“From local cuisine, health and wellness and parenting to sports, music, comedy, animation and news, this new lineup of original channels will have something for everyone” said Robert Kyncl, VP, Global Head of Content. “They are backed by some of the biggest producers, well-known celebrities and emerging media companies from Europe and the U.S.”
According to official information from YouTube, their top 25 original channels are now averaging over a million views every week, while 800 million people are watching 4 billion hours every month. Moreover, the number of subscribers has doubled from year to year. So it would seem that YouTube is on the winning path.
But let’s not forget its competitors as Amazon is preparing to launch a similar service, one for which it has put out a call for original children’s and comedy shows and has begun optioning books for movie adaptations.
We cannot however think that online original channels, regardless of the provider, will indeed replace TV any time soon. It involves a different type of business, education of consumers and it takes a huge budget to become a video production house, one that offers a wide variety of videos in order to meet the needs of as many people as possible. For the new channels, which will be available for free and will include advertising, Google is currently investing USD 200 million.
“I believe that every interest will, at some point, have a channel serving that interest,” explained Robert Kyncl. “People are building channels and creating audiences, which is something they couldn’t do before in such numbers.”
Still, for the moment channels are available for free, but users should think about the possibility that in the future they’ll have to pay to get access to online video content.