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The two US media giants companies have also signed a partnership agreement with rivals , , Microsoft and to distribute videos to their collective audience.

The companies will make thousands of hours of programming, movies and clips available from the extensive back catalogue of TV shows and films that the two own.

Users of the site, which could go live as early as this summer, will be able to view full episodes and clips from shows such as 'Heroes', 'Battlestar Galactica', '24' and 'The Simpsons', as well as movies including 'Borat' and 'Little Miss Sunshine'.

The two companies are seeking to stave off 's growing popularity with users who illegally upload clips of their favourite shows and movies, as well as their own home-made videos.

YouTube is now counting the cost of that as media firms bring legal actions against it. Today's announcement comes a week after Viacom announced that it was suing YouTube for copyright infringement and is seeking more than $1bn. Viacom claimed that around 160,000 unauthorised clips of its shows, including 'South Park', have been made available for free through YouTube and have been viewed around 1.5bn times in total.

Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp, said: "We'll have access to nearly 100% of the US internet audience at launch.

"For the first time consumers will get what they want -- professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live, all for free."

The News Corp/NBC service will be an advertiser-funded initiative, launched free to consumers. Several advertisers have already been lined up for the service, including Cisco, Intel, General Motors and Cadbury-Schweppes.

James McQuivey, Forrester Research media and technology analyst cautioned media companies to be careful in the approach they take in trying to challenge YouTube.

"Media companies are eager to pounce on YouTube's distracting legal troubles to offer any alternative to YouTube's dominance in the market. But if they aim to create a single site where people have to come to watch their shows -- and deprive the rest of the Net of their clips -- then they're missing the point. To succeed, a media-owned site has to share and share alike with as many distribution partners as it can."

Jonathan Arber an analyst at Ovum said that while the launch has raised questions about the impact on YouTube it is no YouTube killer.

"This service will not be a YouTube killer, or even much of a competitor. YouTube is popular because it combines equal parts user-generated video content and social networking, as well as mainstream TV episodes and movies from all over the world – it is about users worldwide controlling what they watch and when they watch it.

"This new offering from NBC/News Corp seems to be focused chiefly on the delivery of mainstream content, and the control will be strictly in the hands of the content owners.”

He added that he would not be surprised to see Google doing a deal to put some of the content from this new site on YouTube.

"From Google's perspective, it would lessen the threat of legal action while giving users access to plenty of high-quality content, while it would give NBC/News Corp access to YouTube's vast user base, and thus a greater pool of potential advertising revenues."