YouTube winds down original content push as longtime chief moves on

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? YouTube is formally exiting the original content business. Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s chief business officer, said the creation of YouTube Originals in 2016 played an integral role in growing their creator economy over the years. Today, YouTube’s Partner Program has over two million members that have collectively earned more than $30 billion over the last three years.

Kyncl said YouTube now believes it can make a greater impact by focusing on other initiatives, like its creator shorts fund, black voices fund and live shopping programming.

Also contributing to YouTube’s decision is the exit of Susanne Daniels, who has served as the global head of original content since the division was created. Kyncl said Daniels has decided to leave YouTube, noting that her last day will be March 1.

“I’m so proud that our YTO content could contribute to the ongoing growth and success of this remarkable platform, and I look forward to new adventures ahead,” Daniels told Variety.

YouTube aspired to compete with heavyweights like Amazon and Netflix in the original content space. The division managed to create some memorable content including Cobra Kai, a modern-day spin-off of The Karate Kid series, and Step Up, which was based on the film series by the same name. YouTube ultimately jettisoned both of those projects, with Cobra Kai going to Netflix and Starz acquiring Step Up.

but once YouTube said it would make future original programming available for free through an ad-supported model, most suspected expensive originals weren’t long for this world.

Image credit: Adam Fejes

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https://www.techspot.com/news/93037-youtube-winds-down-original-content-push-longtime-chief.html

 

[Dimitriid]

Oh so NOW that they've driven just soooo many smaller content creators to either go away completely to places like Twitch or to depend fully on external revenue sources like negotiating their own advertising or starting crowd funding efforts, *NOW* they want to go "upsie, we shouldn't have switched gears towards original produced content and changed the ad revenue and monetization rules to appeal to old media types of advertisers, sowie! come back please?"

Yeah I sincerely hope they choke on it and become (even more) unsustainable.

 

[psycros]

Today's Internet: Google is cancer, Facebook is AIDS, Twitter is ebola, Microsoft is COVID and Twitch is some unknown STD.

 

[Irata]

Wait, they had their own content ???

 

[TheBigT42]

They should have made more seasons of Wayne

 

[hahahanoobs]

One less reason to raise the price of the Premium subscription! I only need it for music and removal of ads across devices. The original stuff didn't interest me so I won't miss it.

 

[0dium]

One less reason to raise the price of the Premium subscription! I only need it for music and removal of ads across devices. The original stuff didn't interest me so I won't miss it.

YouTube Vanced works for me perfectly

 

[hahahanoobs]

YouTube Vanced works for me perfectly

Even if that worked on my TV I still prefer the stock app.

 

[umbala]

Their whole initiate made no sense. They were barely spending any money compared to the big boys like Netflix and Amazon, but expected to compete against them? Yeah, sure.

 

[Thorney]

One less reason to raise the price of the Premium subscription! I only need it for music and removal of ads across devices. The original stuff didn't interest me so I won't miss it.

I dont even need it for that, just the ad removal. But their own content was worth the experiment for Cobra Kai

 

[Danny101]

They were too busy policing everyone's content to produce any of their own.