YouTube Mulls Linear Channel
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 1/8/2007 5:37:00 PM
Las Vegas -- Google's YouTube video-sharing site has been "noodling" over the idea of creating a linear TV channel comprised of content culled from the thousands of clips posted on its site, YouTube vice president of content Kevin Donahue said.
Donahue, speaking on the "Hollywood and the Digital Consumer" panel here Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show, said YouTube has been toying with the idea of generating conventional-form TV programs -- or even a linear channel -- but he added that it's not currently a priority.
"We’re noodling on it," he said. "We haven't gone down a specific road yet. We’ve had a lot of conversations with networks that want us to do shows, companies that want us to do linear YouTube channels … We’re more in strategy phase right now."
For now, YouTube is focusing on improving the user experience on its Web site as the top priority and with wireless as a second thrust, Donahue said. For example, YouTube in November announced a licensing deal with Verizon Wireless, which will be YouTube's exclusive U.S. mobile distributor for a limited period of time.
"It made sense for us to focus on [wireless] early on -- a large part of our audience is active cell-phone users," Donahue said. "We also felt that because we’re focused on short-form programming, it made sense to deliver that to wireless devices."
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As a guy that loves tv and youtube. I must agree with Kevin because, well youtube would become well known if it had its own tv channel. Also people like me who want to become actors when they leave school need to show the tv industry that we got tallent and can be actors, and well today in age we have to go up on stage. But with Kevin's idea we dont. So this is why I Agree with Kevin
Scott Kukowski - 1/15/2007 3:00:00 PM EST -
As a guy who''s a YouTube addict and has almost quit TV. I think that YouTube making a TV show is a terrible idea. Why? Because YouTube is better than TV. YouTube doesn''t have commercials in their videos, you can choose what you want to watch, it''s free, it''s gotten my message out there and it''s gotten me away from all the propaganda and recycled terrible schlock from year after year you see on TV. YouTube making a TV show would only hurt themselves and everybody else because their promoting people to come to TV and their making less people come to YouTube. Besides, that''s not what YouTube is about.
Daniel Smeenk - 1/12/2007 6:07:00 AM EST
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