YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It's Coming for the Sitcom
129 comments
·June 1, 2025mjburgess
diggan
Today I was gonna watch a ~14 minute video on YouTube while having a quick lunch. After the 1:30 mark, YouTube showed me a five second ad. Fair enough. After 4 minutes, it served me a 30 seconds ad, bit less fun, but fine, YouTube gotta get theirs also. After 6 minutes they showed me a 1 minute ad, and now I started getting frustrated. At the 7 minute mark they tried to show me another 1 minute ad, but at that point I just shut off the TV as it's just too frustrating when they're trying to shove in as much ad-time as there is real-content-time.
One of the initial reasons YouTube was better than TV was because it lacked so much ads everywhere. Same for the streaming services. They're quite literally shooting themselves in the foot with adding so much ads...
Now my fingers are itching to build a tiny little service for myself, where I can have a bunch of YouTube channels in a .txt file, and have yt-dlp iterate over them once a day and add automatically to Jellyfin, or something similar, almost solely out of spite. Realistically, I'll probably just avoid YouTube on the TV for a week, until I forget how painful that experience is.
derektank
YouTube Premium is a very reasonably priced service that actually results in more money going to the creators of videos than watching ads does.
fossuser
+1 I can understand people being annoyed by in video sponsorship if it’s done too much, but if you’re not paying for premium and you’re complaining about ads you’re not worth taking seriously.
Being able to pay to remove ads is one of the best things about the new media ecosystem. When I go to my parents house and see them watch cable it’s dystopic how many ads there are for a service with primarily trash content that’s still ridiculously expensive.
dataflow
I suspect this reasonable ad-free pricing will only last as long as needed to gain the majority of users on board. Video hosting costs will have to rise (there are ever more videos being created; you can't host all of them indefinitely available at everyone's fingertips at low cost) and they will have to increase prices to keep up.
Not that this implies you shouldn't get premium, but just worth keeping in mind I think.
acquisitionsilk
It also results in more money going to Youtube/Google LLC/Alphabet Inc.
There are many wonderful videos and video-makers on youtube - but I think the platform has been a net negative for creativity, and for humanity, in many ways. Hence I personally would never support them with my money.
We haven't ever ran the counterfactual, and maybe there's some reason we can't or won't. But I would absolutely love to see youtube without youtube - no middleman, direct payments to the video-makers.
I'm not proposing a technical discussion here on what such a platform might look like or whether it's feasible - I just mean culturally, I'd love to see what videos we would come up with if we weren't constantly adjusting to suit the all-powerful and unknowable "algorithm".
I think this pressure to conform to the algorithm, to always chase more views, subscriptions, and comments, to frame every choice around that, has probably been much more prohibitive on creativity than we are able to imagine.
lurk2
Almost every video I watch these days has a sponsored segment that ends up taking around 1/10th of the video’s total run time. Better than TV, but if I’m paying for the service I’m not willing to watch any ads.
const_cast
Paying for streaming services used to result in zero ads too, and now lots of services either don't offer ad-free or charge double for it.
I think ads are extremely valuable to brands, more than we realize. It's basically allowed propaganda for consumerist behavior. I don't think we can set a pricetag on ads, which is why I don't think they'll ever go away. This is just temporary, don't get used to it.
55555
YouTube Premium is some of the best money I spend. Just buy it if you have the money. 55% goes to creators.
spacemadness
Influencers like to stick ads right in their videos now so you can’t avoid that. Thankfully that’s just influencers and not other types of videos.
Larrikin
You're only stuck watching YouTube ads if you are on an Apple device. There are multiple ways to get around ads on every other platform.
fiatpandas
You can absolutely get rid of ads on an iOS device. You just need to use YouTube in safari.
diggan
> There are multiple ways to get around ads on every other platform.
What about an LG TV, which is where I mostly watch YouTube? Think the platform is WebOS unless I'm mistaken.
mathgeek
The discussion is specifically talking about watching on TVs. Those (usually) don’t have ad blockers natively. You can of course block outside of the platform.
Eddy_Viscosity2
Adblockers/no-adblockers is missing the point. YT and other internet media WILL eventually be mostly ads just like TV became. And they WILL figure out ways to prevent blocking, in fact there are likely very smart and talented people on HN will devote their knowledge and expertise to achieve these ends in exchange for fat salaries. There will also be lobbying of course and I foresee that ad-skipping will eventually be criminalized (harshly) to ensure compliance. There is no escaping these fates. The only hope is a brand new form of media and the brief window of ad-escape it grants before it too is overrun and conquered by ads.
aspenmayer
You can block YouTube ads in Safari on iOS/iPadOS. There are also alternative players you can sideload with AltStore or other methods, all without jailbreaking.
rasz
web Youtube started preliminary work on muxing video on server - js player no longer fetches two separate standard video & audio sources, it gets binary encoded bundle instead. They will at some point hard switch to this method of injecting ads.
kristjansson
Or just pay them their $14/mo (or is it $8 now?). It’s revelatory.
diggan
It's 18EUR/month, or 21 freedom dollars, for me in Spain. Compared to what I used to pay for it, not worth it in the end.
