Starting with the first regularly scheduled broadcasts in 1928, television service evolved rapidly from limited regular scheduling in sports, music, and news, to a now extremely broad range of service, encompassing just about any genre you can think of, as long as you are willing to buy channels outside of basic programming. The biggest limiter however has always been formatting. Even with modern day digitization and widespread online distribution bringing television away from the TV, the actual make-up of television is the biggest self-imposed factor that still exists today.
During the major broadcasts network’s rule over television, the blocked schedule of thirty or sixty minute programs with breaks for advertising was very helpful in bringing consistency and predictability that allowed viewers to watch the programs they wanted to watch at specific times. This structured presentation of the shows locked the industry into a format. Large amounts of infrastructure was dedicated to this format and this stagnated further development of television formatting for the future. While television has branched out into other mediums in the current day, a significant amount of programming, especially the higher production value programming still follows the same time and structure constraints that were imposed during the network television broadcasting era.
When Youtube came around in 2005, it became a major content aggregator, and because of the ease of access from the everyday person a new type of content became prevalent. In the early days of Youtube we saw creators of short sketch comedy such as Smosh and Nigahiga dominate the view counts, with various viral videos sparking briefly into fame before being quickly forgotten. With this popularity Youtube began to find its audience as it grew into the powerhouse hosting service we know today.
Ignoring the fact that you can choose to watch whatever you want on Youtube, as opposed to the more programmed nature of television, Youtube also has capitalized off an interactivity that comes with commenting, and communicating in various ways directly with the creator of content. Youtube has allowed videos under ten minutes since its founding, and over time added more and more capability to its video hosting as it realized what viewers wanted. Taking a look at the most subscribed channels on Youtube as of early march, the top channels consist almost exclusively of music, video games, or comedy, whether it be sketch comedy, talk shows, or something like the Fine Brother’s “React” series.
Seeing this it is easy to see the market that Youtube has accessed which television has not been able to due to limitations. While MTV was very popular at a time, advancement of technology has made music more readily available and viewers can afford to be more picky, so music programming has lost a significant audience. Lack of interactivity and extremely varied timings and personalities within the video games market has also kept television from encroaching in that field. Finally, we see the last time constraint in the comedy department as Youtube has capitalized on videos that are too short for regular programming, or even that contain clips from television itself, highlighting the most entertaining parts, such as TheEllenShow’s broadcast.
Television is not only limited to the basic broadcasting channels, and in fact is easily accessible in many places online, so it fully has the capability to breach into the realm of many Youtube shows that exist today in order to satisfy consumers looking for quicker and more focused content. As far as I can see there will always be a significant place for standard television programming with the viewing public, but as consumers needs change I believe the lines will become blurred between Youtube style content hosting and whatever television evolves into, at least if it wants to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving technology driven society.