Two questions about YouTube ‘Channels’
Peter Kafka reports that Google will start renewing some production deals/investments for its YouTube “channels”…
But not all of them: YouTube figures it will end up re-investing in up to 40 percent of its original channels by the time the renewal process is done.
YouTube will handle renewals in batches, starting with the first set of channels that launched in January of this year. The new deals will largely mirror the ones YouTube set up last year, where the programmers got advances of up to $5 million to produce videos that would live exclusively on the site for more than a year.
I’m curious:
- Have I ever watched a video from a YouTube Channel or associated with one? How would I know? (Am I supposed to know?)
- Where are these channels, anyway? If I go to YouTube logged-out, it says to “Sign in to add channels to your homepage.” After I sign in, then I’m invited to subscribe to some channels “personalized” for me. And then there are a bunch of genres on the side to browse through. (You really have to look to find this navigation — small, light gray text on a dark gray background.) Are these the YouTube Channels? If not, where do I find the real ones? I don’t doubt they exist, and I assume some of them are even watchable. But if this is such a big deal, why isn’t YouTube making a bigger splash with them?
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