YouTube targets TV
Thoughts on TV News, journalism, and digital media. Issue#12
Welcome to my latest Substack newsletter. I’m Nigel Dacre, a former TV news journalist, turned media executive. In this edition, why YouTube and TV are ‘no longer poles apart’, the Huw Edwards archive problem, and a poignant Princess Diana photo.
YouTube moving into TV
The world of media certainly keeps changing! In the last few years, we’ve all got our heads around the fact that TV viewers are shifting from linear TV channels to streaming platforms. In the UK, BBC and ITV have responded by fighting fire with fire, with the BBC iPlayer and ITVX.
OK, we get it. But now, there’s a new factor. As well as the streaming platforms, YouTube is also now moving firmly into the world of TV - with increasing numbers of viewers watching increasingly longer YouTube videos on their internet-connected TV sets, as well as on their phones and computers.
The evidence for this has been coming in thick and fast all year.
Back in February, The Media Leader had an opinion article by Graham Swallow under the headline, ‘Forget short-form, YouTube is going after TV’.
Then, in its July 2024 annual report on UK media habits, the British regulator Ofcom said that “TVs are rapidly growing in importance for YouTube”, accounting for 34% of YouTube’s viewing inside UK homes in 2023, up from 29% the previous year.
And, earlier this month, the British media company Enders Analysis produced a report, ‘YouTube: becoming More TV-Like’.
Its email about the report put it clearly:
“In the past, broadcast TV and YouTube content has been poles apart - both in substance and the need states they served. This is changing, with the overlap in offerings growing.”
The report was based on analysis of the YouTube UK Trending page. It showed that videos on YouTube are becoming longer - the median duration increased to 12 minutes 23 seconds in 2024, a 75% increase in four years. If that’s the median, then it indicates that a lot of YouTube videos are now at more traditional TV programme lengths (say, 30 minutes and over).
Obvious examples of these longer programmes are top ranking ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’ (3.3m subscribers) and, in the US, ‘The Megyn Kelly Show’ (2.47m). Both have found a revenue-generating home for long-form content on YouTube.
The Enders report also revealed a significant overlap between YouTube and TV content - they estimated that nearly half of the videos included in UK Trending last year could reasonably be mapped across to television content.
It’s a similar trend in the US. Nielsen Gauge’s figures for August showed that YouTube had 10.6 per cent of viewing on connected TV devices, compared to 7.9 per cent for Netflix and 3.1 per cent for Prime Video.
And then, just last week, YouTube announced a major upgrade of its connected TV app, which will be rolled out over the coming year - with new features for TV viewers, including allowing programmes to be selected via episodes and seasons, and adding what they call cinematic ‘immersive previews’. All designed to make the YouTube TV platform look and behave more like the other TV streaming apps.
The announcement was at their ‘Made at YouTube’ event in New York on Wednesday, and written up in The Hollywood Reporter.
I find all this fascinating. However much TV bosses try to influence viewing behaviour, in the end it’s actually viewers who lead the way, and broadcasters then have to react and adapt.
Interview with Abi Watson
To add context to the Enders report, I contacted its lead author, Abi Watson, a Senior Media Analyst at Enders.
She said one of the reasons that more long-form content is appearing on YouTube is because it provides a transparent and relatively generous revenue system for content producers. She said:
“YouTube offers the best monetisation opportunities of all the platforms (it has a straightforward revenue share of 55%). YouTube sweetens this deal for broadcasters with individualised incentives with favourable commission rates and support to ensure content is surfaced.”
She also pointed out that the growth in YouTube viewing on TV sets will affect the streaming platforms as well as the linear channels: “It will be a headwind for the SVOD services, as much as linear-based viewing. We are expecting 90% growth in YouTube viewing on the TV set between 2023 to 2030.”
90% growth in the next six years is quite some figure!
YouTube and TV News
All this is interesting in its own right, but the growth of YouTube viewing on connected TV sets poses a particular problem for TV News.
Put simply: for TV News, is YouTube friend or foe?
None of the leading UK TV news organisations appear to run ads consistently across their daily video news content, so it is less of a revenue-generation issue.
