Creating a website for student-run television station. Need help understanding file upload concepts, etc?

Hello there!

I work for Cable 8 Productions, a Washington State University student-run broadcasting television station. We are in the process of taking down our entire website and launching a NEW website with a "blog like" feature. From what the webmaster was telling me, it incorporated a database, php and perl and basically every staff member would have a username/pass and could "upload" pictures/news posts etc. that would be directly posted to their shows page and to the home page of the Cable 8 website.

I was wondering a couple of things (if you guys had the time) First person to answer it in detail will get the Best Answer:

1) .FLV format v YouTube

We had a debate about whether or not to upload them to YouTube and embed it on to the site or just directly upload .flv on to the website? What are the pros/cons of both? How long does an upload for a 25minute/45 minute show take to go on to YouTube? Is there a format the video HAS to be in to get the "view in high quality" option? And is that embeddable on to our website? Should we instead just use .FLV and have them upload that via our own website?

2. If we did have them use .flv video formats to directly upload on to our website, is there a code out there to have it directly embeded in to the website? I'm confident my webmaster can find it (if you can't find it) but we just need to know if this is even possible. If you can link to the script or information about this, that would be great.

And lastly:

How long would it take to create a "blog-like" website? What is happening is basically it will be like a blog website where the front page has a bunch of "feeds" with an image and a condensed description of that show/photo album/news update and basically when you click the picture/description or (the box in general...everything will be on an embossed colored box) it takes you to that specific article. Do you think this is an easy interface to navigate with? Will this be effective?

Thanks so much for your help, any input would be great!