RajT88
YouTube hack: when you see an ad, refresh the page.
bigyabai
If you're not sideloading an alternative YouTube client then yeah, you gotta put up with the ads.
bongodongobob
The "they" that is shoving those mid-roll ads in the video is the content creator, not YouTube. YouTube won't stick ads in the middle of the video unless the creator opted in to monetize it.
j1elo
Do you mean that creators choose explicitly how many ads to insert and their length? Because if it's just an ON/OFF switch and then Youtube proceeds to put almost equal lengths of ads than of content (1+ min ad after 2 minutes of content, as per the previous comment) then that's truly terrible.
Also... ads after only 2 minutes? Am I the only one who thinks that feels much worse to bear than longer ads more spaced out? There's something that feels odd with having to get interrupted by an ad after mere 100 seconds of watching something.
h2zizzle
This is a bit misleading, IIUC. "Content creator" in this case means the nominal copyright-holder, which often means someone simply claiming copyright, in practice, and not necessarily the uploader ("Fair Use" be damned). The person who uploaded the video might have fully intended there to be no ads run during playback, but has little say in the matter if someone comes along and claims that their content is used in the video.
vasco
Many real people sharing real personal stories and real doctors sharing their real experiences in hospitals got banned from YouTube during COVID lockdowns. It's freer but it's not free.
anonym29
That's not strictly a platform problem. US Federal Government (intelligence agencies) were conducting aggressive information operations (i.e. narrative control) and has effectively infinite taxpayer money to bully / sue / harass / force any noncompliant corporation to play ball. Corporations, being naturally focused on profit-seeking, tend to fear loss of revenue more than they love civil liberties, freedom of information, freedom from censorship, etc.
It's a match made in hell. The only real way to beat these is to stick to information sources that are small enough to not be a target. Or to just accept that much of what you see, hear, read, and think has been deliberately curated by a government that is aggressively hostile against your ability to access narratives and information they either disagree with or simply dislike.
Some might see a government scrubbing "malinformation", but the Chinese government would call photographs of Tienanmen Square "malinformation" even though they were real, important, and culturally relevant - they just stood in opposition to the Chinese government's efforts to quell any hint of opposition. Narrative control by silencing people who see things differently.
What the US government did here was no different.
1vuio0pswjnm7
"One hopes the internet stays free enough, in protocol, that if advertisers (and governments) try again to dominate and control the mass media, there are ready-made alternatives to spring up."
What if the "alternatives" are dominated and controlled by intermediaries that are 100% funded by advertising, e.g., YT is subsidiary of company that sells online advertising "services", YT is used to deliver ads and data obtained from YT is used to support the parent company's ad services business
h2zizzle
>The reality is it was an entirely fake constructed world designed by advertisers, and to some lesser degree, the political class
This applies to American car culture also, as mentioned in this video on Tempe, AZ's "Cul De Sac" carless community: https://youtu.be/4UAZMEpOKTI
Something important to remember on this matter is that the American car industry almost collapsed during the GFC and had to be bailed out. Ford, GM, et al. exist today largely because their potential failure represented a national security concern, not because they make products that people desire (at least, at volume), or because those products enable a way of life that people desire.
>My great concern with the "YT is being TV" direction is that this history repeats. Just as facebook (etc.) centralised and ad-santisied the "local, independent" internet -- so will, YT/spotify/etc. just return the mass media back into advertiser hands.
Likewise, it would be nice if our realization that forced car ownership is bad for society didn't push us into a world where public transit was the only option, and owning a car too expensive to justify. In all, sociocultural monopolies seem like the thing to avoid. Not just a matter of not allowing one company to own a market, but not allowing one notion to monopolize our imaginations and ideals. Choice and competition in a capitalist society, whodathunk?
fingerlocks
Nit: Ford did not receive any bailouts or declare bankruptcy during the GFC.
h2zizzle
Eh. Ford didn't declare bankruptcy or receive TARP funds, but they did receive significant government and financial assistance in that time frame.
mschuster91
> Thus we can have multi-hour podcasts with politicians asked real questions on the audiences mind; we can have companies held to account for the real quality of their products; films, games, and other media can be reviewed by people who share the tastes of their audiences -- rather than have their tastes "made" by the nominated ad-friendly elite.
