For YouTube personality Shay Carl of Vlogumentary, here with wife Collette, the camera is a constant companion.

YouTube
October 04, 2016
In The Mix

Red Hook

YouTube looks to its online future with Red subscription platform.

Daniel Frankel

Since ushering the world into the internet video era over a decade ago, YouTube and its corporate parent, Google, have learned an essential truth about viewers — there are a lot of them, and they have very different tastes, habits and expectations.

YouTube has also learned that if it wants to be the top-rated network of the future — and fend off competition from other online giants, like Facebook — it can’t continue to rely on short-form user-generated videos. It needs to diversify and supply a broad lineup of distribution platforms to various segments of its audience.

With the debut last year of the subscription-based YouTube Red, the company set its sights on the premium, commercial-free market that has been so successfully courted by Netflix.

For 10 dollars a month, YouTube Red subscribers can watch YouTube’s vast array of content commercial-free, while enjoying Google’s massive digital music collection to boot — an attractive offering, given that Spotify users pay a similar fee just for subscription tunes.

But YouTube sees the real draw in Red’s original shows, produced under its YouTube Originals banner, where former WB, Lifetime and MTV executive Susanne Daniels is now vice-president. The series are premiering on the free, ad-supported platform, but to see subsequent episodes, viewers must subscribe to Red.

“YouTube Red is targeted towards YouTube’s heaviest users,” says Ben Relles, head of unscripted series for YouTube Originals. “The sweet spot for YouTube Red Originals is audiences 18 to 24.”

The unique spin: well-known faces from traditional, linear platforms are being merged with popular YouTube creators. For example, the Morgan Spurlock–produced Vlogumentary features such popular YouTube “makers” as Shay Carl, Adande “sWooZie” Thorne, Grace Helbig, Charles Trippy and Gaby Dunn, captured in 90-minute documentary format.

Scare PewDiePie takes one of YouTube’s most popular user-generated-content creators — Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie — and puts him in his own original series.

Meanwhile, YouTube Originals is also partnering with Lionsgate to adapt a long-running theatrical franchise, Step Up, for the smaller screen. The series, set to debut in 2017 with ten 45-minute episodes, will place YouTube talent in starring roles. And Channing Tatum, who broke out in Anne Fletcher’s seminal 2006 Step Up film, will serve as an executive producer.

YouTube’s investment into premium, studio-produced shows like Step Up comes as the rate of spending on subscription video on demand is finally decelerating.

The research firm Strategy Analytics has released data showing that U.S. consumers will spend about $6.62 billion this year on SVOD platforms like Neflix, Hulu and YouTube Red. That represents a $1.19 billion increase over last year. But it also represents the first time that growth was slower than the previous year. In 2015, SVOD platforms expanded their revenue by $1.21 billion over 2014.

Relles believes YouTube’s original series will help it stand out in a cluttered market.

“We’ve released 12 originals to date, with 15 to 20 planned overall in 2016,” he notes. “YouTube Red Originals is one of the leading drivers of YouTube Red subscriptions, with viewership that rivals similar cable shows.”

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