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Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

(tedium.co)
641 points shortformblog | 4 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.812s | source
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lxgr ◴[05 Feb 25 15:40 UTC] No.42950057[source]▶
Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform.

Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was just a matter of waiting out until the last person putting up a veto retired or moved on to other things.

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SteveNuts ◴[05 Feb 25 16:17 UTC] No.42950694[source]▶
I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.
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SllX ◴[05 Feb 25 16:43 UTC] No.42951166[source]▶
Ah, FAST services as referenced by the parent are an entire genre of streaming services that might have slipped under the radar for most Hacker News readers.[1] They’d be off my radar too since I’m not interested in them per se, but for Jason Snell’s excellent Downstream[2] podcast (earlier episodes co-hosted by Julia Alexander) covering basically the business of Hollywood with an emphasis on streaming services and rights.

So this is basically just using YouTube as a FAST service.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_te...

[2]: https://www.relay.fm/downstream

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1. dylan604 ◴[05 Feb 25 17:00 UTC] No.42951498[source]▶
YouTube serving content with ads would be more AVOD (on-demand with ads) vs FAST. FAST typically means a linear feed programmed to play specific content at specific time just like tuning into a channel on OTA or cable networks.
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2. lxgr ◴[05 Feb 25 17:09 UTC] No.42951683[source]▶
That's how it started, as far as I know, but these services now offer lots of content on-demand as well.
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3. dylan604 ◴[05 Feb 25 17:36 UTC] No.42952127[source]▶
if it is on-demand, then it is AVOD. A company that started as FAST might have pivoted or decided to release the content they used to program their FAST channel as AVOD as well.

I've personally been involved in doing this very thing, but just look at the apps for like Max where they have their linear channel offerings within the same UI as their VOD. While Max isn't ad supported, it's a similar concept.

4. sib ◴[06 Feb 25 01:20 UTC] No.42957779[source]▶
Licensing is distinct for FAST and (A)VOD. That is, a service may have acquired the rights to show a specific title on FAST but not AVOD (or vice-versa).