Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

YouTube to spend $200 million on professional videos.

That makes it a mid-sized “studio”

YouTube to spend $200 million more on professional videos http://t.co/Imw3YvFl

Google-owned YouTube will drop another $200 million into the programming to more effectively market the nearly 100 channels boasting professional videos, the company told the Wall Street Journal in a report published yesterday.

Note that this is to market what they’ve already funded to the tune of $150 million. While the aggregate sounds great, it’s not nearly as good for the producers as it might seem. From an article on paidcontent.org:

According to this executive, the funding his company received from Google allows it to spend about $1,000 a minute on each video production made for its channel.

“But $1,000 a finished minute is not enough,” he explained. “You need to get to around $2,100. At $1,000 a minute, you’re pulling favors every time you do a shoot. If you’re just pulling a location permit in L.A., it’s going to cost you $900.”

Funny thing is that, since I started in the business well over 30 years ago, production (outside broadcast) was “$1,000 a minute”. Thanks to inflation and deflation of equipment prices that would likely still be enough to produce something. But if you’re going to shoot in LA and get permits, you’re not working in the right budget space for your production!

And that’s the freedom we now have – to get stuff produced in whatever budget you have available, whether that comes from YouTube, a traditional studio, Kickstarter or direct sponsorship. You can now create and own what you create.

As neatly outlined in Tuesday’s WSJ report, the company has spent around $150 million to date to fund nearly 100 distinct channels in the U.S. — a sum the WSJ reports has already been offset by ad sales. YouTube will spend another $200 million to market these channels.

These are not “cat videos” – the goal is:

YouTube is eight months into an ambitious plan to siphon away some of traditional TV’s ad base by seeding the market with “premium” channels — i.e. operations backed by pros — who, unlike teenagers in bedrooms, will reliably produce advertiser-safe content.