Why and how is YouTube a threat to television channels?
Last July was a good month for YouTube, as for the first time in the US, people spent more time on YouTube than watching TV or movies.
As a result, YouTube even surpassed OTT platforms such as Disney, Paramount, Fox Channel, Netflix and Amazon. However, a few months later, YouTube fell to second place, behind Disney and DC platforms.
In fact, YouTube’s popularity is growing worldwide. In the UK, 50 percent of people aged 16 to 24 prefer to watch YouTube instead of watching television programs.
Has YouTube completely overtaken TV channels?
According to Mark Bergen, a Bloomberg technology journalist and author of the book about YouTube, Like, Comment and Subscribe: YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination, about three billion people watch YouTube every month in the world. Most of them are between the ages of 25 and 35. That is, they are younger than the main TV audience. It is now available on apps, video game consoles and smart TVs.
He says YouTube has become the most popular online platform and the biggest way for advertising companies to reach people. It is the largest catalog of videos. People can search and watch different things on YouTube.
YouTube launched in 2005
The online video sharing and streaming platform YouTube was launched in 2005. The first video uploaded to it was just 19 seconds long, which its co-founder recorded while walking around the San Diego Zoo in California.
Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion a year after its founding. YouTube is most viewed in India, where about 400 million people watch YouTube.
According to Mark Bergen, in many new emerging markets such as Brazil and Indonesia, YouTube has not only replaced TV channels, but has also become the main source of entertainment and news there.
YouTube Los Angeles Headquarters
According to Mark Bergen, YouTube has evolved in three phases.
“A former YouTube executive told me that the company’s mantra was ‘Challenge, Joke, or Truth?’” He says. At first, the entertainment industry and advertising companies didn’t take YouTube seriously.
Then came YouTube’s second phase, where it became a threat to Hollywood, the TV industry, Netflix, and Amazon. It started making its own original shows and charging subscribers like Netflix.
According to Bergen, YouTube started making original and expensive content in 2016. However, it couldn’t compete with the investment of companies like Netflix and closed this department in 2022. Now, in this new phase, YouTube has consolidated its position.
Mark Bergen says that people now use YouTube as a utility platform. For example, people use YouTube videos to watch cooking recipes or repair something.
People can easily find most of the videos they need on YouTube. YouTube has its own celebrities whose popularity is no less than that of Hollywood actors.
Mr. Beast, a 26-year-old content creator, whose YouTube channel surpassed Indian music channel T-Series in June. He has 320 million subscribers. So YouTube has proven that anyone can become a star.
YouTube and its famous content creators earn a lot of money from advertising. When an advertisement appears on a video uploaded to the channel, they earn money.
Mark Bergen says: Advertising companies pay YouTube to broadcast their ads, and YouTube keeps 45% of that amount and gives the rest to the respective YouTube channels or three content creators. When YouTube adopted this model in 2007, it was a very new and risky idea. But that same model has proven to be one of the main reasons for YouTube's success.
With the exception of a few services, most of YouTube's services are free. According to Mark Bergen, YouTube is experiencing so many videos that it has become a challenge to regulate them.
YouTube Content Monitoring
Content Creator Mr. Beast
Chris Stokel-Walker, a journalist and author of the book How YouTube Shook Up TV and Created a New Generation of Stars, explains that YouTube is excluded from the legal framework that many TV broadcasters have to operate under.
This means that the strict editorial rules that apply to TV networks do not apply to YouTube content.
To understand this, we need to go back in history. Many years before YouTube arrived, in 1996, the US Department of Information and Communications Technology amended the Communications Decency Act (CDA) to add Section 230, which was designed to give tech companies a boost.
The aim was to protect these companies from potential lawsuits because they did not have enough people or resources to monitor the content that was being broadcast on their platforms.
Chris Stokel-Walker says: This law meant that these companies only broadcast user-generated content, but they don't take responsibility for it. Nor do they have to pay for it.
There is a responsibility to review each piece of content.
But now, people who upload offensive content or make offensive comments on YouTube can be prosecuted. Today, technology companies are making billions of dollars, and they still maintain legal protections.
According to Chris Stokel-Walker, these companies have been taking advantage of this exception for twenty years, and only now are we starting to think about the consequences. Now, copyright and other legal provisions are being applied to determine the liability of companies like YouTube.
