The largest video hosting in the face of YouTube, as it became known, continues to actively move away from the creation of its branded original products. And if you go into details, then Robert Kinkle, the company’s business director, officially announced that YouTube is reducing its Originals program. From now on, the respective division will fund exclusively those projects that are part of its Black Voices and YouTube Kids Funds. But it is also important to note that despite this, the company will still comply with all obligations for current impressions. But other new original shows from the video hosting itself should not be expected.
It should be clarified that the company is making data, really serious and radical changes, as part of a combination of its current strategy and a “key deviation”. We are talking about the fact that initially YouTube believed that it could have a “significantly greater impact” on the creators, funding their activities through projects such as Shorts, Black Voices Fund, and Live Shopping. However, as we can judge, this strategy turned out to be a losing one.
An update on YouTube Originals: pic.twitter.com/PixhgZ2yhU
— Robert Kyncl (@rkyncl) January 18, 2022
And by the way, at the same time there was information that Suzanne Daniels, the global leader of the Originals division, was leaving YouTube on March 1st. In other words, now, with some degree of probability, there will be a great opportunity to rethink the program. One way or another, this change is not something shocking and surprising. YouTube initially had very big ambitions to fully compete with other paid streaming services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, with shows like Cobra Kai.
Although it had some success, it still, unfortunately for the company, failed to become even a slightly serious threat to the giants mentioned above. So there were more than enough prerequisites for the fact that we could soon witness the death of Originals. The new video hosting strategy will allow YouTube to fund a significantly larger number of creators, thereby increasing the level of competitiveness in the fight against TikTok, Instagram and other short video players.