YouTube covets TV gold with new channels
SAN FRANCISCO, May 3 — The cramped third-floor studio where a scarf-wearing puppet is being filmed feels more like the hive of an Internet startup than the set of a video production.
Squatting behind a table on one end of the room, the show’s director does double-duty as puppeteer, while colleagues outside the camera’s field of view toil on Mac computers.
Peter Furia, the director-cum-puppeteer, has no formal background in acting. But with years of experience making short online videos that “went viral” on the Web, Furia and two partners have high hopes for American Hipster, a new YouTube “channel” that streams three original series every week.
From a popular hub for home videos, You Tube aims for slice of the big money on TV. — Reuters picAmerican Hipster is one of about 100 channels covering topics ranging from food to sports that YouTube is bankrolling to attract advertising dollars of the television world by getting YouTube users to adopt the habits of television viewers.
The success of the channels will test whether YouTube, a division of Google Inc, can evolve from a popular hub for home videos into an influential player in the entertainment industry’s big leagues.
YouTube is promoting a new slate of original channels to big-brand advertisers in New York, hosting for the first time yesterday a splashy “upfront” event where marketers previewed upcoming television shows and allocated ad dollars.
YouTube joins a growing crop of other Internet services — from Hulu to AOL and Yahoo — trying to lure TV dollars to their own growing menus of online video programming.
The more professional and semi-professional content that YouTube added to its mix of videos, the greater the ad revenue it would reap, said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser.
“If it’s not professional content, it’s hard to monetise,” said Wieser. “An advertiser is unlikely to want to be associated with the proverbial cat on a skateboard.”
YouTube’s head of global content, Robert Kyncl, said YouTube was not trying to replace TV.
“No matter what you do, there is too much great stuff on TV,” he said, citing personal favourites such as the AMC series “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad”.
As cable was to TV
The new channels would improve YouTube in the way that cable transformed television, Kyncl said, allowing consumers to regularly “get their fill” of their favourite topics and giving marketers an easy way to pitch products to well-defined segments of viewers.
Kyncl said it should take from six months to a year for the new channels to take off.
YouTube’s efforts are being closely watched by Google investors, eager for the search company to tap new sources of revenue.
Google, which generated about US$38 billion (RM114.8 billion) in revenue in 2011, does not break out financial results for YouTube. Analyst estimates for YouTube’s revenue this year generally range between US$2 billion and US$3 billion.
To jump-start the new channels, YouTube distributed about US$100 million among 100 content producers last year.
The funding essentially serves as an advance on the advertising revenue that the channels are expected to generate. YouTube sells ads on the channels and shares a portion of that revenue with the channel partners.
Thomson Reuters is among YouTube’s partners.
According to YouTube, the most successful of the new channels are garnering more than one million video views a week.
DanceOn, a YouTube channel that pop star Madonna is involved with, plans to launch 10 original series this year.
The channel’s first show, a dance competition featuring YouTube celebrities such as Obama Girl, had helped the channel get 26 million monthly video views, said DanceOn chief executive Amanda Taylor. She said she was also thinking about how to do a scripted programme with a storyline.
SourceFed, a news-oriented channel started by YouTube veteran Phil DeFranco three months ago, releases five videos of two to three minutes in length every day.
DeFranco, who dropped out of college several years ago to focus on making YouTube videos, has expanded to a 10-person crew, moved into a bigger studio and bought new equipment, including clip-on lapel microphones and additional cameras, as part of his plan to create a “news network” on YouTube.
The SourceFed videos don’t yet attract as big an audience as the original YouTube video show he started several years ago. But because DeFranco is now producing a greater number of videos, his total monthly video views, now at 25 million, have surpassed his previous efforts.
A YouTube programme with 20 million views sounds impressive when compared with successful cable television shows that garner three million views when they air. But Pivotal Research Group’s Wieser cautioned that all those additional online views did not deliver a similar boost in ad revenue.
A short three- or four-minute YouTube show might only have a couple of slots for ads, he noted, while a television programme might have as many as 24 slots for 30-second ads.
For YouTube, getting a new crop of hits is only the first hurdle — and it’s a work in progress
“There will be some failures,” Kyncl said. As in the world of Web startups, some channels would “pivot” and refocus their programmes until they found the right formula, he said. — Reuters
