AOL, Shrek and Ellen Degeneres?

Time Warner’s AOL is poised to announce production deals for new Web programming today. The new partnership will include deals with Mark Burnett (survivor), Dreamworks Animation, Madison Road, Telepictures and others. According to the story via Reuters/Yahoo! the deals will feature games based on “Shrek”, trivia games from Burnett’s “Gold Rush” and a link with the Ellen Degeneres Show allowing users to share their personal stories.

AOL CEO Randy Falco is expected to update their subscription based access to an advertising based service. AOL has had a loose collaboration with Google, who owns about 5 percent of AOL. AOL asked government officials to scrutinize the Google/DoubleClick deal even though AOL and Google have been partnered since 2005.

The news has a ring of “shakeup” about it given the conflicting signals between Google and AOL. Competition between all the major Internet players is heating up as one announcement after another pits one against the other. This news from AOL seems interesting given all the other media migration to Web based companies.

Google’s ad shakeup already appears to be having an impact as Internet specimens move to their respective corners of the ring. Stay tuned for the “battle royal” to come. I still can’t get over the imagery of a collaboration between Shrek, Ellen and AOL, Survivor AOL maybe?