Is YouTube’s disruption of TV now complete?

11/14/24 • 22 min

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Earlier this year the global video sharing platform You Tube dominated TV viewership in the United States, knocking Disney off the top spot and leaving major media names like Netflix, Paramount, Amazon and Fox in its wake. In a first for the streaming platform, the time people spent watching YouTube on television accounted for 10.4 percent of total TV in the month of July.

In terms of its world reach, the platform is now available in more than one hundred countries and pulls in nearly three billion users every month, the majority of which are between 25 and 34 years old, that’s younger than the core audience for traditional television.

Launched in 2005, YouTube has since expanded and diversified, but it’s niche area for dominating the market is still in user generated content and the advertising income it draws in provides the platform with its main source of revenue, leaving the traditional TV market in its wake.

So, on this week’s Inquiry, we’re asking ‘Is YouTube’s disruption of TV now complete?’

Contributors: Mark Bergen, Reporter with Bloomberg Technology, Author of ‘Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination’, London, UK.

Chris Stokel-Walker, Journalist, Author of ‘YouTubers: How YouTube Shook Up TV and Created a New Generation of Stars’, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Rahul Telang, Professor of Information Systems, Carnegie Mellon University, Co-Author of ‘Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment’, Pennsylvania, USA

Dr. Marlen Komorowski, Professor for European Media Markets, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Senior Research Fellow, Cardiff University, Wales, UK Presenter: Charmaine Cozier Producer: Jill Collins Researcher: Kirsteen Knight Editor: Tara McDermott Technical Producer: Cameron Ward Production Co-ordinator: Tim Fernley

Image: Silhouettes of laptop and mobile device users are seen next to a screen projection of the YouTube logo

Credit: Reuters/Dado Ruvić

So, on this week’s Inquiry, we’re asking ‘Is YouTube’s disruption of TV now complete?’

Contributors: Mark Bergen, Reporter with Bloomberg Technology, Author of ‘Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination’, London, UK.

Image: Silhouettes of laptop and mobile device users are seen next to a screen projection of the YouTube logo

Credit: Reuters/Dado Ruvić

Previous Episode

What will happen after the International Space Station?

The International Space Station will be decommissioned in 2030 and crash down into the Pacific Ocean, ending more than three decades of international cooperation.

Launched in the wake of the Cold War, the ISS is seen as a triumph of global diplomacy between the US, Russia and other nations. Its demise will mark the end of an era.

Nasa has awarded contracts to commercial companies to develop potential successors to the ISS, and maintain a U.S. presence in low earth orbit. Meanwhile Russia and India have said they plan to launch their own individual stations, and China has already got its own space station, Tiangong.

As the era of the International Space Station nears its end, this week on The Inquiry, we’re asking ‘What will happen after the International Space Station?’

Presenter: Tanya Beckett Producer: Matt Toulson Researcher: Kirsteen Knight Editor: Tara McDermott Technical Operator: Ben Houghton

Contributors: Jennifer Levasseur, Museum Curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C., US

Mark McCaughrean, former Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration at the European Space Agency and astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany

Mai'a Cross, Professor of political science at Northeastern University, and director for the Center for International Affairs and World Cultures, Massachusetts, US

Wendy Whitman Cobb, Professor of strategy and security studies at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Alabama, US

CREDIT: State of the Union address, 1984; Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Next Episode

Can Boeing turn it around?

Aerospace giant Boeing has had big problems to overcome since the crashes of two of its 737 Max aircraft. Its situation was compounded this year with another safety scare and a strike losing it billions of dollars. It has a new CEO who has pledged to return the company to its engineering roots and away from cost cutting and in October, Boeing managed to raise 21bn US dollars by issuing new shares in the company. However, catching up on lost production will take time and money and financially the company is nowhere near out of the weeds.

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Contributors: Richard Aboulafia, AeroDynamic Advisory, a US aerospace consultancy Sharon Turlep, an aviation industry reporter at the Wall Street Journal Christine Negroni, an aviation journalist specialising in safety Scott Hamilton, aviation analyst

Presented by David Baker. Produced by Bob Howard. Researched by Matt Toulson. Edited by Tara McDermott. Mixed by David Crackles.

Image credit - Kevin Burkholder via Getty Images