Google, or rather YouTube, is reportedly close to buying Next New Networks, a company producing original web video content as well as distributing videos created by others. NNN is responsible for some of the most popular regular series in YouTube and some of the more popular individual videos.

YouTube wants to encourage more and more people to create video content for the web, especially in a steady, serialized fashion and NNN has the experience in doing just that.

Talks are in the late-stage, according to the Wall Street Journal, but there are no financial details. Despite having more than one billion views on YouTube, the company hasn't been a great success financially, so Google could snatch it up on the cheap.