Earlier this year the global video sharing platform You Tube dominated TV viewership in the United States, knocking Disney off the top spot and leaving major media names like Netflix, Paramount, Amazon and Fox in its wake. In a first for the streaming platform, the time people spent watching YouTube on television accounted for 10.4 percent of total TV in the month of July.

In terms of its world reach, the platform is now available in more than one hundred countries and pulls in nearly three billion users every month, the majority of which are between 25 and 34 years old, that’s younger than the core audience for traditional television.

Launched in 2005, YouTube has since expanded and diversified, but it’s niche area for dominating the market is still in user generated content and the advertising income it draws in provides the platform with its main source of revenue, leaving the traditional TV market in its wake.

So, on this week’s Inquiry, we’re asking ‘Is YouTube’s disruption of TV now complete?’

Contributors:
Mark Bergen, Reporter with Bloomberg Technology, Author of ‘Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination’, London, UK.

Chris Stokel-Walker, Journalist, Author of ‘YouTubers: How YouTube Shook Up TV and Created a New Generation of Stars’, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Rahul Telang, Professor of Information Systems, Carnegie Mellon University, Co-Author of ‘Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment’, Pennsylvania, USA

Dr. Marlen Komorowski, Professor for European Media Markets, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Senior Research Fellow, Cardiff University, Wales, UK

Presenter: Charmaine Cozier
Producer: Jill Collins
Researcher: Kirsteen Knight
Editor: Tara McDermott
Technical Producer: Cameron Ward
Production Co-ordinator: Tim Fernley

Image: Silhouettes of laptop and mobile device users are seen next to a screen projection of the YouTube logo

Credit: Reuters/Dado Ruvić