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YouTube may be known mostly as the place to watch entertaining, funny, or just plain odd amateur contributions, but those amateurs may be facing some new forms of competition pretty soon. Movie and television producers are rushing to create Web-exclusive programming, in the form of short episodes to be aired on YouTube channels. 
Successful Web content can offer a good trial run for a full-length feature film or television series. The content is timely and just as captivating, but it requires fewer resources to produce and does not demand any commitment in terms of the number of episodes. Google thus is creating 100 new video channels that offer original content.
Web content also can be created much more quickly than other forms of communication. Yahoo has used its own data to determine what sort of videos to produce. Thus, when Yahoo noticed the volume of clicks on news stories about wedding engagements, it immediately developed a Web series entitled “The Ultimate Proposal.” Each episode has attracted around 11 million views.
Web videos can be strategic in terms of the people involved too. Instead of using a celebrity, Awesomeness TV relies on well-known, 14-year-old skateboarders to anchor their own shows. These teen opinion leaders are not only are experts on the topic, but they also bring with them thousands of YouTube and Twitter followers. Their shows thus come with a premade audience, which helps ensure the success of the channel.
Discussion Questions:
- Will Web content be interesting?
Source: John Jergensen, “Web TV’s New Line Up,” The Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2012.
Grewal Levy Marketing News 
By shows being put on channels on YouTube, web content may become even more entertaining than regular TV. By production companies and websites changing with the times by putting shows on YouTube channels, it may put television, cable, and satellite companies out of business if they don’t pay attention to the immediate environment of what their competitors are doing and how their customers prefer to be entertained, thus showing the importance of firms paying attention to their immediate environments and putting their customers as their center focus.
Web Content will be able to further cater to specific audiences as likes and dislikes of audiences are used to then create a “custom” show. The people appearing in these episode creations as well as the topics touched upon will be exactly what the consumer is looking for, and will therefore increase followers and reduce costs for companies. The research is done by the same website in which it is posted and feedback can be received immediately from the consumer. Further costs can be reduced in the creation of these shows as less resources are needed.
Personally, I don’t find this to be an attractive idea. However, if hosts are bringing thousands of followers onto the site, then I feel it will be very successful. If hundreds of thousands of internet users are only a click away from getting to a show, I feel as if this will create a lot of traffic on these shows. If the hosts are knowledgeable and the episodes are captivating, then this has the potential to expand rapidly. The growth of this project could be very high, or it could fall flat on its face depending on the quality of the episodes. If the viewers aren’t enjoying the content, they will not return.
One of the ways that people socialize today is through watching videos or shows. By putting these things online, there will probably be even more viewers than before. More people tend to have the internet or access to the internet than to cable or a provider for channels so the market for these online shows automatically increases. Also, shows on TV or elsewhere are usually at a specific time of day and only available to see on TV at a certain hour. Online, these shows can be accessed at any time and at any place which allows there to be more flexibility when watching. Overall the content could be interesting since these web providers are predicting what people are interested in now, but this could also be overkill. If too many things end up online, it might be overwhelming to the customer who then might turn away in the end.