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Talking about the relationship between Saturday Night Live and YouTube (GOOG), Lorne Michaels, the shows creator and executive producer said that “YouTube has been great for us.”

As a matter of fact, Saturday Night Live has probably received the most value from YouTube than any other TV show. It could be said that it has been the major reason for its resurgence, as new people connect and relate to its content.

That leaves the question of what its future will be with a very limited presence on YouTube, now that the greater amount of SNL content isn't allowed to be aired on the site and NBC Universal (GE) lawyers continually making sure anything not approved is taken down.

The answer, is now that YouTube has shown how much of an impact online video viewing can have, the television network has learned and taken its cue from that and is looking to do the same via its upcoming release of its own video-sharing site they're partnering with Fox (NWS-A) on.

It's clear from NBC that they believe the new partnership will have a beneficial impact upon Saturday Night Live and will be made available to a number of other sites as well. Content from the initiative will be offered across AOL (TWX), Yahoo (YHOO), MSN (MSFT) and MySpace. It seems the only site they're not too interested in working with is YouTube.

Behind all of this is the reality that the networks can't allow any one platform to be the sole distributor of online video. With the upcoming launch of their video site and agreements in place to stream their video across the major Web portals, this gives them a real strong position to be in, whether anything is worked out with YouTube or not.