A decade ago, in pursuit of quick revenue, major content studios licensed their best shows and movies to an up-and-coming streaming platform called Netflix.
In turn, Netflix leveraged that short-term thinking to outmanoeuvre the studios. It supercharged its subscriber base on the studios’ intellectual property and turned that subscriber base into power to produce its own content and drop all the content providers that fuelled its growth.
You would think that the global content community learned its lesson. But a decade later, content producers are falling into the same trap: feeding Youtube with the easy content it’s using to take over the global entertainment marketplace.
And this time, news organisations are playing along, too, with dire consequences for the global information ecosystem.
Content sharing on Youtube isn’t new, but over the past few years, major producers of news and entertainment content, like the BBC, ITV, Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros Discovery, have deepened their Youtube partnerships.
One might almost be sympathetic to the content giants for thinking they need Youtube. After all, it’s where the eyeballs are.
It’s the single most-watched outlet on television screens, representing a disproportionate share of viewing. In the US, for instance, Youtube is now bigger than Disney. It has become an indispensable tool for cultural visibility, and other media companies naturally feel they need it to attract audiences and (they hope) redirect those eyes to their own platforms.
That same logic has pulled in newspapers and broadcasters across the world, who post clips and highlights on Youtube hoping to reach younger audiences — often at the cost of ceding control over distribution and ad revenue.
[Read more: Publishers ‘should be making £1m a year’ from a successful Youtube channel]
The BBC began posting curated clips and compilations from shows like Doctor Who to Youtube, not only to reach international audiences but to give younger viewers an on-ramp to its public service content.
ITV built dedicated Youtube channels like ITV Sport and ITV Daytime to distribute clips first, and eventually entire shows. Early Youtube releases of HBO’s Last Week Tonight segments provided “flexible viewing…as well as promotional exposure” back before HBO had its own on-demand app.
News and information publishers have made similar calculations, uploading interviews and short clips from flagship programming. But Big Tech platforms’ control of ad markets has already devastated local journalism, leaving news outlets dependent on the same platforms that undermined their business models.
This is a dangerous gambit. Just as Netflix did, when Youtube has extracted the value it needs from these partnerships, it will pivot. It is a not a neutral distributor: Youtube is a competitor. And it has every incentive to favour content it can control more directly, whether that’s creator-driven programming, AI-generated content, or Youtube’s own original productions.
Indeed, Youtube is increasingly producing its own long-form video features that put it in direct competition with the traditional content companies it is purporting to partner with.
Youtube’s growing dominance over where and how people find news mirrors what Google and Facebook did to the press – monetising publishers’ content while starving them of ad revenue.
Youtube already has unique existing advantages that pull viewers away from traditional media, and not just younger viewers, either: people over 55 are watching double the amount of YouTube content as a year ago. The huge stable of content creators with deep audience connections and quick-turn content creation means Youtube can target fast-changing and hyper-niche trends to lock in viewers.
Adding studios’ traditional and prestige content on top of Youtube’s creator-content advantage makes it a one-stop shop that locks in viewers across huge swaths of media. A viewer can watch TV, a new movie, the news, and their favourite influencer- and Youtube has spent huge resources to trap those viewers within the app.
[Youtube tips for publishers: Consistency, niche, SEO and community building]
Unlike Netflix, where the power and incentives were questionable, Youtube is no upstart. It is already the world’s largest distributor of video content, with billions of users. And while it is branded separately, it is owned by Google, a twice convicted monopolist.
A US court cracked down on Google’s search playbook – self-preferencing and exclusionary contracts – just a few months ago. In the UK authorities have designated Google with “strategic market status” because of its power to distort markets. In the EU, Google has been fined €8bn for abusing its search dominance in online shopping, requiring its apps on Android, and blocking third-party search ads. And now European and UK regulators are hearing growing alarm from news publishers, who argue that Youtube’s iron grip on video distribution and advertising is being replicated in their treatment of news.
Content companies are willingly handing over control of this market. Youtube is now the gatekeeper between traditional media and the next generation of viewers. While it could hypothetically help funnel audiences toward public service broadcasters and independent journalists, the clear incentive is to siphon off viewership instead.
In the UK, Ofcom and industry leaders have warned that Youtube’s dominance threatens the visibility and funding of news and public interest content, and have called for that content to be spotlighted within the Youtube app. It is particularly ironic that Youtube is amassing this outsized influence just when UK regulators are working overtime to try to protect the prominence and discoverability of public content across the media landscape through the Media Act.
[Read more: Public service broadcasters need ‘stable’ funding for news and prominence on Youtube, Ofcom finds]
As Youtube grows across all demographics it can dictate what gets made, what gets seen, and ultimately, what defines the media and information ecosystem. It has more reach than any streaming service, more engagement than any traditional network, and an unrivalled ability to shape what audiences see. When one company can control this much content, its whims can squeeze out anything it doesn’t like.
As Netflix’s footprint grew, traditional content companies regretted supplying its biggest hits. They were left competing against a platform they helped create but no longer needed them.
In response to Youtube’s rise, some companies, like ITV, are becoming more strategic about what they share with Youtube, testing how aggressively they can push for viewership without giving up brand control entirely. And in June, the UK’s big three independents – Sky, ITV, and Channel 4 – joined forces in a shared streaming ads network to try to claw back some of the revenue they’ve ceded to the world’s biggest video delivery platform.
But too many content producers are handing over their most valuable assets yet again. They should know better than to make another dangerous deal with another devil.
If the studios can’t or won’t wake up to reality, perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at whether the world’s competition laws can take on how Youtube is distorting the marketplace for video content.
The stakes extend beyond studios and streamers. If news organisations continue handing over their work to a platform that sets the terms, we risk repeating the same pattern that hollowed out local journalism worldwide. And we will all bear the consequences of a world where Google and Youtube increasingly determine what we watch, hear, and read.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
