Google cash brings all the cold TV leftovers you can eat to YouTube For years, some pundits have touted YouTube as the future of TV - so you may be interested to see what this future might look like. The picture is now clearer after Google confirmed funding for 60 UK telly producers to make YouTube clips. And so the future of television will look like… a low-budget cable channel serving up …
In the future there will be no need for television. Instead you will take a Blue Pill each morning that will drop you directly you into the same subservient state as the television already does.
Youtube already has the capacity for keeping the unwashed masses entertained for countless hours on end. These television programs will not change much.
Google eyed youth spending 16 hours in front of screen - that's how we like'em..
"but it has failed to upset any media incumbents" Considering all the bitching the incumbents do about You Tube I would say they are rather upset. Yes I understand it wasn't in the manner that Andrew meant.
It is hard to provide content legally when no one wants to sell it to you though. I'm not sure You Tube will ever be the home of big names such as Game of Thrones, breaking bad etc but i suspect it will be the formation ground for many successful shows that will go on to be bought up by the big distribution labels.
"There is a place, however, where distributors have successfully invested in new programming and seen creativity flourish: that place is cable channels investing in original drama in the form of $3m-per-hour shows such as Breaking Bad and The Wire"
Which then gets ripped and shared anyway. You can sort of start to see why they gets a bit pissed off with it all a bit can't you..?
i think it's worth thinking about piracy more deeply. it is wrong to steal work, especially great (and expensive to produce) work like the two shows mentioned. but what if stealing content actually leads to, or encourages a deepening engagement with the media (tv, games etc). i've noticed amongst my friends, the ones who are the most active downloaders of illegal content are at the same time, by far the biggest buyers of legal content. after all, if the illegally downloaded movie or game was never going to be purchased in the first place, the downloader is not depriving the producer of anything, but may well spur them to go and buy something related.
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Streaming cannot be the future of TV until the UK's creaking broadband system (and avaricious BTw data costs) are sorted out.
No matter how much the talking heads want this we need an infrastructure capable of carrying the output to all corners of the UK, and that includes the huge swathes of the UK still on 20cn.
Given that many ISPs have data caps it would also require a rethink on the TV licence as otherwise - in effect - some homes will be paying twice for the output.
If you want to see how a director/writer/editor can escape from the normal distribution handcuffs then check this.
http://www.vampiremob.com/Vampire_Mob/Vampire_Mob.html
You can watch the entire series to date on YouTube.
For enlightenment and a few good laughs watch the director, Joe Wilson, have a good rant against Hollywood here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRdRzlVuzn0
Probably NSFW
"a low-budget cable channel serving up repeats and knock-offs [....]"
That sounds like what a large number of ATSC stations here in the US are doing: running many multplexes (multiple logical channels on one carrier), with one or more multiplex carrying RetroTV, or ME-TV, or Antenna-TV, all of which run old shows (from the 1950's through the 1980's) due to their lower cost (and of course, lots of commercials).
Is that happening as well in the UK with DVB?
It woukld appear to be so, with many SD channels on the freeview, and especially Freesat, pushing blocky pixellated sub VHS quality output that is unwatchable on a HD Tv due to the upscaling engine in the TV mashing it up further trying to improve crap, and displaying worse crap.
I confess to a moment of real interest at seeing the James May science listing-- oh, but that's not real content, it turns out, just something they might have someday.
Right then, I'll just go back to watching my legal online anime simulcasts until Google gets this whole future thing sorted out...
Glasses-wearing geek because that's the closest approximation to an urban hipster available in the icons.
In an age when the Freeview channel 'Challenge' is showing Bob Monkhouse repeats, the YouTube story is not so bad. But more importantly, my kids rarely watch broadcast TV - maybe to catch a new episode of Family Guy - instead they are glued to YouTube. They don't mind watching a film uploaded in parts and they love what we old farts think of as repeats. For them it's all new. Drew Carey is a favorite at the moment both his series and Who's line is it any way?
So may be Google has done its research and concluded that the AAA consumer is not watching YouTube anyway and that there's some low hanging fruit in the less discerning teenage (and future AAA consumer) market. In other words, the type who will right an El Reg article or comment on it is never going to get what YouTube can offer.
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