YouTube will cut at least 60 percent of its programming deals heading
into its second season offering a TV-like experience for viewers.
Last fall, YouTube announced it would fund original content, dubbed
channels. The Google-owned video site launched 100 channels at that time
and added an additional 60 last month.
Channels, featuring stars like Madonna, Ashton Kutcher and Sofia Vergara, is a bid to attract premium advertising dollars.
Other channels include eHow Home by Demand Media, WSJ Live by The
Wall Street Journal, WWE and Red Bull. The entire listing can be viewed here.
As the contracts for the original 100 channels have come up for
renewal, according to AllThingsD, YouTube will only renew roughly 40
percent of them.
YouTube will reportedly deal with the renewals in groups, beginning
with the channels launched in January of this year. The new deals,
AllThingsD reports, will be similar to those YouTube set up last year —
programmers received advances of up to $5 million to produce videos that
would be exclusive to the video site for at least one year.
Even if a channel is not renewed, it can still appear on YouTube. It
won’t, however, receive any more funding with which to produce videos,
AllThingsD reports. Channels that have not earned at least YouTube’s $5
million investment back must pay 100 percent of its revenue to YouTube
until the company is paid back in full.
In an interview with AllThingsD, YouTube’s director of content
strategy Jamie Byrne says the site is most concerned about the “watch
time” each channel spawns.
Adage.com,
which has a listing of the top YouTube channels, is likely a good
indicator of at least some of the channels that will be renewed. Mondo
Media, Howcast, WWE Fan Nation, Jayz, Motor Trend, Source Fed, The
Warner Sound, The Onion and XTreme Video make up the all-time top 10.
The Warner Sound, Awesomeness TV, Source Fed, EnTV, Motor Trend are the current top five trending sites.
Post from: SiteProNews
