YouTube said it will begin showing full-length television programs beginning with shows from CBS Corp., including "The Young and the Restless," "90210," "Dexter" and "Californication." YouTube said it is in discussions with other media partners, but declined to give any further details.

The CBS shows will play in YouTube's new "Feature View" format, which, presumably, will be of a much higher quality than the short films we usually watch on this site.

Google-owned YouTube told Reuters on Friday that YouTube was looking to broker similar agreements with other TV networks to show their archived television shows.

However various ads are placed in an episode's typical TV commercial spots, and the timeline controls dim during ads so that they cannot be paused, skipped, or muted.

The scant collection of full-length shows available on YouTube pales in comparison to the TV pantheon on sites such as Hulu, the joint venture of News Corporation and NBC Universal. Also notably in the game is Amazon.com and its subsidiary Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

Moreover, YouTube's new content will compliment the "theater view" features recently added to the site's video player. Theater view expands the player's dimensions for wide-screen viewing and lowers the brightness of the surrounding page (much like the Hulu's "lower lights" button.)

Showing full-length shows could also help YouTube attract more advertisers due to hefty audience. The site draws 100 million people a month in the U.S. alone, but so far YouTube has not been able to capitalize on this as much as some investors had hoped.