CBS announced it was going mobile earlier this week, and now its former “corporate sibling,” Viacom, is following suit. Shows to be available streaming from Sprint include Nickelodeon’s “Spongebob Squarepants” and Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” I’m sure my sisters will be excited to watch MTV’s “The Hills” on their phones.

Other MTV, Comedy Central and VH1 content will also be available on their mobile websites as well as a new channel, GameTrailers.

Like CBS’s, their mobile video will be ad-supported, with advertisers including Pepsi and Intel. I agree with MediaPost’s Wendy Davis’s conclusion:

It’s understandable that Viacom doesn’t want to get left behind by technology, but curious that the company is wheeling and dealing in the nascent mobile video market at the same time that it’s warring with YouTube — a company that already delivers video in a format that everyone knows consumers want.

Maybe 2007 will be the year that mobile finally reaches the tipping point. If the recent flurry of mobile news is any representation, it could just be the year that mobile reaches the masses.

Today we have two partnership deals to share with you.

First, LG Electronics will start shipping select LG handsets with Google apps already installed. The phones will offer one-click access to Google search via an icon on the application menu and will come with Google Maps, Gmail and Blogger.

Next up to bat, is Yahoo and their deal with Virgin Mobile USA.

Starting next month, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger can be downloaded onto several Virgin Mobile handsets, and the applications will be preloaded on select phones in the future.

It’s not often you get to suggest that Google is playing “catch-up” to a competitor, so I’m sure the headline above will bring a wry smile to the folks at Yahoo.

Humor aside, it does appear that Google’s blog post, announcing their expansion of features for Google Mobile, is in reaction to Yahoo’s oneSearch initiative.

Here’s what you’ll now get with Google’s mobile site (from their blog post).

• Get the information you care about, right from your homepage. Because it can be difficult to manage small screens and small keypads, and because mobile search is often more about seeking specific information than browsing for extended periods, we’ve made it possible to add the information you’re interested in directly to the mobile homepage. Ranging from movie listings to stock-market updates to website feeds or news snippets, these gadgets can be added with a simple click. You can then reorder, replace, or modify your gadgets however you like.

You’ve got to give them credit for trying: CBS does kind of seem to be getting the new media. For more than a year they’ve been making deals with Google Video, YouTube, and CSTV. in addition to their own streaming channel. And now they’re going mobile.

MediaPost blogs about the new deal to provide popular shows on mobile phones. CBS has signed deals with several providers, including Cingular and Verizon. Their most recent deal, with Sprint, is the first to include preroll ads for their shows and clips.

Aside from the convience of watching the shows that you weren’t going to watch anyway or the evening news whenever you want (what, a week after it airs so it’s already out of date?), what are the advantages of mobile TV? I certainly don’t want to watch TV on a 2″ x 2″ screen while paying by the kilobyte—and that’s even without preroll ads. (Though, like Wendy on MediaPost points out, early adopters will be all over it.)