June 2, 2025 • 9 mins
For two decades, YouTube has tried to convince advertisers that it’s the future of entertainment.
The streaming giant has spent the past few years trying to make itself the centerpiece of the living room. The company teamed up with TV manufacturers so watching YouTube on a TV became as easy as watching it on your phone or laptop. People can now leave comments and subscribe to YouTube channels on a TV, and creators can arrange videos as though they’re episodes of a show.
Bloomberg News Managing Editor, Media & Entertainment Lucas Shaw details his Businessweek story on content creators making longer shows to meet viewers where they are.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Hey, we want to get to a story. Do you
watch YouTube a lot?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I actually do. I feel like it's so easy to
just continue to go down rabbit holes of all the
things that you watch one thing, another video will come up,
and it just I probably spend too much time.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
We have dedicated channels that we definitely go to. We
Saiale and we watch some of the sailors that are
going around the globe. So we like we'll like tune
in every week or two weeks when they've got a
new episode. Got to keep in mind YouTube, I've spent
the past few years trying to make itself the centerpiece
of the living room. For two decades, it has tried
to convince advertisers that it's the future of entertainment. It
(00:49):
has had some problems making that case. So rights our
own Lucas Shaw. We want to head to our la
bureau for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg News Managing Editor, Media
and Entertainment head Lucas Shaw. He's really the ringleader, I
should say behind our Bloomberg screen time coverage and vertical
as well. Hey Lucas, good to check.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
In with you.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Great story. YouTube. It feels like it's I don't know,
I feel like everybody's talking about it. It's coming into
its own what's going on and is kind of everybody
talking about it with good reason.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, I'd say everyone in Hollywood is paying more attention
to it than they used to be. You know, it's
funny to talk about YouTube as anything new, right, It's
been around for twenty years as of this year. It's
been widely popular for at least a decade, if not longer.
You know, it's the most popular music service in most
of the world. It's become a very popular platform for podcasting.
(01:43):
You know, it's where people essentially watch late night. It's
the new home of all I use it for yoga.
But I think that what's really happened over the last
couple of years is twofold one is it's just as
traditional entertainment has gotten more challenge and as the TV
business has shrunk, advertisers have looked to YouTube as the
(02:05):
future and started to spend more and more money there.
Creators who have been there for a long time have
started to build businesses and been able to raise real capital.
And then I think data also does play a real
role here where Nielsen puts out these monthly reports on
how much people how much time people are spending watching
a given streaming service on television, and YouTube has gone
(02:25):
from being already number two behind Netflix now being the
unequivocal number one. People spend more time watching YouTube on
a television than everything Disney owns, that's streaming, that's TV networks,
and I think that has really reinforced for people in entertainment, like,
holy crap, YouTube is really big, and we need to
look at this again.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
What do we know as far as behind Alphabet's efforts
when it comes to streaming When you think about other rivals,
say like Amazon with Amazon Prime and the streaming services
that they have. When you're mentioning obviously Netflix two.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Here, well, look, YouTube is just is lead and bounds
bigger than what any of the other tech companies have,
right Apple, Apple and Amazon have their own streaming services.
Apples is very niche, Amazon's is pretty big, but still
much smaller. Both of them view themselves, I think primarily
(03:18):
as homes and retailers for other people's wares. Right, like
Amazon is a it's core a retailer. It wants to
sell everyone else's streaming service. Apple would wanted to make
its TV app at the place where you could come
and find everything. The challenge that a lot of them
ran into as a company like Netflix was like, I
don't want to collaborate with you on this. I'm trying
(03:38):
to become the place that everybody goes. You know, YouTube
has aspects of it being this destination.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
They sell the live TV service YouTube TV. You can
pay for paid streaming services and stream them within YouTube.
