What else did you expect?

Remember when YouTube had a $200 million pound war chest to pump into original programming?

It was their bold attempt to move beyond those upload-your-cat-videos amateur content that the site has become synonymous with and try to be a digital multiplatform with commissioned content. They tried their best to veer away from the self-built curse of being a sprawling site with no real niche or individuality.

In fact, do you remember any of these channels that were created?

No?

Not even the Tony Hawks skateboarding channel?

Well, I knew beforehand the money would eventually be wasted with pretty much nothing substantial to show for it. The experiment failed. In fact even I tried to squeeze money out of them.

The disaster was two-fold; firstly nobody can differentiate between each “channel” due to the amount of sidebar noise so it’s attention span hell. Rarely do people (even me) look for a particular channel on a regular basis. Streaming sites like iPlayer and Netflix are built in brands from the start, you knew what you would get by going to their sites.

Secondly the YouTube commissioners seemed to have been hypnotized by the larger companies that jumped on board. They simply didn’t understand the market direction they needed to do down. I hazard a guess that these suppliers had some scripts that were hardly A-List so dusted them off and slipped them over. The quality control didn’t seem to be an issue to a certain degree as they just wanted eyeballs pulled towards their site. In fact if I remember correctly, after speaking to someone, they said that YouTube keep the rights for only a year or two and they revert back to the filmmaker. The content creator gets to win all the way… strange deal if true.

It’s hard to change from this curse of success and other attempts like Comedy Week have fared little better in getting a niche corner of the market.

The main problem is that they didn’t have the right people with a clear agenda, I mean what do you want to be? Broad or Niche? You can’t have it both ways. Also not having a strong sense of quality control didn’t help. Netflix as an example succeeded by spending big but wisely with House of Cards. Solid drama with teeth, which you knew, would win accolades. A great business card if any. I think they should stick to what they do best.