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Looking into the global media system and its transformation pushed by technology — ——Why does YouTube against the trend?

As is shown in the picture, the global media system is divided into 4 parts:
for profit with paid staff, non-profit media by volunteers, profit media by volunteers and non-profit media with paid staff. With the dissemination of new media like YouTube and Facebook, the attraction of traditional media like CNN or television is cut down rapidly. In order to regain the engagement from the public, CNN has created some innovative programs which appeal to volunteer contributions. This lead to a tendency for the media in the left part move to the right part (change from paid staff to volunteer contributions). However, YouTube do the opposite. In May 2007, YouTube launched its Partner Program, a system based on AdSense which allows the uploader of the video to share the revenue produced by advertising on the site. (Biggs, J. 2007) YouTube typically takes 45 percent of the advertising revenue from videos in the Partner Program, with 55 percent going to the uploader. (Carmody, T. 2013) There are over a million members of the YouTube Partner Program. The Partner Program change part of the volunteer contributions to paid staff which is against the trend. Now let us look deep into the phenomenon.
To solve this problem, we should look into the main function of YouTube and what it differs from traditional media like TV or CNN. For TV or CNN, it is the channel to broadcast news, which is quite single and fixed. Thus when new media steps into the stage, they may lose the public’s attention easily. In this situation, the change to call for volunteer contributions is a good way to raise the engagement. However, for YouTube, it is a video-sharing website which has already attracted a large amount of audience. The requirement for uploading is just registration in the website, which is effective to foster the number of users, while it risks having too many low-quality or useless videos as well. To generate high quality videos, or some videos with high cost, Partner Program is a great tool to share the profit with the video creators, which also become an inspiration for the uploader to produce some videos with more efforts, money and time. This change to “paid staff ” is a guarantee for the quality of the videos uploaded and can develop some specific channels attracting more people. “We’ve been building a YouTube partner program since 2007 that enables content creators to earn revenue for their creativity. We’ve watched them build amazing channels that have made YouTube into a news, education and entertainment destination 1 billion people around the world cannot do without.” When the videos on the website are more meaningful and can achieve some education or entertainment purposes, the scope of the users will be broadened, for instance, people with higher status and greater knowledge will focus on the website, which is helpful to the popularity of YouTube and more expensive commodities to be advertised. The profit gained from commercial advertisement will be increased in this way. In this perspective, YouTube’s Partner Program is evidently beneficial to its users as well as its development in the long term.