Why aren't there TV shows on YouTube..

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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So if your a small or large production company, and you can't get your TV shows on Terrestrial TV or cable/sky etc. Why isn't there more TV shows on a free platform to get your shows out..
Is the return from a advert laden channel not enough to cover the production costs or is it a restriction of YouTube somehow?

There are many amateur very well produced shows but why not fully paid professional series?
 
Associate
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Prob little chance of getting a decent return, yes they will get something through ads ect but nothing remotely close to being able to cover the costs of a modern professionally produced series.
Look at some of the biggest youtube channels and what they get in revenue, is it not somewhere around 1000 or so quid per million views per month?
Thats not going to pay a decent TV production with modern production values and modern expenses. Not even close.
 
Man of Honour
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They do, I've seen both comedy panel shows such as QI and "Would I lie to you?" a lot. Obviously this isn't quite the use case you're talking about, but it's definitely on TVs radar, mainly advertising for their shows but there's also probably a nice little bit of change to be made recycling all their old content in to hundreds of 10 minute videos each with millions of views.
 
Soldato
OP
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Prob little chance of getting a decent return, yes they will get something through ads ect but nothing remotely close to being able to cover the costs of a modern professionally produced series.
Look at some of the biggest youtube channels and what they get in revenue, is it not somewhere around 1000 or so quid per million views per month?
Thats not going to pay a decent TV production with modern production values and modern expenses. Not even close.

No but if you put product advertising all over it, it might.
 
Commissario
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No but if you put product advertising all over it, it might.
Not really.

Product placement and advertising only pay reasonably well if you can target them at the right groups, and if you have a fairly good "platform" that will get the views withing the right timescale.

For example you'll get so little advertising revenue at some points on broadcast TV that the channels will give slots away free because they can't sell them (usually this applies to out of prime time hours and lesser channels) - hence why during the early hours on the likes of Discovery you'll get fewer adverts and many of them will be things like "infomercials" or PPI etc.
Advertisers won't want to pay a lot for product placement on something that might not get many views for weeks/months, as they often time their advertising quite specifically, so they won't pay for advertising if the show is going out "out of season" for some things, or after they've been pushing the product in question (IE they won't pay anything like as much for PP to show their new car if the program is not going to be seen by many until months after the car has launched).

Streaming revenues on the likes of youtube are usually a pittance, often you'll need hundreds of thousands/millions of views of your content to get close to paying the wages of half a dozen staff, let alone a proper TV production (typically even a simple comedy or panel show might have 50-100 people involved, plus all the costs of things like the studio and equipment).

Most of the "TV" style content on youtube falls into two categories:
The illegally uploaded (no need to pay anyone involved so the uploader is happy with whatever he gets).
Stuff that has been broadcast on traditional TV already, has a relatively low "repeat" value except as advertising for the new episodes being broadcast.

Basically advertising is pretty cut throat and highly targeted, with the result that unless you can show you'll get exactly who the advertisers are after at the right time, they'll pay peanuts at best.
 
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