YouTube, the Google-bought video collection, is going pro-am. Its weekend announcement that it plans to launch 100 new “channels” of professionally made video to its oh-so-amateur core could move Kansas City, especially, away from the cable box.
The website’s promise of richer video offerings, teamed with Google’s pledge to bring light-speed-fast Internet connections to town, will make it all the more attractive to watch TV on the Internet. It still will take a little time, and more marquee entertainment, but a growing number of analysts see an Internet TV world as a less distant future.
With gigabit-speed Internet hookups — 10 to 100 times faster than what most of us think of as broadband — there should be no freezing images or annoying slow-to-start videos. Internet video will truly be on demand. YouTube’s move to hire Hollywood-tested producers to fill its library makes the Google plan to stretch fiber optic cables across Kansas City all the more significant.
“Of course, nobody just wants to watch dogs on skateboards and that kind of stuff all day,” said Herman Leung, an Internet analyst for Susquehanna International. “But if you’ve got professional content and a fast connection, why wouldn’t you just do that instead of cable?”
And dump your cable or satellite television subscription, because YouTube is free. Any shift won’t come overnight. (For starters, Google hasn’t made clear how fast its super-speedy service will spread across this market. It says only that some neighborhoods will get turned on early next year, for a cost still to be determined.) The selection on YouTube still doesn’t compare with even basic cable.
There are no first-run movies or television shows. No live NFL or World Series. (If you’re a fan of Indian Premiere League cricket, well, click away at will.)
“I don’t think many people are going to drop their cable subscription just yet,” said Mark Kersey, a California-based cable industry analyst. “Maybe somebody who’s had to quit cable because money’s tight will find something else online, but they’re not equivalent yet.”The new YouTube lineup, however, hopes to get closer. The Wall Street Journal, British newswire Reuters and online magazine Slate are signed up.
There’s a channel by New Age motivator Deepak Chopra. Energy drink maker Red Bull will have one for “action sports” (we’re presuming no chess). Former basketball player Shaquille O’Neal will have a channel for “urban comedy.” A superhero channel. A pet channel. A celebrity news channel (because the world doesn’t yet have enough).
Already, users stream 2 billion YouTube videos over the Internet every day — twice as many as last year. For the most part they’re of the homemade variety. Increasingly, though, the content comes from people who film stuff for a living. (Atop the “favorited” list on Monday, for instance, was a promotional clip from the cast and crew of the long-running British television show “Doctor Who.”)
YouTube is aiming to increasingly professionalize what it delivers. Amateur videos can sometimes go viral and draw millions, but they can require more money to run on the company’s computer servers than they offset with advertising traffic.
The money lies in the content that YouTube can tie to, and target for, advertising. For almost four years it has signed up partners who provide some content and split ad revenue with YouTube. YouTube hopes to lure users back to the website with regular programming the way people today turn to NBC daily for the “The Today Show” or to HBO every week for “Game of Thrones.”
Unlike on a cable network, though, on-demand Internet video need not be a slave to time slots. A viewer could find a YouTube show without having remembered to record it on a DVR. And the producers might load up the package, and the opportunity to draw eyes to advertising, with cast interviews or blooper reels.
YouTube plans to stick with its advertising model, with no plans to charge viewers to watch the expanding content. One analyst saw the expanded content as part of a growing move that would draw more viewers to the Internet — which is where Google wants them. (Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006.)
“For traditional TV, it just seems to be death by a thousand cuts,” said Josh Olson, a technology analyst for Edward Jones & Co.
There’s YouTube. There’s Netflix. Google tried to buy Hulu, a service created by television networks to stream content on the Internet after its original broadcast.
“The big turning point will be when you get a large studio — Disney or NBCUniversal or Fox — to team up with some Internet service,” Olson said. “But long term, this is sort of inevitable: TV on the Internet.”