Don't bother with the Techcrunch article, go straight to the well formatted list that includes information on each channel: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/creators/original-channels.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/creators/original-channels.html</a>
These aren't the channels any regular person is interested in watching. This is basically the list of video podcasts that are already on iTunes/TiVo/etc. These are popular:<p><a href="http://www.hulu.com/browse/popular/tv" rel="nofollow">http://www.hulu.com/browse/popular/tv</a>
<a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/tv-shows/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/tv-shows/</a><p>And no amount of "free" is going to change that in the forseeable future.
People complaining that these channels don't have broad appeal are missing the point.<p>The cheap economics of Youtube broadcasting make producing content for micro-market segments economically viable, in exactly the same way that many niche blogs are profitable in segments that would have struggled to support a print magazine
Too many partners in my opinion. MTV blew up not only because of the subject matter but also because it was one of the only channels that had a youth market at all. It was like the internet as a TV channel - metaphorically-speaking.<p>It's very telling that as cable TV became a fractured medium with 100s of 'extra' channels, channels like MTV had to turn to the me-too and less-expensive/higher-margin programming of reality shows and also to the proliferation-per-channel idea as well - where there are now - what - 6 MTV channels. 1980's MTV literally gave us a music movement; 2011 version is mostly Jersey Shore and Teenage Mom . . .<p>It seems an odd choice for Youtube/Google to set up an old format of business as the straw man they're 'disrupting'. If one really wanted to disrupt the endless seas of mediocre, center-of-the-bell-curve content, they'd have to focus much more narrowly, invest much more heavily, and share the proceeds much more generously. I'm not saying I know the numbers, but none of these are a characteristic of Youtube or Google when it comes to content - that's for sure. The sheer volume of their partnership agreements implies a see-which-spaghetti-sticks approach.<p>The article would like to imply that Youtube is going to move [nobly] beyond it's root essentially as a distribution system. Distributors, as a business, care about 'good enough'; they rarely bother with 'great'. In my opinion, Youtube/Google have had a long free ride on the content of others - both user-generated and the kind that 'fell off the back of a truck'. I hardly see them as a capable partner for truly creative content production.<p>Anyway, Lady Gaga is the new MTV :P
I find it amusing that people hate on regular TV for being brainless junk, even going as far as to sell the TV they own...then as a replacement they watch youtube videos for hours a day. Ridiculous and shows people just don't get the concept of why to get rid of the TV in the first place.