There are a lot of other things you can do
besides watch core YouTube. But it has the biggest advantage
of all, which is it has just YouTube, and so
many people already hum for that, and it becomes a
natural hub to direct them to all these other things.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
So I'm going to ask you, Lucas our Sebastian Escobar
is just saying YouTube premium like kind of changed his life,
changed his mind. He said, it's like nineteen dollars a month,
a bit pricey, but no ads. I mean, is that
where they're making their money or do they need to
be providing content that advertisers want to advertise with.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, look, YouTube still makes the majority of its money
from advertising. You know, I think last year it was
I'm going to say it's about thirty five billion, but
don't hold it to that. Maybe it was a little lower,
Maybe it was closer to thirty Subscription wise, the outside
estimates now say the YouTube business is probably fifteen to
twenty billion. That's also massive, it's not as big as advertising.
That's the mix of YouTube TV, the YouTube premium. I
(04:47):
think YouTube premium is great for certain people, and the
music service has also is a big lore. You know,
YouTube has become one of the bigger paid music services
on top of being free. But it's still that's like
the nice growth area and something they're putting a lot
of effort into. But YouTube is a division of Alphabet.
Alphabet makes most of its money from advertising. I don't
(05:09):
think that's going to change anytime soon. But they want
to have a little bit of everything. And you know,
there's the quality of programming that you see on YouTube,
I think is getting better each year. And that's one
of the things that I tried to get at is
there's always been this perception of YouTube as sort of
a home for lower quality smut, and there's some of
(05:32):
that still. There's a lot of that still there. Right,
It's sort of an inexhaustible amount of video that you
can watch on YouTube, but the stuff at the top
end is starting to rival what you could see on TV.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
How are Hollywood executives trying to jump in on this?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Well, so there's a long and checkered history of Hollywood
and YouTube in that. About ten years ago, maybe twelve
years ago, there was sort of an initial rush of investment,
and Hollywood companies invested in all these companies called multi
channel networks. There were loose confederations of channels where they
the company itself didn't really own anything. They did a
lot of business like ad sales or distribution on behalf
(06:08):
of the channels. Turns out those were not very good businesses.
But Disney spent a bunch of money on one, Framework's
Animation bought one, Warner Brothers bought one or two. Now
I think they're looking at that again, but trying to
be smarter about how they go about it. So that
can be either in kind of taking just licensing existing shows. Right,
(06:29):
So Netflix has Coco Melon, they have Miss Rachel, they
have the Sidemen, Amazon has a big show with Mister Beast,
and that's essentially paying these people to bring what's already
popular over to them. Or they may invest in some
of these companies or try to strike deals, and those
haven't happened yet, but I think they probably will at
some point. You'll see an effort to kind of buy
(06:52):
someone who has brands or properties that might work.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, it's just kind of fascinating. I guess, you know,
does it bottom Lucas? I mean, going forward, do they
want to have I'm assuming the majority of their content,
you know, produced well, or do they like this idea
that there's like kind of anybody can create a YouTube
channel and put some content.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Up there in they in that case is YouTube.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Well I'm thinking about Yeah, like I guess YouTube creating,
I guess their own content. It sounds like they want
to kind of up the quality of it, but I
just feel like there's just so many other people do
it too, and some of it's really good, some of
it's not.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I don't think YouTube wants to finance a lot of
its own programming. That could change, but they have dabbled
in that over the years and it hasn't gone very well.
And I think they much prefer being this neutral distributor
and being a platform where people can upload anything, and
(07:53):
they might invest or put money behind certain areas where
they want to push people. But they have alphabet, Google,
YouTube and any part of that. Glasses has never shown
a ton of interest in being a proper studio in
the same way that Amazon and Apple are now. Now
that could change. Someone made a good point to me
the other day, which is like, if you're them and
(08:13):
you want to be ahead and AI, would you want
to buy a big studio and use that copyright to
train your video model. Maybe, But to date, funding entertainment
or kind of directly funding production has not been something
that YouTube is liked the lot.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
All right, Well, it's such a great deep dive, and
I just feel like we are increasingly when we're talking about,
like where everybody's watching, we are talking so much about YouTube. Lucas,
thank you as always really appreciated. Chris Bloomberg, News Managing Editor,
Media and Entertainment. Lucas Shaw. Check out his story. It's
in the weekend addition two of Bloomberg Business Week, and
(08:50):
you can check it out and read a little bit more.
