YouTube Still Hasn’t Replaced Television. And Here’s Why It Won’t

Views aside, the pop-culture cache of all 100 YouTube channels combined scarcely adds up to a single episode of “Homeland” or one Monday Night Football game.

Now Google is cutting off funding to more than half of those channels as it steps up its efforts to transform YouTube from a low-rent home for cute cat videos into a Hollywood power player for the attention-deficit set. AdAge’s Michael Learmonth reports that Google has announced an extension of its original-content programming, but only about 30 to 40 percent of its channels are receiving new funding. The remaining channels will not necessarily be canceled, but YouTube will no longer put up the money to keep them going. (The annoucement comes a month after Google announced it is expanding the program in Europe.)

via YouTube Still Hasn’t Replaced Television. And Here’s Why It Won’t.