By Gavin Boyle
Having successfully taken over the entertainment industry, YouTube looks to consume even more of the TV business as the platform seeks to expand to greater heights.
“For more and more people, watching TV means watching YouTube,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan wrote in May. “Viewers are watching, on average, over 1B hours of YouTube’s content on TVs daily, and TV is now the primary device for YouTube viewing in the U.S. But the ‘new’ television doesn’t look like the ‘old’ television. It’s interactive and includes things like Shorts (yes, people watch them on TVs), podcasts, and live streams, right alongside sports, sitcoms and talk shows people already love.”
Related: The Surprising Way Most People Watch YouTube
YouTube is known for its vast ecosystem of creators that serve every interest out there, from niche to mainstream. Many viewers recognize that clips from cable TV also have a home on YouTube, such as SNL skits or talk show segments. In recent years, the platform has also become the home to live TV and currently hosts the NFL Sunday Ticket, making it the premiere destination for most NFL regular season games.
All of these offerings add up to the 1 billion daily viewing hours that Mohan touted in May. However, the company believes there are more types of content out there that will allow the platform to grow even larger.
For example, nearly all of the content on YouTube is unscripted despite scripted content making up the majority of broadcast TV. Mohan believes that as YouTube becomes a more legitimate place for burgeoning actors to get their start, scripted shows will begin to find popularity on the site.
“A lot of times when people think of YouTube content, it’s mainly spectacle-based or gamified, or music or podcasting, reactionary content, but there’s a whole ecosystem of scripted content that’s really growing, and I think it’s going to be one of the areas that really explodes,” said scripted content creator Dhar Mann.
“I do think it is maybe the early phases of growth that we’re seeing there,” Mohan added.
If YouTube were to successfully expand into the scripted content space, it is unclear where the rest of the industry would go. Broadcast and cable TV are already struggling, and traditional streaming platforms are also having difficulty keeping pace with YouTube. In August, it accounted for 13.4% of all time spent on TVs, 4% more than Disney’s second place, according to Nielsen.
While audiences largely connect with YouTube creators because of the level of closeness they feel to them, there is certainly an opportunity for scripted content to make a rise on the platform as well. This could cause it to garner even more hours of watch time every day and cause it to truly take over the industry it already has a solid grip on.
Read Next: Is YouTube Redefining TV?
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