• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 13, 2025

YouTube is TV -- at least according to company executives. Now, primary YouTube viewing comes via the TV screen, exceeding that of mobile.

So can it go further -- finding content niches that have yet to be explored, including more original premium entertainment TV?

We could ignore the fact that YouTube keeps rising in usage -- now representing 11.1% of all total TV viewing time, according to Nielsen metrics. But YouTube --- along with advertising video-on-demand platforms -- displays the only real growth areas in streaming.

But does brand awareness among consumers change? YouTube still relies largely upon small, independent, creator-generated stuff. That said, increasingly there are other premium events -- under the YouTube brand name -- that squeeze into the picture.

“From elections to the Olympics to Coachella to the Super Bowl and the Cricket World Cup, the world’s biggest moments play out on YouTube,” wrote Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, recently.

He adds that future plans include rolling “out more tools to support podcasters, improve monetization for creators, and make it even easier to discover podcasts” -- and adding more YouTube Shorts and live streaming content into the mix.

These should not be confused with subscription services: YouTube Premium, ad-free programming, mostly library sitcoms, talk shows, and some originals; YouTube Primetime Channels ( a la carte live channels); or YouTube TV( cable TV-like packages of channels). These are mostly traditional TV-like platforms.

Except for the very pricey NFL Sunday Ticket -- around $449 a year -- premium original entertainment TV shows are no longer a regular YouTube thing. They stopped producing original TV series in 2022. Entering a maturing streaming marketplace now is not the way to go.

And consider this: with advertising revenues now soaring on YouTube -- pulling in about $10 billion a quarter -- why change?

So what are we left with? YouTube is all about TV now, but not traditional-looking TV shows and movie content.

Still, it is compared with Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video -- as well as ABC, CBS, and NBC -- when Nielsen includes it in its Total TV & Streaming measurement.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, YouTube viewing was at 17.7 billion hours -- up from 15.1 billion in the third quarter, and 14.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.

It is not just that YouTube is “now TV."  Mohan says, more specifically, that it is “new television... [not] like the ‘old’ television.”

Industry experts kind of get it. But do consumers really understand or know the difference?

Does it matter -- in the long term?