By Cassimir Medford

The cable TV industry’s infatuation with user generated video continued to mature Thursday as communications giant Verizon struck a deal to broadcast user generated videos from Internet video-sharing site Revver.

The announcement comes a little more than two weeks after cable TV giant Comcast and Internet social network Facebook announced a similar arrangement. (see Comcast, Facebook Hook up Video)

Verizon said it would broadcast select Revver videos to FiOS pay TV customers starting later this year. Revver videos will also be available on Verizon’s Surround entertainment portal. Revver already has a deal to provide videos to V CAST, Verizon Wireless’ mobile video service. (see Verizon Offers Revver on Phones)

Verizon’s deal with Revver is not quite as far-reaching as the Comcast/Facebook deal. Verizon will make selected Revver user generated videos available in a special category on its TV video-on-demand menu.

“Our approach allows you to view user generated video on TV but it won’t be part of our FiOS TV regular broadcast programming,” said Verizon spokesperson Sharon Cohen-Hagar. “It will be a kind of ‘best of Revver’ under certain categories that Revver comes up with.”

Pay TV

Verizon as of the end of 2006 had 207,000 subscribers to its pay-TV service, which is still being rolled out across the U.S. Revver, which pays users to who provide content to its service and does not accept copyright-infringing content, said it would share revenues from its Verizon pay TV deal with the creators of videos that are featured on FiOS.

The content will be chosen from categories on Revver.com such as Editor's Picks, Viral Video Classics, Extreme Sports, Laughs, Animation and Cute Overdose.Revver will provide the best user-generated video clips daily to Verizon. Revver’s catalog of videos will be presented to Verizon’s broadband customers when they search for related material. A customer watching a sporting event, for example, will be presented with Revver’s sports oriented fare.