Add YouTube to the growing list of online video sites looking to impinge on the increasingly-fragile PayTV business model. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the user-generated-content powerhouse is in the process of adding professionally-produced original content to the mix. The company plans to spend $100 million developing the content and plans to highlight it across 20 or so "channels" to be featured as part of the site's gradual re-vamp later this year.
Original professional content is no stranger to the web. There has been a steady stream of mainstream actors choosing it as their distribution medium for pet projects. Latest in this batch are Patricia Heaton and William H. Macy, who are collaborating on a new comedy project called Versailles, of which the site My Damn Channel has ordered eight episodes.
These announcements - along with the Netflix announcement previously discussed in the lead story - illustrate very well why the PayTV model is now under full assault from the web. Despite the best efforts of cable and studios to keep content hidden behind the walls of a PayTV subscription, content tends to naturally flow to where the eyeballs are. And increasingly those eyeballs are on web-connected devices.
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