The problem is, it's increasingly less attractive. Like, the NordVPN, AG1 supplement or whatever else shill scripts, they're all the damn same, it's annoying, particularly if you know the product being shilled is a fucking scam like AG1.
With "traditional" media you at least had some regulatory requirements here in Europe - either ad blocks clearly labeled as "advertising", or a permanent "infomercial" text overlay. And anything that was advertising outside of these two factors meant fines, sometimes serious ones, for violating the regulatory framework ("Schleichwerbung", see Art. 13 European Convention on Transfrontier Television [1]).
But these days? You can't be sure that influencers comply with even the bare minimum of regulation that exists, and no one takes care about prosecuting anyway.
mjburgess
Sure, but let's do like-for-like. MLMs and other scams were institutionalised before crypto -- the bushes and top cliton admin people were right there on their payroll. Madelein albright was infamous as an MLM shill. All this was conducted on the mainstream media of that era.
TV never protected people from scams, the law did. TV was the propaganda organ of a corrput elite --- see no more than george bush snr complaining about the simpsons, prefering the cosbys -- a man himself who turned up at the funeral on one of the most psychopathic of the Eron scammers, who was flown to his own inauguration in one of their private jets.
The original conservative cultural elite used the mainstream media to create an illusion of western life consistent with values they wish to see the public perform. Values they themselves did not practice.
They were not protecting people from scams. They were in on the largest scams in american history.
mschuster91
> TV never protected people from scams, the law did.
Indeed, that's my point. And that even for Americans, despite y'all's regulations (particularly when it comes to product placements) being far more relaxed than in Europe.
The problem is, the law hasn't even come close to catching up with reality for well over a decade. Influencers obviously - look no further than Fyre Festival or multi-million subscriber YouTubers that have a primary audience of children shilling online casinos [1] - but also the platforms themselves. YouTube is particularly egregious... in TV the regulation here is 12 minutes per hour and minimum 30 minutes between ad breaks [2], but YouTube? If you're not subscribing for Premium, it's a 30 second preroll and about a minute or two every 5-ish minutes - on top of the influencer's own ad roll that's usually 2 minutes per 10-minute video. That ad load is ridiculous.
[1] https://www.ingame.de/news/illegales-gluecksspiel-marcel-eri...
[2] https://www.rnd.de/medien/eu-und-fernsehwerbung-warum-es-nur...
Barrin92
>and other media can be reviewed by people who share the tastes of their audiences -- rather than have their tastes "made" by the nominated ad-friendly elite.
There's nothing wrong with taste-making, having criticism structured and communicated in an intelligent way that gives an audience a way to look at things is valuable when engaging with art, including popular art. What you have instead now is entirely audience captured creators who will just produce viral and controversial content and tell audiences exactly what they want to hear. A literal echo chamber where any critic that would say something unpopular is immediately dropped because they can never offend their audience.
The advertisement is of course as omnipresent, and in addition without shame or guard rails. Now you have mainstreamed bogus medical advice, VPN ads, nutrition pills, cam and porn sites, and stuff you'd otherwise only found at the bottom of a email spam folder.
There's basically a complete collapse in audience and discourse quality. Very practical example, I came across an interview with Frank Herbert, and funnily enough almost every youtube comment on the interview mentions how articulate it is (https://youtu.be/26GPaMoeiu4).
That's what you had when culture was still discussed at a level that wasn't a Joe Rogan podcast. On TV we used to have interviewers who were at least intelligent enough to comprehend the topic they were interviewing on, instead of just sitting there stoned.
_DeadFred_
This is such a current era comment.
Vast conspiracies? Check. Ignore that creators now are audience captured in a way worse, way more manipulative of the outcome, and way less free for the creators then previous capture, check. Ignore that 'unpopular manufactured' previous mass culture was popular, mass culture, check. People literally talked around the water cooler about 'did you watch XYZ'? Did you got see XYZ movie yet?
Your argument makes sense if you had no experience with the past and sounds plausible. It would be perfect for a Youtube video, especially one for someone audience captured by a 'we know the truth' type audience. They would eat it up.
mjburgess
I don't really see how any of these points relate to my comment.
1. That advertises played a shaping role in what could be broadcast on TV is not a conspiracy, but documented fact. That, eg., the FTC had "public airwaves" obsceneity rules that made saying "shit" on TV revolutionary in the 2000s is, again, a fact. And so on.
