Networks may announce YouTube rival soon

The NY Times reports that NBCU, News Corp, Viacom and possibly CBS will announce as early as this week that they’re teaming up on a new site to take on YouTube. The idea is to offer an ad-supported site that features the media companies’ clips, as well as encourage users to upload their own. But executives warn, the deal could still fall apart because of the unprecedented amount of collaboration between the competing companies required to pull it off. And CBS is in talks with Google about selling radio time, which is complicating matters. But the question remains, can big media create its own YouTube? Will user switch? Posting professional video is easy, but getting users by the millions to start posting their own is a challenge (although the networks certainly have enough promotional muscle to get the word out.) And technology is critical, so will acquiring an existing site like MetaCafe, as rumored by TechCrunch, be enough to get things rolling?