In 2019, Google and YouTube were sued for collecting data from children under the age of 13 without their parents' consent. In that case, the companies had to pay $170 million.
According to Chris Stokel-Walker, these companies are spread around the world and are not subject to the jurisdiction of any one country. However, in many places they are also under government surveillance.
For example, YouTube has been banned or criticized in many countries in the Middle East because it contains videos that involve sex, sexual violence, and drug use, which are not as controversial in Western countries. However, these contents are against the culture of Middle Eastern countries.
Recently, the European Union has implemented two new legal provisions to ensure online safety and control anti-competitive behavior of technology companies. However, the implementation of these legal provisions is problematic because of the large amount of content uploaded to YouTube.
According to one statistic, 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. This creates many difficulties in monitoring.
YouTube has its own rules and guidelines that clearly state what kind of content can and cannot be uploaded. For example, hate speech and offensive comments are prohibited, and users who do not follow these rules are warned or even banned.
YouTube also blocks ads on such content, which means that the creators of that content do not earn money.
Is TikTok a challenge for YouTube?
TikTok
Earlier, the TV industry could not consider YouTube as its competitor. But now, YouTube has become a powerful competitor not only for TV channels but also for Hollywood, Netflix and Disney.
YouTube's biggest advantage is that it has user-generated content, where users do not need to think about what will be trending or popular.
On the other hand, TV companies and OTT platforms have to think about this deeply, because they have to invest a lot of money in their content. This takes time, and sometimes the content may not be popular with the audience. But for YouTube, this is not a problem. On the other hand, YouTube also knows very well what content viewers are watching on its platform.
Netflix or other traditional television channels only create content. But YouTube knows what we have watched or liked in recent days and based on that, shows ads on YouTube or recommends similar videos to watch. That is why YouTube is more connected to the audience than other streaming platforms and traditional TV.
But one of YouTube's weaknesses is that it doesn't make big-budget videos like other channels and doesn't broadcast big sporting events. TV and streaming platforms also want to take advantage of YouTube's reach.
For example, when TV channels and streaming platforms launch new shows, they use YouTube to promote them.
YouTube doesn't see a threat from traditional TV, but it is also concerned about the growing popularity of TikTok, a video-sharing app that also features user-generated content. Because TikTok is competing with YouTube.
TikTok really knows how to entertain people. People spend hours watching videos on TikTok.
In fact, all platforms now want to attract user attention, and apps like TikTok can challenge YouTube. However, YouTube has so much variety and interesting content that no one can shake its leading position in the current market.
The mantra
YouTube
According to Dr. Marlene Komorowski, a professor of European media markets at the University of Brussels, YouTube is once again focusing more on advertising and content creators, which was its original mantra.
It has started placing more ads on YouTube channels. Last year, YouTube earned $31.5 billion from advertising, which is 10 percent more than its parent company Google.
According to Komorowski, YouTube has achieved great success and has established its dominance in various markets around the world. Just as the Disney Channel invests heavily in content production, YouTube is also investing heavily in content production. YouTube has spent $20 billion worldwide on content production, which is a huge amount.
YouTube's main goal is to The goal is to attract the attention of the audience and being part of Google helps it a lot in bringing new features to its platform.
According to Dr. Marlin Komorowski, with the help of Google, YouTube brings useful features to its content creators on its channels. It automatically translates the videos uploaded to it and adds subtitles to their videos. Google is developing this AI to help its creators.
Considering the competition with TikTok, YouTube has included the Shorts feature, which is a video shorter than a minute. Shorts is really giving TikTok a run for its money.
Such a short video format feature is also available on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
According to experts, Google keeps bringing new features and products by considering what other competing platforms are doing, which are becoming very popular and successful.
There was a time when Facebook seemed to be very powerful. But now TikTok has made a strong presence in the social media market, which has a lot of very young users. On the other hand, Facebook and YouTube users are a bit more mature than Tiktok.
Now let's get back to the main question: Has YouTube completely defeated TV channels? In fact, YouTube has closed its original content creation department. But this does not mean that TV channels are less threatened by it. In fact, YouTube has posed a big challenge to TV channels by focusing more on user-generated content. Watching YouTube every day has become a daily routine for millions of people. Advertisements have increased YouTube's income and it is increasing its investment in content creation. YouTube's content is always available on the Internet. Due to which people have started watching YouTube more than TV.
