YouTube Channels: Google is Banking on Consumers Switching from Cable
By Karla Robinson
August 17, 2012
August 17, 2012
- ETCentric previously reported on Google’s investment in premium original content for its “channels,” drawing big names like Madonna and Ashton Kutcher to create episodes and Web series. In a related story, Wired explains how Google is hoping its channels will bypass cable and become the one-stop shop for all content needs.
- “Cable has run out of space,” says Shishir Mehrotra, the VP of product management at YouTube. “If you’re going to broadcast content to everybody whether or not they watch it, you can only afford to broadcast a few hundred channels. But if you move to a world where you can broadcast on demand to only whoever wants it, now you can support millions of channels.”
- Aimed to lengthen viewing times and boost overall number of viewers — not just hits — YouTube’s channels cover a variety of content from surfing to Olympics to live coverage of Ramadan in Mecca. “The average American watches five hours of TV per day,” notes YouTube product manager Noam Lovinsky, and Google wants them watching on their platform.
- The company is working to build awareness of the channels. A large black bar on the left side of the site is intended to drive user attention to channel subscriptions.
- YouTube’s top channels are getting millions of views and users are unsubscribing to channels. Even though that might seem like a bad thing, to Google it means people care what content is in their subscription lists. YouTube will also tap into other Google services to provide users with channel suggestions.
- Also, YouTube has to make the content available to everyone everywhere and consistent across all devices. This means taking over app development instead of having partners build their own apps for the service. By making all future apps HTML-based, YouTube won’t rely on manufacturers to update them.
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