The most-watched streaming service in the world by a wide mile is YouTube. The service doesn’t get the same attention as Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, and other online streaming services because it is seen as something completely different. TV is TV and YouTube is the stuff kids watch on their phones.
Well, in what could portend another seismic change in the way people consume and create entertainment, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says “TV screens have officially overtaken mobile as the ‘primary device for YouTube viewing in the U.S.’
Imagine that. More people now watch YouTube on their television than their phones, tablets, laptops, or desktop computers.
The YouTube numbers are mind-boggling. These are the totals from 2023:
“Data insights giant Nielsen announced that, as of today, YouTube has been the top streaming platform by watch time for one full year,” reports Mashable. “Globally, viewers watch an average of more than 1 billion hours of YouTube content on their TVs every day. This includes not only long-form YouTube content but YouTube Shorts as well.”
Much of this success has to do with the amount of content uploaded to YouTube.
“It is impossible for streamers to compete with the vast expense of YouTube’s content library,” adds the report. “For example, more than 500 hours of video was uploaded to YouTube every minute in 2022. That’s more than 260 million hours of video every year.”
By comparison, “Netflix, by comparison, has an estimated 18,000 titles, though the actual amount available to viewers varies by region.”
Every minute — each minute! — 500 hours of new video is uploaded to YouTube. Man alive.
The fact that people are now watching YouTube on their televisions more often than any other device is more bad news for streamers. YouTube is becoming TV content. What’s more, most of what’s on YouTube is free. So, why pay for a streaming service when YouTube is free and you could live for a thousand years and never watch all the content on YouTube you want?
This is also something closer to the democratization of entertainment we’ve all been waiting for since the digital revolution began. Anyone can distribute their content on YouTube, and the bottleneck between the creator and the audience in the past has always been distribution.
My wife and I are currently in Chicago visiting family and I was shocked when some of the smaller kids got control of the TV. They weren’t interested in cartoons or Netflix or reruns of Gilligan’s Island. They went right to a YouTube channel that makes silly animated shorts for kids that last less than 30 seconds each. There’s no story. Stuff just happens. Apparently, the people who produce this are raking in a fortune. And the content is all free.
And every second those kids are not watching the Disney Channel costs Disney money.
Yes, I realize YouTube is part of the evil Google Regime, but the people who produce the content are not.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
