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It didn’t take long for YouTube‘s original content channels to come of age. Google started funding them in late 2011 — and just this month execs presented YouTube’s channels to advertisers as an alternative to conventional television in the 2012-13 upfront market. Now that they’re starting to become a force in media and entertainment, we decided it’s time to help you keep track of them. And we begin today. Each week, Deadline will rank channels by their weekly views. The data will come from VidStatsX; for this week we used its numbers for the top 50 with information for the rest compiled by our parent company, PMC. Channels highlighted in beige were launched after Google introduced its original channels program in November. Others were already up and running. Full disclosure: PMC owns ENTV, which is represented on the list of new services. Here’s the list for the week ending May 23:
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What’s scary about how low the weekly view counts are is that these numbers are inflated by Google’s promotion. Once they take these channels off life support this initiative will die faster than Google TV.
Interesting post Guys, however it might be more interesting if you created your own ranking system across several of the top streaming sites and/or include live content and YT channels that aren’t YT original content since what you’re doing now is basically akin to ranking NBC’s weekly ratings against other shows on NBC family channels only.
For instance our indie YT channel “Youtube.com/Choppertown” received 18,693 views in the same time period which would place us at #84 (source YT analytics.) and our live streaming show “LiveSciFi” received over 5,000,000 views in just three days last month on Justin.tv/livescifi (source Justin.tv), which would essentially put us at #1 or #2 on your list.
Anyway, glad to see someone giving the web its due. Look forward to more on this topic.
YouTube’s biggest problem = all they count are views when all advertisers care about is VIEWERS. Enough trotting out video views. I could create a program that keeps pinging a video to increase it’s view numbers, but all those views are coming from 0 viewers. Let’s get real Youtube and start making something an advertiser can sink their teeth into.
I don’t think you can ping YouTube video views, once they rolled out the partnership program and adsense, they set up barriers to catch any scammers. This is why you see videos pause on 303 or 305 or 287 video views despite having thousands of likes.
that has nothing to do with anything. It is a weird quirk of youtubes counter, but it’s still counting on the back end and catches up by day 2 to actual view numbers.
JimmyT – I don’t think you understand how views are counted.
At all.
Even a little bit.
Just FYI: You could create that program, and it would count one view from one viewer.
That program would not work because YouTube has a built in system to check for that. You will notice it working when a new video is stuck at 303 views for a couple hours. This video is getting a ton of views and the system is checking to see if all of those views are unique or not. YouTube has many problems with it but that is not one of them.
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by this. YouTube verifies views after around the 300 mark, meaning that each view on those videos is unique. This is why newly uploaded videos on popular channels gets their viewcount immediately stuck at around 300. This (mostly) keeps the system from being abused.
And if we’re talking about actually “viewing” ads, YouTube has trueview ads which allow users who watch a full ad or skip directly to the video. However, they still actually watch the ad–even if it’s just a small portion. In many ways, it’s a more effective way of viewing ads than television, where people simply fast-forward or go to the bathroom.
In less than a year the number 1 channel on this list has 97 million views.
Repeat that: 97 million views since January of THIS YEAR.
there is nothing, and there has never been anything o broadcast or cable that has ever come close to that number.
The reservoir episode of ER got a 48 share and now the best they can hope for is a 4 on NBC.
The broadcast and pilot model is broken and I just saw the final nail in its coffin.
All the major networks and most of the cable networks easily get 97 million views in that timeframe. Keep in mind, those views are for a whole YouTube channel, not one show.
Heck, Hatfield and McCoys had nearly 14 million views in one hour last night on History. I imagine History’s total views from January to today, counting all their shows in all time periods, is well over a billion.
In most cases on YouTube: 1 channel = 1 show.
That’s not true of the above prermium channels. These channels have multiple shows so that they have content everyday. Basically it’s 4-5 teams of content creators lumped together in one channel.
While there is some truth to what you say when Hatfield and mccoys hit 14 million viewers that was a record most shows do not hit the millions viewers every episode. Also the History channel has been around for a while so it seems likely for them to put up good numbers. Source Fed has been around for 3 months and before those 3 months nobody knew who they were. What we are seeing here is a revolution in media. Traditional media is dyeing and Youtube is growing.
I don’t have my abacus out, but I’m pretty sure every network has surpassed 97 Million TOTAL VIEWS since January. While I agree that digital channels are nibbling at the crust, they still have a long way to get to the fruit.
Hu?
“there is nothing, and there has never been anything o broadcast or cable that has ever come close to that number.”
What are you talking about? Any show that averages 10 Million viewers for it’s 22 episode season is getting more then double 97 Million (220 Million actually) in less time (22 weeks vs 25 weeks)
Over many years Philip Defranco did alot of work with his own channel to make Sourcefed what it is today.