2. That the mainstream media of the past was highly limited is again, a fact. Fox news, indeed, only arose post elimination of the fairenes doctrine (again, another extrordainary gov regulation on speech for a so-called Free Speech culture). It took the end of the FTC's public airwaves rules, via private means; the end of the fairness doctrine, and the like, for any diversity to arise: this was cable. HBO was the first breaking through of what-the-public-wanted.
Therefore that the public engaged with the mainstream media is beside the point: it has nothing to do with my comment. My comment describes what happened when these extraordinary government and advertiser require restrictions were relaxed. (See, even hollywood before they existed: precode hollywood is a vastly more "modern" place than the gov-constructed fantasy land on TV which followed).
3. You diagnose problems with the present day mass media landscape ("audience capture") and the like. This was already a problem with TV, and indeed also caused by advertisers (see, e.g., the movie Network which basically diagnoses an aduience-captured TV host as necessary schiozophrenic).
The relevant comparison I am making is not between the sins of one and the sins of the other. It is to simply observe that the modern mass media is not a product, in origin, of vast state and ad-sponsored censorship. That TV was is extremely well-documented. I've given you many search terms in this reply.
_DeadFred_
It was mainly censorship over form not thought. The modern media landscape has no censorship on form, but thought is manipulated/segregated so much more. I'd gladly give up the ability to say 'shit' for more freedom/diversity of thought instead of audience captured self selecting islands.
aspenmayer
> The reality is it was an entirely fake constructed world designed by advertisers, and to some lesser degree, the political class
Did anyone else hear this narrated in Adam Curtis's voice, or is that just me?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation
> HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIHC4NNScEI HyperNormalisation explained by Adam Curtis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to72IJzQT5k HyperNormalisation (2016)
darknavi
Shout out to high quality, more independent "TV" media like Dropout (ex College Humor).
mathgeek
Thankfully Comcast’s minor holding in Dropout hasn’t resulted in anything too terrible thus far.
qoez
Is it actually funny though?
tecleandor
I've been been having a lot of fun with their Game Changer series and some chapters of Very Important People and Smartypants.
Of course, it has to be your thing (and not all their productions are "my thing"), but I find it well produced and handled with certain love for the product and people working there.
null_deref
If you like improvisation, some shows there are pretty good in that aspect
tecleandor
And I have to say that I don't like the 'improv' stuff just in general, but this people is REALLY good.
otherayden
https://unbloq.us/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/20...
I made this auto-redirect tool that automatically redirects you to a site's archive link :)
GeekyBear
As someone who used to enjoy the History Channel before it went downhill, that sort of more educational content is on YouTube now, but not on cable.
_DeadFred_
And you can find videos that fit exactly your audience type, your conspiracy belief, and your specific alt-history fetish.
I find a lot of nonsense alt-history entertainment, but much less unbiased, un-audience captured actual history. And those that are unbiased quickly get attacked, pushing them to some opposite extreme than their attacked, attracting an audience drawn to that pushback and boom, another audience captured creator.
GeekyBear
Give Fall of Civilizations a try.
It is original content and well done.
jccalhoun
I teach at a community college and unless it is sports, most people, especially (but not limited to) young people, don't watch much tv or movies at all. I try to give examples from current tv shows and rarely have any of the students seen them.
jajko
Who watches stuff like Wednesday or even a better example, Stranger things? These are not series my parents would (want to) watch. These are primarily aimed at teens/tweens IMHO.
The list of such shows is very long, pulling them out randomly since I just saw trailers for next seasons. Maybe your students are somehow outliers?
adingus
It's rich for a TV exec to call YouTube 'slop'. Compared to traditional TV, where 1/3rd or more of your time is spent watching ads for prescription drugs or fake silver coins, the YouTubers I watch put much more thought and artistic energy into what they produce than the laugh track trash on TV.
throwaway290
You skipped the part about how much of your time is spent watching ads on Youtube? If zero and you've got UBO on then you are stealing revenue from your favourite YouTubers who put so much thought and artistic energy into what they produce
tialaramex
Youtube Premium actually pays the Youtubers similar or possibly slightly better than running Youtube advertising and I don't watch ads to fund that, I pay them money.
I guess you could argue that the stuff where Hank Green is telling me to consider buying a crash course coin is advertising? But by the same token arguably watching Carl Sagan play Blue Prince is advertising how great Carl is? Where are we drawing the line here?
throwaway290
No I wouldn't argue that, it's fair. Promotions or product placement and that stuff are everywhere and no place is special in that.