It’s more about how YouTube aligns with their strategic aims. This means that TV News organisations in the UK appear to be approaching YouTube in two different ways - while some see it as an important new platform for their output, others are uploading their content for what looks like mainly marketing and profile reasons.
For example, BBC News (16.6m YouTube subscribers) and Channel 4 News (3.5m) seem to see YouTube as another important platform to be on, as part of their remit to broadcast their content to as demographically broad an audience as possible.
For commercial channels, though, it’s more complicated. They appear to have no problem with maintaining some level of news presence on YouTube, to promote their news brand and encourage viewers to watch their news programmes on their main TV channel. But now that YouTube is moving more into connected TV set viewing, do commercial channels want to upload a large part of their expensive-to-produce news content for free to a platform that takes TV viewers away from their ad-linked news programmes on its EPG channels and SVOD platforms?
Also, should the news organisations transmit whole news programmes on YouTube, or just clips? Most UK TV news organisations just upload short sequences. But Sky News (8m YouTube subscribers) is breaking away from that and following the US trend of streaming whole bulletins.
So, yes, the winds of change continue to rattle the foundations of the world of TV - and TV News programmes are facing an ongoing dilemma of how best to respond to these shifting viewing patterns.
Other Media Developments
Huw Edwards and the BBC Archive
The BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, was interviewed at the Royal Television Society London Convention on Tuesday and, inevitably, was asked a range of questions about the Huw Edwards case - including whether Edwards should be removed from the BBC archive.
The former BBC newscaster was back in the headlines this week when he appeared in court in London on Monday for sentencing.
The issue on the archive is what to do with the many hours of BBC content presented or voiced by Edwards - such as the William and Kate wedding, general election programmes, and the death of the Queen and the Coronation.
These events are obviously an important aspect of Britain’s story in recent years. The fact that they are now inextricably linked to Huw Edwards is a significant problem. His downfall has robbed the nation of an essential part of its visual history.
So, what does the BBC do about it?
You can see the problem in the following image. Edwards presented the 2023 Royal Trooping the Colour ceremony - all that is now on the BBC website is a photo from the event, with the words: “Sorry, this event is not currently available”.
The BBC could carry out a complicated excision of Edwards from the archive. They may well be doing this, for example, with national events by creating natural sound versions for the iPlayer, without the commentary. This would feel, though, uncannily like George Orwell’s ‘1984’, in which people were erased from records - making them 'unpersons'.
The Times newspaper in the UK actually wrote an editorial in late August referring to Orwell, and arguing against Huw Edwards being deleted:
“To attempt to edit him out of the archive would involve falsifying recent history.
At a time when truth is under attack from online misinformation, including video manipulation, the BBC of all institutions must avoid the temptation to massage reality.
In this it should learn from one of its most eminent employees, George Orwell. Huw Edwards cannot be made into an unperson.”
I assumed, when I read this, that the solution would be a pragmatic one. Huw Edwards wouldn’t be edited out of the news archive itself, but programme makers would avoid selecting clips featuring the former newscaster’s voice or image when assembling TV sequences.
And indeed, Tim Davie confirmed this when answering the archive question at the RTS event. He said: “We never completely ban and rip someone out of the archive.” But… “I’m not seeing a scenario in which any Huw Edwards material is used in day-to-day programming”.
Put another way: Edwards will stay as a person in the BBC digital archive, but become an unperson on air.
Archive Photo
Princess Diana Mine Clearing Photo
An interesting photo was emailed to me this month by ITN’s Africa-based camera operator Andy Rex.
The photo shows Andy with Princess Diana in Angola in January 1997. He had just filmed her walking through a recently cleared section of a minefield in Huambo. She was there to support the Red Cross campaign to ban landmines.
The photo is particularly poignant as Diana looked so well, confident and poised - yet, sadly, this was only seven months before her death in the Paris car crash.
Andy had sent me the photo for an article in this month's ITN 1955 Club magazine.
He has worked with a long line of ITV News Africa correspondents, and has filmed many of the big stories in the region - from the end of apartheid to the Mozambique floods.
A fascinating ‘of its time’ photo from a great cameraman.
The ITN 1955 Club Newsletter magazine is for staff who used to work at ITN. For non-British readers, ITN is the main commercial TV news organisation in the UK, producing ITV News, Channel 4 News and Five News.