) And Comcast has already made the cable industry’s first major foray into online video delivery with its Fancast XFINITY TV.   

We’ve predicted that other broadband service providers will try to follow Comcast’s lead in beefing up their online video holdings, and that will leave more video content controlled by the major cable operators and telcos. Those providers are not likely to want to cannibalize their own revenue streams by licensing content to YouTube. YouTube’s best option is a rental model like Apple’s iTunes and Amazon.com.

Filed under: Content, VOD, Video, streaming media by Scott Sleek | Social tagging: Amazon.com > Apple > Comcast > Disney > Google > Hulu > iTunes > NBC Universal > News Corp. > YouTube