In terms of details, there's some great. I mean, I
think Lucas touched on it. But according to Nielsen, an
average of more than seven million people in the US
are watching YouTube Tube on a TV at any given time,
more than watching Netflix and Amazon Prime Video combined. Fastest
growing audience being viewers sixty five and over. I don't know,
it's just kind of wrong. We watched it a lot
(09:11):
in our hassole. Yeah,
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Hey, we want to get to a story. Do you
watch YouTube a lot?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I actually do. I feel like it's so easy to
just continue to go down rabbit holes of all the
things that you watch one thing, another video will come up,
and it just I probably spend too much time.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
We have dedicated channels that we definitely go to. We
Saiale and we watch some of the sailors that are
going around the globe. So we like we'll like tune
in every week or two weeks when they've got a
new episode. Got to keep in mind YouTube, I've spent
the past few years trying to make itself the centerpiece
of the living room. For two decades, it has tried
to convince advertisers that it's the future of entertainment. It
(00:49):
has had some problems making that case. So rights our
own Lucas Shaw. We want to head to our la
bureau for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg News Managing Editor, Media
and Entertainment head Lucas Shaw. He's really the ringleader, I
should say behind our Bloomberg screen time coverage and vertical
as well. Hey Lucas, good to check.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
In with you.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Great story. YouTube. It feels like it's I don't know,
I feel like everybody's talking about it. It's coming into
its own what's going on and is kind of everybody
talking about it with good reason.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, I'd say everyone in Hollywood is paying more attention
to it than they used to be. You know, it's
funny to talk about YouTube as anything new, right, It's
been around for twenty years as of this year. It's
been widely popular for at least a decade, if not longer.
You know, it's the most popular music service in most
of the world. It's become a very popular platform for podcasting.
(01:43):
You know, it's where people essentially watch late night. It's
the new home of all I use it for yoga.
But I think that what's really happened over the last
couple of years is twofold one is it's just as
traditional entertainment has gotten more challenge and as the TV
business has shrunk, advertisers have looked to YouTube as the
(02:05):
future and started to spend more and more money there.
Creators who have been there for a long time have
started to build businesses and been able to raise real capital.
And then I think data also does play a real
role here where Nielsen puts out these monthly reports on
how much people how much time people are spending watching
a given streaming service on television, and YouTube has gone
(02:25):
from being already number two behind Netflix now being the
unequivocal number one. People spend more time watching YouTube on
a television than everything Disney owns, that's streaming, that's TV networks,
and I think that has really reinforced for people in entertainment, like,
holy crap, YouTube is really big, and we need to
look at this again.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
What do we know as far as behind Alphabet's efforts
when it comes to streaming When you think about other rivals,
say like Amazon with Amazon Prime and the streaming services
that they have. When you're mentioning obviously Netflix two.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Here, well, look, YouTube is just is lead and bounds
bigger than what any of the other tech companies have,
right Apple, Apple and Amazon have their own streaming services.
Apples is very niche, Amazon's is pretty big, but still
much smaller. Both of them view themselves, I think primarily
(03:18):
as homes and retailers for other people's wares. Right, like
Amazon is a it's core a retailer. It wants to
sell everyone else's streaming service. Apple would wanted to make
its TV app at the place where you could come
and find everything. The challenge that a lot of them
ran into as a company like Netflix was like, I
don't want to collaborate with you on this. I'm trying
(03:38):
to become the place that everybody goes. You know, YouTube
has aspects of it being this destination.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
They sell the live TV service YouTube TV. You can
pay for paid streaming services and stream them within YouTube.
There are a lot of other things you can do
besides watch core YouTube. But it has the biggest advantage
of all, which is it has just YouTube, and so
many people already hum for that, and it becomes a
natural hub to direct them to all these other things.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
So I'm going to ask you, Lucas our Sebastian Escobar
is just saying YouTube premium like kind of changed his life,
changed his mind. He said, it's like nineteen dollars a month,
a bit pricey, but no ads. I mean, is that
where they're making their money or do they need to
be providing content that advertisers want to advertise with.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, look, YouTube still makes the majority of its money
from advertising. You know, I think last year it was
I'm going to say it's about thirty five billion, but
don't hold it to that. Maybe it was a little lower,
Maybe it was closer to thirty Subscription wise, the outside
estimates now say the YouTube business is probably fifteen to
twenty billion. That's also massive, it's not as big as advertising.
