YouTube reveals how Shows will help to push creators’ episodic content

Shows will allow creators to structure their content on their channels as though they were fully-fledged, episodic TV shows.

Think of it like any major TV series on Netflix or Amazon Prime – once a user clicks through to their favorite show, they’re able to flick through its various seasons and see all the episodes for each in chronological order. Plus, whenever they’ve finished an episode, the next one plays automatically. 

That’s exactly how creators will be able to organize their own content via the YouTube Studio soon enough. It builds on the playlist functionality they already have on the platform, which effectively groups together a bunch of their videos in no particular order. However, this was cumbersome for viewers that wanted to follow their favorite creator in a more orderly fashion. Shows will address those issues once it launches, giving viewers a sleeker and more intuitive experience. 

“We’ll [YouTube] then build a beautiful page for them with art that they upload for their show and put it on their channel,” said YouTube’s senior director of product management for living room, Kurt Wilms. “That way viewers can find it throughout the app, and we’ll recommend the show.”

The idea builds on what YouTube was already doing for its PrimeTime Channels – another feature which allows users to subscribe to as well as access content from various different streaming services within the YouTube platform, including Paramount+ and Showtime.

“We built these beautiful show pages for PrimeTime Channels, and we realized we should bring this product to creators, because many of them are making really high quality shows,” Wilms said.

Now more than ever those shows are crucial to YouTube’s continued, unrivalled success. It’s long been a force multiplier for entertainment, a platform that doesn’t just showcase content but elevates it, amplifies it and – when the algorithm deems it worthy – injects it into the cultural bloodstream. But its real power may not be in what it promotes so much as what it absorbs. With each video watched, each recommendation served, YouTube refines its ability to shape not just individual tastes but entire modes of consumption, transforming itself into an endless self-perpetuating stream of consciousness. YouTube Shows is another vector for that. 

“YouTube is equivalent to TV for many people, especially young consumers, but the CTV experience hasn’t reflected that,” said Jasmine Enberg, vp and principal analyst, social media and the creator economy at eMarketer. “Top name creators are already developing shows, and more viewing is taking place on bigger screens, so it makes sense for YouTube to make it easier to find and watch shows the way consumers do on major streaming services.”

Some might see what YouTube is doing as a precursor to it making another foray into funding content again, but the platform has other ideas. 

“We used to produce our own content for a while called YouTube Originals,” said YouTube’s vp of engineering, Geoff van der Meer. “We have no plans to restart [YouTube Originals]. Our expertise is not in creating media. We’re much better at facilitating the creation for others and helping with distribution rather than originating it.”

YouTube Originals was launched in 2015 as part of the paid subscription service YouTube Premium which was then known as YouTube Red. At the time, the content initiative focused on producing exclusive, high-quality series, films and documentaries.

An example of this, which Geoff referred to was Cobra Kai – a sequel to the Karate Kid film franchise which YouTube green lit in 2018. Back then, the first two seasons were exclusively available on YouTube Premium before the show transferred over to Netflix in 2020. Two years later, Originals shut down given the shows were not driving subscriptions as quickly as YouTube execs would have liked. 

“The short version is that that space was just one we didn’t want to play in,” van der Meer explained. “So we’ve instead focused on the creator ecosystem rather than competing with traditional media to commission shows.”