The good news: YouTube has secured video clips from Time Warner channels including CNN and Cartoon Network. The bad news: Clips is the operative word, with it all being short-form content. To see full episodes or movies, YouTube still isn’t an option.
The Long & Short Of It
Online video started as short-form clips being passed around on the Web, particularly via email. And YouTube used this as its starting point when it launched in 2005. User-generated clips were king, with the ability of anyone to upload a video of their dog doing something dumb offering huge mainstream appeal.
But things have moved on a touch since then. Sure, there is still a place for short-form video, and for UGC, but long-form video is really where the future lies. People are increasingly turning towards Hulu and the BBC iPlayer in order to watch full-length television shows and movies on their computer.
YouTube = Short & Sweet
This unfortunately isn’t a sector where YouTube excels. It’s done several deals over the last year or so to bring premium content to the site, and some of it is in the form of full episodes of TV shows or movies. But the majority of YouTube video remain short, sweet, and easily forgotten.
Even when YouTube does manage to secure a full-length movie, as it did with Ghostbusters last week, those pesky international copyrights mean everyone outside of the U.S. loses out.
Time Warner Deal
YouTube and Time Warner have made a deal where by clips of shows from across its networks will be made available to watch on YouTube as well as clips from Warner Bros. movies. CNN, Turner, Adult Swim, and The Cartoon Network are to be featured heavily, along with shows such as Gossip Girl.
Time Warner will also create YouTube channels for each of its key brands and sell advertising against the video clips. However, to see the full-length shows or movies, viewers will have to either go to another Web site or purchase a DVD or Blu-ray of the content they want to watch.
A Raw Deal For YouTube?
Some shows will work well as short-form clips such as Adult Swim. But in reality, most shows and movies really need to be watched in full to be worth the time and effort made in tracking them down online.
It feels to me as though Time Warner, and Disney before it, are using YouTube’s massive popularity to effectively advertise its content without actually making the full-length shows available on the site. YouTube will inevitably gain some traffic from the deal but the big winner here is Time Warner.
