- TV companies are helping feed YouTube’s growth in long-form viewing.
- Some are distributing full-length episodes and even making originals for the frenemy platform.
- Companies like the UK’s Channel 4 and Fremantle are finding new audiences and revenue there.
Many TV companies have stopped trying to fight YouTube and are embracing its rise instead.
TV has become the top place people watch YouTube in the US, beating out mobile and desktop. And increasingly, Hollywood is providing shows for viewers to watch there.
“Long-form content is now crushing on YouTube,” media industry analyst Evan Shapiro told Business Insider. “Mainstream media companies are leaning into it by programming YouTube with their existing libraries of long-form TV.”
This content ranges from full-length episodes and movies to original shows made for the platform.
Companies in the reality TV and game show space have been particularly active.
British broadcaster ITV recently struck a deal with YouTube to post hundreds of hours of popular shows like “Love Island” and “I’m a Celebrity” on the platform.
The production company Fremantle, known for long-running and popular formats like “The Price is Right” and “Too Hot to Handle,” has been expanding its YouTube presence over the past several years and now has 1,500 channels on YouTube and 32 billion views across YouTube and Facebook combined. Unscripted production giant Banijay has 75,000 hours of full-length shows such as “Big Brother” and “Master Chef” on YouTube. And in the past year, the UK’s Channel 4 has increased its sharing of full-length episodes of lifestyle shows and documentaries on YouTube.
The moves by media companies have gone beyond lifestyle content.
Warner Bros. Discovery this month began putting “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” episodes on YouTube the day after they air on HBO and Max. Previously, viewers had to wait four days to catch new episodes on YouTube. WBD has also been making older, full-length movies available on YouTube for a few years and recently moved them to its own channel from YouTube’s hub of free movies and TV shows to improve their visibility.
In another sign of YouTube’s undeniable reach, some companies are even starting to make original shows for the platform.
Paramount Global’s Nickelodeon just made its first animated series for YouTube, “Kid Cowboy,” and said there would be more to come.
Fremantle has decided to start making originals for YouTube as well. It has two original shows in production, including a comedy video podcast, “High in the Sky,” where the hosts riff on conspiracy theories, and several more in the pipeline.
“About 18 months ago, we decided we needed to future-proof ourselves,” said Brian Lovett, head of content strategy for Fremantle’s original productions. “Cable, broadcast, streaming, are a huge part of our business, and we do that really well. But what else can we do?”
YouTube has become harder to ignore
As YouTube has cemented itself as a destination on TV screens, it’s changed the conversation around the platform in Hollywood. YouTube isn’t just seen as a place for short, user-generated clips anymore.
The streaming data analysis company Digital i found that videos lasting 30 minutes or more accounted for 73% of total viewing on the platform in the US in October 2024, up 8% from a year earlier.
YouTube isn’t the only game in town when it comes to free streaming TV. Publishers are also distributing full-length movies and TV on other free video platforms like The Roku Channel and Fox’s Tubi. Some have even experimented with TikTok, which now allows videos up to 60 minutes long. But industry insiders generally say YouTube is the biggest opportunity because companies can easily upload videos there, control their publishing strategy, and reach a vast audience.
YouTube’s appeal varies somewhat from publisher to publisher.
Kids media companies like Nickelodeon recognize YouTube is increasingly the platform of choice for their core audiences.
In the case of “Last Week Tonight,” a person familiar with the decision said the call to move up the YouTube drops was made to satisfy Oliver. They added that delaying the YouTube release hadn’t helped the show’s viewership on WBD’s own channels anyway. This person asked for anonymity because they weren’t publicly authorized to discuss the strategy; their identity is known to BI.
For companies like Fremantle and WBD, with huge catalogs of older shows and movies, YouTube can unearth pockets of viewers for even the most niche shows.
“These are 10-year-old shows that were hugely popular,” Lovett said. “Being able to air them on a [free, on-demand streaming] channel gave them a whole new revenue stream. This is pretty much passive income.”
YouTube can also help a show find an audience it missed on TV.
Channel 4 put “Huge Homes with Hugh Dennis,” where the comedian takes viewers inside big houses, on YouTube after it flopped elsewhere. The audience went bonkers for it on YouTube, and then viewership on streaming ticked up.
YouTube can offer new ad revenue and viewers but can be tricky to navigate
Republishing full-length content successfully on YouTube isn’t always quick or easy.
Shows are often tangled up in a knot of local and overseas rights, preventing producers from dropping them straight on YouTube. It also can take a while to figure out how to package up old shows so they land with viewers.
Channel 4 tested for months to hone its strategy. The company bleeped swear words to avoid YouTube’s age restrictions and worked to nail titles, thumbnails, and keywords so the platform’s algorithm would surface the videos. And it had to curate its vast amount of material for a YouTube audience. It figured out that “blue light” emergency services docs about police and ambulance rescues played well with viewers, for example.
In publishing to YouTube, media companies also have to reckon with the potential loss of licensing or audience revenue. That’s why viewers tend to see older shows on YouTube that are of less value to other platforms.
“I would be surprised if any legacy media business was not nervous about this or had any existential crisis,” said Matt Risley, managing director of 4Studio at Channel 4. “We discussed it at length.”
Despite that, many media companies, including Channel 4, feel they’re getting meaningful ad revenue from YouTube and reaching new audiences.
Risley said that, as a premium publisher, the broadcaster is allowed to sell its own ads on YouTube. He said Channel 4 makes up to five times the ad rate that it would get if YouTube sold the ads programmatically, and that publishing across YouTube and other social channels combined is now an eight-figure business for the company.
“This is a way to create a much longer tail for our content,” said Matt Creasey, EVP of sales, acquisitions, and coproductions for Banijay Rights. “And advertisers are moving to YouTube as well.”
Other companies take a different tack
Disney has made some of its shows available on YouTube, like “Bluey,” which was the top pre-schooler channel on the platform in 2024, per Digital i.
But don’t expect media giants like Disney or NBCUniversal, which have spent billions to build their own streaming services, to shovel huge swaths of their full-length catalogs on YouTube anytime soon.
And Netflix and Amazon, with deep pockets and big audiences, have taken a different approach to YouTube than some traditional TV rivals. These companies are now licensing or making shows with popular YouTubers for their own platforms.
That said, some media execs say they only see the interplay between YouTube and paid streaming services increasing as the industry matures.
“The audience and power of YouTube is undeniable,” Lovett said.
After all, distributing content to different audiences has been a mainstay of media for years. Some Hollywood companies have recently got back into the licensing game in a big way as they hunt for cash, after hoarding their content to power their own streamers. Valuable shows like HBO’s “Sex and the City” and Disney’s “Grey’s Anatomy” are back on Netflix, for example.
Could they one day make their way to YouTube?
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