Is YouTube making Hollywood irrelevant?

I recently saw a statistic that surprised me: in February of 2025, Americans used their television sets to watch YouTube more than anything else. More than Disney. More than HBO. Even more than Netflix.

I often think of YouTube as a service for young people – specifically, young people using their phones. But that's all changing. A recent report by research firm Moffett Nathanson projects that by the end of this year, YouTube's revenue will eclipse that of the entire Walt Disney Company (movies, theme parks and all). That report put it bluntly, dubbing YouTube the "king of all media".

But what does it mean for the rest of the entertainment industry when YouTube is more popular than anything else and YouTube stars seem just as likely to receive big Hollywood deals as A-list actors?

I spoke about all of this with Lucas Shaw, a reporter and editor for Bloomberg and the author of the Screentime newsletter. It was a fun conversation – you can watch or read more of it here:

Below are excerpts from our conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity:

Katty Kay: Lucas, people who became famous on YouTube – Mr. Beast, Cocomelon, etc – are now getting their own shows on streaming platforms. Is that the direction that we're going to see this going, where increasingly YouTube becomes the incubator for shows that then go onto streaming?

Lucas Shaw: Hollywood studios and TV networks have tried to make programming with social media talent – especially YouTube stars – for at least a decade now. Lilly Singh was a big YouTuber who got a late-night talk show; it didn't quite work. Grace Helbig was a big YouTuber who got a talk show. There were some movies that cast talent. We're now seeing a second or third attempt at it.

I think part of the reason is that these stars have gotten so big that there is now greater confidence that they can deliver. And part of it is that Hollywood companies have learned that they can't force some of this talent into their formats. They have to sort of empower them to continue doing what they're doing. So, the Mr. Beast show for Amazon is just like a maximal version of what he does on his YouTube channel. And with Cocomelon, they're basically licensing YouTube videos and then paying them to make slightly longer and more expensive versions of it. We'll continue to see more of that. 

KK: So, there's a difference in what it takes to be successful on YouTube compared to what it takes to be successful on traditional television and streaming platforms?

LS: Yeah, I think so. I think what people want on YouTube is different from what they want from Netflix, at least for now. People come to like a creator for doing a specific thing.

There was a point in time at which this Swedish gaming creator PewDiePie was the biggest YouTube star in the world and YouTube funded an original program with him as part of this original programming initiative that they had. And it didn't resonate in the same way that his channel did, because it wasn't what people came to watch. People liked watching him speak off the cuff while playing games. There was an intimacy to that, but there was also a rawness and it felt sort of less sanitized and manicured. And so, then seeing him being a star of a more traditional TV show, even though it's already on YouTube, I just don't think it appealed to those people in the same way.

KK: Lucas, you just came back from a trip around Asia. Is there no global competitor – or even an American competitor – who looks like it's going to knock YouTube off its perch of such huge dominance? 

LS: There was definitely a moment where TikTok appeared to be that – and YouTube was intimidated because a lot of emerging and independent creators were posting to TikTok first. One of YouTube's great strengths historically was that it lowered the barrier to entry for anyone who wanted to make a video. And that barrier started to feel higher to some, because YouTube had gotten so big and there were established players. So, going from zero to 100 got much harder and they saw creators going to TikTok instead. TikTok is still a big competitor, but there just isn't anything that operates in as many different categories as YouTube. Spotify is competing with YouTube in music and in podcasting and in some video.

Netflix obviously competes with YouTube globally; I'd say it's one of the biggest competitors in terms of entertainment. But YouTube and Netflix just play different roles, because YouTube is free. For instance, YouTube has hundreds of millions of users in India. Netflix has about 15 million. It's just much easier for YouTube to penetrate some of these poorer markets. Now, there's not as much money there, but from a just "reach as many people as possible" standpoint, there really isn't a direct comparison. Maybe Instagram.

KK: I had a conversation recently with Jonathan Haidt and we were talking about kids and screen time and it occurred to me that so many of the social media companies – TikTok, Instagram, and others – have been hauled up before Congress to justify what they're doing. And YouTube seems to have escaped some of that scrutiny. How has it done that and do you think it'll carry on doing that?

LS: I think it comes back to this idea that people don't know how to categorize YouTube. It is in some ways a social network, right? And I think some people initially saw it that way because it came from Silicon Valley, because there were comments, because people were uploading their own videos. But it is also an entertainment platform. But also, at its core – because it's part of Google – it's a search engine. That's in a lot of ways how Google views it. It's a video search engine. And so, I think the difficulty of categorizing it has just made it so that people aren't quite sure how to approach it. 

But you're right that they haven't received the same scrutiny from a regulatory perspective, certainly not as much as Meta or TikTok, and it's a little bit baffling. You know, speaking from an American perspective, it is so funny to me that the government would not allow one company to own two domestic broadcast television networks, but it's fine that Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, both of which reach way more people than any broadcast network. Or it's fine that Alphabet owns both Google and YouTube, both of which reach way more people than any broadcast TV network. So, I think part of this is also that our regulatory behavior is pretty antiquated.

KK: What are the big changes that you see coming to the platform in the next year or two? 

LS: I'd say, in aggregate, the big change is that as more advertising dollars flow to YouTube creators and channels will have more money to invest in their programming. There's a pretty widely held belief that you'll continue to see the caliber and cost of some of the top YouTube shows go up and more closely resemble television. You may see some more expensive unscripted shows. Mr. Beast is one example, right? The average cost of one of his videos is three or four million dollars, which is comparable to what you'd see on television, but not comparable to almost anything else you'd see on YouTube.

Another big area that I'm actually in the middle of writing a story about now is the growth of scripted programming. It's still pretty small on YouTube, partially because it is more complicated and more expensive. I think another part of it is that YouTube as a platform is just more hospitable to unscripted programming. But as it becomes possible to make more money on YouTube and as it becomes clearer to top writers and actors that there's a much bigger audience on YouTube than some of these other places, I think you'll see more and more people try scripted.

KK: Is YouTube the straw that broke the camel's back of monoculture? I grew up in an era where there were still just a few channels on television. Everybody watched the same thing. But now, it seems that it is really broken. And I wonder whether people will start hankering for that again, for a common experience in this very fragmented, polarized, divided world that we live in.

LS: I don't know the answer to that. I think we like the idea of there being a monoculture, right? It's fun when you have a moment like when Barbie came out and it seemed like everyone was talking about the movie or the Taylor Swift tour happens and everyone is talking about this tour. We are social creatures, and so we enjoy these moments where everyone is bonded by the same idea or interested in the same topic. But it certainly doesn't feel like we're on the precipice of returning to that in any way.

If you think about how Netflix and YouTube work, which are the two dominant entertainment platforms right now, they are tailored to your individual tastes. People don't watch shows and videos at the same time. There are things that go viral, but that virality is fairly short-lived. 

I guess Adolescence in some ways feels like a monoculture moment, right? Everyone is watching and talking about this show. But unlike in the past, when that might last for the 10 or 20 or 30 weeks that it's on, it lasts for a week or two. And then, we're on to the next one. That pattern feels like it will only continue and accelerate. I don't see us reverting to some world in which we are all watching the same thing, unless there's a fundamental shift in the distribution mechanism. 

KK: Yeah, it's been described to me as a moment where we're living in a "me culture" with short attention spans.

LS: Yeah, because it's all about YouTube, Instagram, Netflix. Everything feels like they are serving you specifically, as opposed to serving all of us collectively.

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