As the amount of people who have viewed Britain’s Got Talent singer, Susan Boyle’s Youtube video climbs to over twelve million, it may be hard to believe that the company who produced the show, has not received one penny from the content that has now become viral.

The Times have reported that ITV and YouTube cannot come to an agreement on the type of advertising to put on the clip. ITV wants pre-roll ads and YouTube prefers overlay and text ads. The Times quotes ITV’s director of online saying, “We don’t want to be part of YouTube’s standard terms and conditions, because content like Susan Boyle is unique … I think both sides are being hard-nosed and commercial about it.”

It isn’t much of a secret that ITV are becoming more cash strapped by the day. They have cut production on many major shows, laid off thousands of regional staff and reportedly slashed the wages of some of their major stars. The millions of pounds that could potentially be raised from clips of Susan Boyle’s or Shaheen Jafargholi’s performances would not save ITV but surely they would help.

ITV would prefer us to watch all BGT and X Factor clips on their own site ITV.com, but since much of the hype has been created by those outside the UK who haven’t heard of the website, YouTube is generating the majority of hits. For this reason it would pay ITV to come to some arrangement with the new media company, surely some sort of ad revenue is better than none and ITV can tweak the deal for future videos as they are produced. This whole debacle is simply another example of ITV cutting off its own nose to spite its face. BBC has embraced new media in an admirable fashion. When will ITV catch up?