Youtube announced yesterday that it signed contracts with Hollywood movie studios, allowing the popular video streaming website to upload thousands of movies and TV shows to its content database.
I think this is was an excellent decision on YouTube's part. It was only a few years ago that you couldn't find TV shows and movies online without having to go to illegitimate pirating sites to find them. Now, TV networks are putting current shows online, which is rapidly changing the way Americans watch TV. Don't have time to catch the Real Housewives of New York? Bravo has you covered on their website! Using the internet for TV watching purposes is genius, really. People have busy schedules and don't necessarily have time to watch their favorite shows in the alotted network time slot. Now they have something to do while bored at work! For me at least, I know I use the internet to watch shows I would never actually care to watch or remember to watch on cable. For example, when proscastinating on homework or other tasks, I turn to MTV.com to watch back epsiodes of True Life and The Hills. Movies are not quite as easily accesible online. More often than not, if I am going to watch a movie online, I find it on some random Japanese site. I'm not sure if that's illegal or not, and frankly I really don't want to know. However, with Youtube adding movies and TV shows, I won't have to worry. Youtube is perfectly legal, fairly decent quality, and my computer will be virus free.
Advertisers will benefit from Youtube's new venture as well. Youtube will most likely be adding in quick commercial breaks to the new movies and TV shows it will feature. Even online commercials are better than watching on TV. There is usually only one at a time, and only 30 seconds long. Better yet, ignoring commercials is much easier to do while seated at a computer as opposed to being confined to the couch. I can easily grab a nail file, write a sentence of a paper, or fiddle with my iPod while for waiting for the show to return.
The people behind Youtube are being incredibly smart about their business ventures. Media is moving online, and while many companies are struggling to survive, Youtube is flowing with the current quite smoothly.
It's funny that I also wrote about this in my blog. However I took a slightly different position on it. I agree with TV on youtube being a smart decision because tv shows are meant to be consumed that way but for me I worry about the death of films. There is something about the quality and experience of film that is different from digitized streaming videos. It is similar to the move from vinyl records to mp3 players. While mp3 players are more portable and offer more ease of use, the fidelity of the music is lost. There is hope though because it is only a matter of time before gigabytes of information can be downloaded and uploaded on the internet with great speed so the quality of movies accessible on youtube can only get better and better.
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