That's the mix of YouTube TV, the YouTube premium. I
(04:47):
think YouTube premium is great for certain people, and the
music service has also is a big lore. You know,
YouTube has become one of the bigger paid music services
on top of being free. But it's still that's like
the nice growth area and something they're putting a lot
of effort into. But YouTube is a division of Alphabet.
Alphabet makes most of its money from advertising. I don't
(05:09):
think that's going to change anytime soon. But they want
to have a little bit of everything. And you know,
there's the quality of programming that you see on YouTube,
I think is getting better each year. And that's one
of the things that I tried to get at is
there's always been this perception of YouTube as sort of
a home for lower quality smut, and there's some of
(05:32):
that still. There's a lot of that still there. Right,
It's sort of an inexhaustible amount of video that you
can watch on YouTube, but the stuff at the top
end is starting to rival what you could see on TV.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
How are Hollywood executives trying to jump in on this?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Well, so there's a long and checkered history of Hollywood
and YouTube in that. About ten years ago, maybe twelve
years ago, there was sort of an initial rush of investment,
and Hollywood companies invested in all these companies called multi
channel networks. There were loose confederations of channels where they
the company itself didn't really own anything. They did a
lot of business like ad sales or distribution on behalf
(06:08):
of the channels. Turns out those were not very good businesses.
But Disney spent a bunch of money on one, Framework's
Animation bought one, Warner Brothers bought one or two. Now
I think they're looking at that again, but trying to
be smarter about how they go about it. So that
can be either in kind of taking just licensing existing shows. Right,
(06:29):
So Netflix has Coco Melon, they have Miss Rachel, they
have the Sidemen, Amazon has a big show with Mister Beast,
and that's essentially paying these people to bring what's already
popular over to them. Or they may invest in some
of these companies or try to strike deals, and those
haven't happened yet, but I think they probably will at
some point. You'll see an effort to kind of buy
(06:52):
someone who has brands or properties that might work.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, it's just kind of fascinating. I guess, you know,
does it bottom Lucas? I mean, going forward, do they
want to have I'm assuming the majority of their content,
you know, produced well, or do they like this idea
that there's like kind of anybody can create a YouTube
channel and put some content.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Up there in they in that case is YouTube.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Well I'm thinking about Yeah, like I guess YouTube creating,
I guess their own content. It sounds like they want
to kind of up the quality of it, but I
just feel like there's just so many other people do
it too, and some of it's really good, some of
it's not.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I don't think YouTube wants to finance a lot of
its own programming. That could change, but they have dabbled
in that over the years and it hasn't gone very well.
And I think they much prefer being this neutral distributor
and being a platform where people can upload anything, and
(07:53):
they might invest or put money behind certain areas where
they want to push people. But they have alphabet, Google,
YouTube and any part of that. Glasses has never shown
a ton of interest in being a proper studio in
the same way that Amazon and Apple are now. Now
that could change. Someone made a good point to me
the other day, which is like, if you're them and
(08:13):
you want to be ahead and AI, would you want
to buy a big studio and use that copyright to
train your video model. Maybe, But to date, funding entertainment
or kind of directly funding production has not been something
that YouTube is liked the lot.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
All right, Well, it's such a great deep dive, and
I just feel like we are increasingly when we're talking about,
like where everybody's watching, we are talking so much about YouTube. Lucas,
thank you as always really appreciated. Chris Bloomberg, News Managing Editor,
Media and Entertainment. Lucas Shaw. Check out his story. It's
in the weekend addition two of Bloomberg Business Week, and
(08:50):
you can check it out and read a little bit more.
In terms of details, there's some great. I mean, I
think Lucas touched on it. But according to Nielsen, an
average of more than seven million people in the US
are watching YouTube Tube on a TV at any given time,
more than watching Netflix and Amazon Prime Video combined. Fastest
growing audience being viewers sixty five and over. I don't know,
it's just kind of wrong. We watched it a lot
(09:11):
in our hassole. Yeah,
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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