Original Content Coming To YouTube?

itwbennett writes "Rumors of original, professionally-produced content channels coming to YouTube are heating up. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported on it, invoking pro skateboarder Tony Hawk as one of the star attractions. Now The Hollywood Reporter is saying the channels may be launched early next year, with an official announcement coming later this month. 'Originally the story was that YouTube was going to invest $100 million in this content, but now that number has been bumped up to $150 million,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Does that sound like a lot? Consider Netflix is rumored to be spending $100 million on House of Cards, a single original series that the company is backing. YouTube is said to be delivering 24 channels of original content.'"

Can we PLEASE get Firefly back?

[dreadlord76]

nuf said

Self-publication

[internerdj]

Interesting, a few articles down it says Amazon is chasing writers. I'm glad to get the old greedy distribution systems out of the way, but how long before these become our new content hoarding overlords?

When comparing to Netflix...

[trunicated]

Remember, YouTube has been going with the quantity over quality argument since its inception. No reason why $150 million tossed at a number of different, smaller projects wouldn't be better for the audience that YouTube already pulls in. While I'm excited for Netflix new series, I'm interested to see what YouTube can pull together. There is a good chance that I will at least find some of the things they put on their site amusing, which isn't that hard to repeat a few hundred million times, and would lead to repayment via advertising revenue, whereas Netflix is going to need to either bump prices, increase subscriptions, or cut back other purchases.

Or see what Journey Quest is doing with $60k

[RingDev]

Really, $100 million for a retred of yet another generic format TV program? Where the only thing that entertains anymore is putting extreme gore/fear/violence/sex into the content.

We have tons of small-house production studios that are doing amazing work on a shoe-string budget comparitively.

For $100M we could have a dozens full length Journey Quest seasons, or a bunch of new Dorkness Rising movies with even better production quality.

Instead it's "Hey look, Jack Bower disembowls a terrorist and feeds his intestins to a 5 year old to get him to admit that he hid his keys!"

-Rick

Re:When comparing to Netflix...

[Wescotte]

They should buy up indy content. Sure, they can't buy content in nice big packages but they won't be forced content they don't want in these bundles like Netflix seems to suffer from. For every good show/fiilm they stream there is 100 more they got because it was in a bundle. The production value on non studio tv/film is getting really high really fast. This could be a great outlet for original content made outside the normal channels.

Maybe it's time to reward everyone who helped make YouTube what it is today by giving them an outlet for producing higher quality content that will never see the light of day on current TV/Film distribution methods.