You Might Be Watching Less TV-Like Programming on YouTube in the Future
It seemed like just last year YouTube was announcing that they wanted to create more original, paid, long-form programming on the platform. But apparently, that program wasn’t able to gain much of a foothold. Now YouTube is scaling back.
As reported by Bloomberg:
“The Google-owned business has stopped accepting pitches for expensive scripted shows, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the decision hasn’t been announced. The retreat from direct competition with Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video service reflects the high cost — in billions of dollars — needed to take on those deeply entrenched players, even for a rich tech giant like Google, the people said.”
It is important to note that this switch isn’t necessarily a failure — it is more that YouTube doesn’t need original programming and paid subscribers to make money. They are doing just fine without those features. YouTube generated more than $15 billion in ad sales last year without exclusive, TV-like programming.
The good news is, YouTube also announced that it would make its original productions free to view, as opposed to subscription-based. This is really great news for those of us who hadn’t pulled the triggered on a YouTube Premium subscription. On the flip side, YouTube will be funding much fewer original shows in the future to focus on ramping up existing offerings.
Some people say this is a great move for YouTube — why break what isn’t broken? Instead of investing billions of dollars to compete with original programming giants like Netflix and Amazon video, the platform is wisely sticking with what works. However, others say that YouTube is making a mistake. According to Social Media Today, YouTube could lose its position as the dominant online video platform and lose ad dollars as newer online offerings come through.
Only time will tell if this approach will work for YouTube — but given their current rate of success, we think this legacy platform knows exactly what they are doing.
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