YouTube would like, very much, to be where television goes next once the decaying cable and broadcast apparatus currently wasting valuable spectrum on Whitney realizes they can make more money selling wireless broadband across a sixty mile area.
So much so that they’re expecting people, on the Internet, to give money to YouTube. Before you start laughing, keep reading: This might actually work.
Needless to say, stupid cat videos would still be free, but some of the higher end stuff might be a little less so:
YouTube has reached out to a small group of channel producers and asked them to submit applications to create channels that users would have to pay to access. As of now it appears that the first paid channels will cost somewhere between $1 and $5 a month, two of these people said. In addition to episodic content, YouTube is also considering charging for content libraries and access to live events, a la pay-per-view, as well as self-help or financial advice shows.
That amount on there is pretty important, because YouTube’s plan is to lure smaller cable networks away from, well, cable. And for the smaller networks, it makes sense: Most networks that aren’t sports networks charge a buck a subscriber, if that. Why not just cut out the middleman, tell your fan base that you’re going on YouTube, and consolidate all your content online for a higher rate? Especially when the new middleman will take less of a cut, probably still let you sell advertising, and is currently also the owner of one of the most popular pieces of software on the entire planet?
This would also be, er, let’s see here, the arrival of ala carte cable channel choice that we’ve been waiting for since what seems like the beginning of time.
We’re sure that this will be greeted with an intelligent and mature reaction by the cable networks. Absolutely.
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i’m so excited about this. and i can’t wait to see everybody’s cable bill explode by another$20-50 bucks, chasing more folks towards this and doing the exact opposite of what the cable companies want, because they’re too stupid and myopic to just change with the times, which is what every generation of human beings has had to do since Jesus told the Pharisees to “suck it”.
Really, all cable has to do is bundle sports channels separately, and that’ll solve the problem for, like, five years. Not that they will actually do this.
Wonder if the Cable companies will get the government involved to save their asses?
Not really sure how they could, actually. If little networks just let their contracts expire and sign with YouTube, that’s perfectly legal. Also, that would involve bringing in the FCC, which is not really a big fan of cable at the moment.
This is how little I care for YouTube’s business model.
I didn’t even know they had channels until I read some story about how they’re cutting funding and resources to like a hundred of them and only focusing on the popular ones.
YouTube is good for 3 things: Music Videos, Cat Videos, Russian Dash Cam Videos.
And none of those things are going away, so, yeah.
Although I have to admit, if Food Network just said “GIVE US A DOLLAR”, I’d give ‘em the damn dollar and get the shows.
This is good. Cable is way too much for me to pay for but if i can pay for 3 or 4 of my favorite channels one day in the future I’d be down with that
If this helps finally get us to a la carte style channel picking, then I am all for it. The cable companies are going to fight this hard, though, and they’ve got plenty of money to throw at the problem.
The issue I see is that while I only watch a handful of cable channels, ignoring the vast majority of them, I do still want to have my ESPNs and Pac-12 Network. So I don’t know if a la carte channels are really going to save me a lot of money. I think there are many people out there that will feel the same – as little as we may watch ESPN sometimes, we still want to have it.
I wish we could just set up a system where anyone with a broadband connection can subscribe not to certain channels but to certain shows. That way we only get exactly what we want. They could offer preview episodes, say the pilot for a new show or the first episode of the new season for existing shows. The individual channels still remain relevant because they act as a digital distributor. You wanna watch Pawn Stars? Rent Pawn Stars from (whatever channel that show is on). They can even make package deals. The Food Network could offer Chopped, The Next Iron Chef, and some Bobby Flay vehicle all for $9 per month (during those months that they air new episodes) or $4 each. The US govt can subsidize Google who with a massive decade-long fiber deployment to 95% of the population and we legislate that Internet Access is a right not a privilege. We can even set a standard of 30Mbps.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry time buttfucking cable executives.
It’s a fine theory but there are some flaws with it. The shows we all love, not Two And A Half Men or Two Broke Girls or Whitney, all cost money. In some cases, lots of it. There is precious little evidence to support that the model you guys are all over can work. ARCHER got the second best ratings ever for this season’s premiere. And it was still only 1.61 million people by Neilson numbers. Is that enough of a translation to this new model to keep it on the air? I get that there are DVR numbers and streaming viewings not considered there but even if that estimate is doubled it’s still a very real concern. This isn’t even discussing the very real metaphorical elephant in the room. Right now, ESPN and ABC and the rest subsidize the content theft model. What evidence is there that a generation conditioned to believe in the overwhelming sense of self entitlement that comes with torrenting EVERYTHING is suddenly just going to start paying for it? It will all still be free on torrent sites and the same people who steal it now will steal it then. Only then the content creators will DEFINITELY feel the pinch by not getting real monies per eyeball. Maybe not you, DW, and maybe not anyone else who reads the fine content of the many superb UPROXX sites, but it’s still a real thing.
I don’t propose to know the answer, but I am reasonably confident that in the model you all are suggesting, pirates will kill your favorite shows.
To me, content is king. The sooner people can pay/support strictly only the things they enjoy then the creators of such content can actually reap some of the profits. Less bankrolled shitcoms will be forced down the cable lines and original content will prove to build strong audiences. Now, the day that we see the Neilson rating system go extinct and actual click views determine ad revenues, we can all see the cable companies see the error of their ways.