But I bet the guy I replied to doesn't actually pay for premium. Most people who say "TV sucks because ads and YT is great because no ads and creators braining" mean that they can block ads on YT and those brainy creators can deliver stuff to them for free, so it's totally better than TV yeah. like it's "better" if you can steal stuff than if you have to pay for it)
9x39
It’s zero but we paid for YT Premium which splits revenue with creators.
drumhead
It quite the Darwinian experiment isnt it. Thousands of new videos every day, some get popular, get copied and a new trend emerges. Before you know it millions are watching and it didnt even cost that much to do. Legacy TV companies must be so envious.
matthewdgreen
And yet almost none of it has made it to legacy TV. I think Mr. Beast had some reality show on Amazon for a bit? You'd think legacy TV folks would be thrilled to grab up all this great cheap content and throw it on their platforms, but I see very little of it.
elif
Mr beast "had some reality show on Amazon" he released a season of a reality show which broke many world records and got renewed with a larger budget for two more seasons.
But the path was paved way before last year. Think of how many podcasts started as one person on YouTube and became major multiplatform productions with dozens of creatives.
If "reality" isn't your thing plenty of narrative fiction has been picked up by Netflix and HBO, Cobra Kai probably the most recognizable but also maybe you've seen broad city or workaholics. In journalism we've seen Channel 5 get at least one HBO deal, etc
But I think you'll find that the majority of these creators are making enough revenue on YouTube that these deals are more an optional way to grow their audience than "the next step"
JumpCrisscross
> You'd think legacy TV folks would be thrilled to grab up all this great cheap content and throw it on their platforms
This reduces them to YouTube wrappers. A risky strategic position with advertisers, viewers and investors.
matthewdgreen
But YouTube doesn’t own the content, they’re just a platform. I’m surprised I don’t see all these famous influencers showing up in mass-broadcast culture, having their faces plastered on billboards, etc. the way traditional celebrities are.
eptcyka
Who would want to be featured on legacy television these days?
lif
Am curious about what true competition Youtube has.
(And if the answer is "essentially none", then when is Youtube going to be broken up?)
varsketiz
Netflix, TikTok
cadamsdotcom
Recently sold my TV after not switching it on for 5-6 months.
There’s lots to do outdoors. You can spend your TV subscription money on equipment for whatever hobby you enjoy. Plus, it’s (currently) hard for commercial interests to enshittify the patches of the world we’ve demarcated as public spaces.
jmclnx
I noticed more ads on YouTube recently, a small say 10 minute clip could have a 3 minute add at the start and in the middle.
Plus I think the young likes the small clip type content than traditional entertainment. Just look at ticktoc (I never use it) how it is dragging all the young people to their content.
I an curious about seeing an age breakdown, but that is hard to get.
mathgeek
> I an curious about seeing an age breakdown, but that is hard to get.
Not difficult as all, as there are plenty of studies and research in the area. Quick google gets a bunch of results, and of course you can ask Perplexity or any LLM that has research capability.
perching_aix
> PewDiePie (...) was later accused of inspiring White nationalist shooting rampages.
What a bizarre and vile characterization. You know it damn well that's bollocks. Cracking some edgy jokes doesn't mean you're suddenly responsible for some insane asshole shouting you out before committing genocide. Absurd. Never ceases to disgust me when media reports on the story like this.
There's a plausible argument that advertisement killed "mainstream media" as a mass media. It survived only while there were no other options, giving the illusion of genuine mass appeal. The reality is it was an entirely fake constructed world designed by advertisers, and to some lesser degree, the political class: governments in the TV age pressed hard to ensure the public never got what it wanted (consider, eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood).
It seems we are roughly in a place where power has equilibrated between creators giving the people what they want: advertisers have no choice but to go to mass media platforms, because one's under their control are dead. And "free speech" is increasingly been given an ahistorical radically liberal interpretation. Thus we can have multi-hour podcasts with politicians asked real questions on the audiences mind; we can have companies held to account for the real quality of their products; films, games, and other media can be reviewed by people who share the tastes of their audiences -- rather than have their tastes "made" by the nominated ad-friendly elite.
The whole traditional media ecosystem, of course, is in a full-blown panic about this -- and continues to blame the new media and their audiences (their customers, whom they long forgot existed as anything other than domesticated animals that will turn up to the only game in town). It's hard to tell how many involved realise they are purely a construct of an advertised-determined, government-sanctioned world -- a world that almost no one ever actually lived in.
My great concern with the "YT is being TV" direction is that this history repeats. Just as facebook (etc.) centralised and ad-santisied the "local, independent" internet -- so will, YT/spotify/etc. just return the mass media back into advertiser hands.
Many will say: this has already happened, etc. But I think: not quite. I think at the moment it feels like a balance. One hopes the internet stays free enough, in protocol, that if advertisers (and governments) try again to dominate and control the mass media, there are ready-made alternatives to spring up.