Great point. In fact, this is not exciting or impressive at all. I prefer all of the truly independent YouTube channels that aren’t on this list b/c they aren’t being promoted and given life support by Google. Blech… Just more corporate programming.
And there goes television…
The number 1 channel (SourceFed) was started by PhillyDTV, who already had a massive following on YouTube at the time.
Hot list.
Television is done.
All these in the top 10 are the new boys in town.
As food for thought – as many people think that data like this signal the end of television – it’s pretty clear that these channels cannot exist without television. A good portion of their content comes from video clips, and news stories, that were shown on TV. So, these original YouTube channels are taking views from TV, and also relying upon it. One can believe that eventually most major news channels could switch to online shows, but in the end they will still continue to get “ratings”. Because without their release of information, these original channels will run out of content.
While some youtube channels gets their content from television, much of what is out there is true original content. The Wigs channel shows scripted series and original shorts (so far not loving Jan but it is certainly well done). Geek & Sundry has 6 original shows from Felicia Day doing whatever strikes her fancy each week in her vlog (blacksmithing, fishing, croquet) to a fantasy book club to Wil Wheaton playing tabletop games to the scripted series The Guild.
I certainly don’t think youtube is a death knell for television, but as long as there are creative people who like the freedom that web video provides there won’t be a content issue. The real issue when it comes to their growth is monetization. Can these shows/channels make enough money to pay for their production and while providing those involved with a decent living? If not I suspect televsion will poach the best of the web video world (not necessary the actual content, but the writers, directors and actors) who can make more money in TV.
Thanks for pointing that out. Case and point is Dr. Oz show… it’s essentially now a lot of short bits that encourages show viewers to visit Dr. Oz website every 7 minutes.
LOL and sourcefed is killing them all. They’ll overtake How Cast eventually in terms of sheer views overall. even though they launched after. You can’t beat that monster 4 shows a day being uploaded the same day. Fresh content + a crazy fanbase =beating tv. The question is how will tv fight this. It’s also amazing these channels don’t get more sponsors with this fan base, but I guess give it another year or two and it will.
If you would take the time to watch what Philip and his team at Sourcefed have done with that wonderful mini show they have, you will realize that the minds behind the team new darn well what they set their goals out to be and how to accomplish them. They have an all to real fan base, and I am a fan.
I love that you guys are keeping track of these stats – it’s great information to have access to. However, I highly suggest ranking the channels based on something other than views. A good portion of the video views for these channels are being sponsored in ads as part of Google’s promotions for this initiative, causing the view counts to be highly inflated and not representative of the channel. It would be much more accurate to rank these channels based on subscriber increases, or another measure, such as subscribers/# of videos.
Where is =3 in all of this it should be in the top 10!!!
That’s because =3 isn’t a YouTube original channel.
That and the show itself just sucks.
Hatfields and McCoys got 13.9M viewers LAST NIGHT. That’s one cable TV miniseries on ONE NIGHT. That’s more than the top four channels got in A WEEK. Do you know how many viewers tune into CBS per week? You’re talking a hundred + million per week NCIS alone gets 17-20M viewers to watch for a full hour, (15 mins of advertising) not some 5 minute clip.
I am a SourceFed Fan through and through
So proud of all of the accomplishments of the team over at PhillyD Inc.!
Deadline.com again doing something that no-one else does….being first with the data we need as an industry. Very cool to see the future of TV.
To The Deadline Team your on top of everything again.
Great feature, but would love to see some links attached to those channels.
These numbers only reflect channels that received the youtube grant, correct? It’s unfortunate that people will read this site and think this is what’s actually hot on youtube. None of these channels are actually in the running for most views, subscribers, etc.
The thing they have going is that they are getting money from youtube and promotion. I wonder when the content creators who BUILT youtube into what they are today will start crying foul.
This is a risky maneuver for youtube. Like ebay they want to grow and expand, but leave their original users in the dust. When users realize companies are getting $$$ and preferential treatment…what happens to the YOU in youtube?
What’s funny is that this “list” is being taken seriously with actually very small view counts. The actual top youtubers dwarf these new premium channels in most ways. . Kudos to deadline for doing some coverage on web content, but the real big boys on youtube would knock almost every premium channel off this list…. although I’m hoping this will help shift youtube away from cult of personality/vlogger shows that are pretty bad to something I’d maybe watch…. although these premium channels are a real mixed bag. Some are just so poorly written and acted. Hopefully they can get real dollars, and start hiring kids out of film school and not just kids from youtube that are great at self promotion and marketing but horrible filmmakers/writers…. Or put these two different talent sets together and get a little of both.