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Comment by inkaudio | Hacker News Reader

Quality matters everywhere, quality matters on T.V. and online. 300 million is like the budget of a handful of popular T.V. shows. Game of Thrones has a budget of about 60 million a season, House of Cards cost about 100 million. 300 million spread across hundreds of channels is not going to give you the best of T.V. The T.V. networks make big bets on a smaller number of shows. Time Warner alone has over a billion dollar budget for their content. It’s really high risk, high reward for them and I don’t think it is something Google is ready to stomach. The budget would have been better spent on more educational programming, which T.V. channels offer very little of. Educational programming is popular on Youtube and other sites.

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Most of the channels were educational or news or other special interest, not sitcom, drama, etc.

I think the issue is just cost -- high-end TV is $250k-3mm/hr . Low-quality TV costs something like $30k/hr of finished product. High-end web is $1-4k/hr. Amateur is $100-400.

You can produce much more niche content if you need only $1k/hr to produce it. Niche reduces the cost per hour for the same quality, too -- I'd rather see dmor or sama or garry talking about startups for 15 minutes vs. Morgan Freeman. Non-talent costs really can be dramatically reduced in a non-union world, especially one where the principals are compensated through equity or other non-cash, for the same final quality. And, if something is niche, I'll watch it even if the editing, sound, video, etc. aren't quite up to the same level.

-> Most of the channels were educational or news or other special interest...

There was a lot of news and special interest but throwing Educational programming into the mix is not factually correct.

I have two list, one from 2011 and one recent. Both show an emphasis on Entertainment and Extracurricular programming.

Recent: http://www.youtube.com/yt/advertise/original-channels.html

From 2011: http://www.tubefilter.com/2011/10/28/youtube-original-channe...

Not too many pure educational programming plays. Certainly not the majority.

->Non-talent costs really can be dramatically reduced in a non-union world...

Producing content is like anything else you have to make, a lot of times you get what you pay. I've worked with a lot of new workers, the good ones rise to professional level pretty fast and they won't work for equity/portfolio for too long. I think Youtube has gone as far as it can go with cheap content, which is pretty good. Now they are experimenting.

Ah, great list.

I would consider a lot of the science/food/tech/automotive stuff as "educational entertainment" to the extent that the Hitler Channel and other cable tv programming is educational. But there is not a single thing there I'd personally watch.

(The only YouTube content I love, personally, is Hickok45, MrColionNoir, etc., and cat videos. I'd love curated high quality cat videos. I'll probably get some cats and a 4K RED or Canon just to have an excuse to produce this.)

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