YouTube is taking over TV

YouTube was launched in February 2005 and soon adopted a simple motto: “Broadcast Yourself.” While we initially watched on PCs, and then smartphones, it seems that these days an increasing number of us are engaging with YouTube content on our televisions.

That’s one of the key findings of YouTube’s annual year-end wrap-up, in which the Google-owned company revealed that in 2024 users streamed a billion hours of YouTube content daily through their televisions. Putting YouTube in the heart of our living rooms, as a communal consumption of entertainment, may be a surprise to many—but it’s the culmination of a yearslong shift in habits.

“At a time when media consumption is becoming more fragmented, YouTube is positioning itself as an epicenter,” says Jess Maddox, associate professor at the University of Alabama and a social media expert.

The process hasn’t just happened in 2024, but has been building up over years. As YouTube shifted the maximum length of uploads, creators responded by expanding the scope of their videos. Some go down the feature-length documentary format, putting out deeply researched videos, while others, like MrBeast, borrow the episodic format more traditionally seen on TV.

“YouTube has been one of the more consistent and stable platforms for creators over the years. It doesn’t surprise me that podcasters, video essayists, food reviewers, children’s entertainers, and content creators from other genres are finding ways to upload their content to their primary platform as well as YouTube to grow their audiences and increase their revenue,” says Brandon Harris, assistant professor at the University of Alabama and a member of the Content Creator Scholars Network.

According to YouTube, the revenue generated is increasingly coming from those TV viewers, too, citing that the number of creators making a majority of their revenue from TV is up more than 30% year over year.

And as YouTube called out in its blog post, another big driver of viewing on TVs is podcasts—400 million hours of which are consumed on living room devices monthly. “If most podcasts are recorded on digital cameras and mics, why not turn the video on and upload it to Audible or Spotify and YouTube?” Harris says.

YouTube’s increasing incursion into the living room highlights just how ubiquitous the platform has become. After all, it is the world’s second-biggest search engine, behind Google. “By being the one-stop shop for podcasting, content creators, influencers, and traditional broadcast television, YouTube is taking a spread-out media landscape and offering it all in one place,” Maddox says.

The popularity of YouTube on TV may also be down to the fact that it’s bundling together disparate forms of content at a time when the industry more generally is going in the other direction—and consumers are struggling to afford the numerous streaming service subscriptions they’re being asked to cough up for.

“This is advantageous as legacy media companies split and merge, as everyone launches their own streaming platform, and as social media platforms are in flux,” says Maddox. “It represents a new way forward in screen entertainment. We’re likely to see more companies follow this model of media and entertainment convergence.”

It’s an idea that Harris agrees with. “YouTube has been the most popular video platform for decades, largely by bringing content from various industries onto one platform for an easier viewing experience.” The concept of having the world’s collective entertainment available just a remote press away is something that separates it from the competition.

However, some caution is needed when thinking about the motivations behind increasing YouTube viewership from sofas around the world. “The blog mentions that YouTube on TV is more popular than ever, which means that the company is paying more attention to people using YouTube apps on their smart TV devices,” says Harris. “That isn’t necessarily the same thing as more people signing up for YouTube TV to gain access to premium programming like the NFL.”

But at a time when cord cutting is increasing—just 68.8 million people subscribe to a traditional pay TV service now, the lowest figures on record, according to MoffettNathanson—YouTube can capitalize on consumers seeking a cheaper alternative to traditional TV programming. Two of the fastest-growing areas of TV consumption in 2024 that YouTube predicts will continue into 2025 are sports and kids’ content. YouTube’s own data suggests that watch time on highlights and analysis of sports is up 30% year over year.

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