By Graham Hayday, co-founder and CEO of Showrunners Media
If you want to understand where the TV industry is heading, follow the money.
YouTube generated more than $60bn globally last year. In the US, it now accounts for the largest share of TV streaming watch time, according to Nielsen’s Gauge reports. In the UK, Ofcom’s Media Nations research shows online video increasingly being watched on the television set itself – not just on mobile.
This is no longer a social platform living on the second screen. It is competing for living-room dominance.
Which raises an awkward question: is YouTube now upstream of television rather than downstream?
For years, the hierarchy felt settled. Clips of TV shows went up post-transmission. Box sets found secondary audiences. IP extended into social once it had already been proven elsewhere. The direction was clear: TV commissioned, platforms amplified.
That assumption is starting to look dated.
At MIPLondon this week, distributors have been openly discussing YouTube-first strategies with rights owners – complete with AVOD revenue projections, retention curves and international reach modelling. In other words, it’s now being talked about as a mature distribution platform for content that would previously have been the preserve of broadcast TV or the streamers.
There are some good recent examples of this shift.
The Sidemen have revived Family Fortunes on YouTube, taking a legacy TV format, tweaking it and relaunching it via a creator-led route rather than through a traditional broadcaster commission. This piece of classic entertainment IP wasn’t plonked on YouTube after a linear run; clips weren’t uploaded to drive eyeballs to a broadcast series. It was commissioned and distributed natively for the platform. That is a meaningful inversion of the old hierarchy.
At the same time, major rights holders are investing structurally in platform-native distribution. BBC Studios has built out dedicated digital and social sales capability, reflecting the fact that YouTube monetisation is no longer an ancillary concern but a core commercial channel. They’ve commissioned and distributed YouTube-only content featuring the world’s favourite cartoon puppy, Bluey. When established production and distribution groups allocate resource in that direction, it signals something more than experimentation.
In these cases, YouTube isn’t downstream of broadcast. It is functioning as a primary market in its own right.
The device shift underpins this change. Nielsen’s US data shows YouTube leading streaming watch time on TV sets. YouTube has reported connected TV as its fastest-growing screen. Ofcom’s UK data points to steady growth in online video viewing via the main household television, particularly among younger audiences.
Once YouTube is watched predominantly on the living-room screen, it stops behaving like a social platform and starts behaving like a channel.
That matters for development.
If ideas can be launched on YouTube – gathering real audience data, completion rates and demonstrable AVOD revenue – before entering a traditional commissioning conversation, the power dynamic shifts. Commissioners are no longer evaluating pure concept; they’re being handed audience evidence.
For rights holders, the sequence changes. Instead of “greenlight → produce → distribute”, it can become “launch → optimise → scale”.
This model has long existed in creator culture. What feels different now is the level of institutional adoption. When major distributors build YouTube-first strategies into their sales decks, it signals that the platform is being treated as a core part of the commercial ecosystem.
None of this is to suggest that linear television becomes irrelevant. Broadcasters still offer scale, marketing muscle and cultural impact that platforms often struggle to replicate. Public service remits shape content in ways AVOD economics do not. Many genres remain better suited to traditional commissioning pathways.
But the strategic centre of gravity appears to be shifting.
What’s happening in television today reminds me of the transition news brands went through in the early 2010s as they shifted from print-first to digital-first processes. I know – I was there, at the Guardian.
There was cultural resistance. A degree of head-in-the-sand scepticism. The economics were genuinely challenging: it was far harder to monetise an audience online than in print, and in many ways that tension still hasn’t fully resolved.
But one truth was undeniable. Readers had moved online.
The successful news organisations weren’t the ones who defended the legacy product. They were the ones who accepted where the audience had gone and rebuilt their operations accordingly.
There are echoes of that moment in television now. Audiences are fragmenting away from traditional linear schedules and spending increasing time on platforms – particularly YouTube. The business model is still evolving. The monetisation gap between broadcast and AVOD remains real. But the audience shift is measurable.
YouTube does not need to replace television to change the balance of power. It simply needs to be treated as what it has become: a primary, monetisable distribution platform – not a secondary outlet for content that has already proved itself elsewhere.
Follow the audience. Follow the money. In a market this fluid, the winners won’t wait for new rules – they’ll write their own.
