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

There is an increasing amount of UK TV uploaded to YouTube from whoever owns the rights. Have seen The Bill (26 seasons) and pretty much all of Gordon Ramsey's work recently (including a 8hr entire season video). ITV appears to have even created the brand "Our Stories" for their YouTube fly on the wall telly content.

Much of this not-fantastic-quality TV could probably be easily found on YouTube even without the rights holder being involved anyway - so better they get paid?

Also 18 seasons of Taskmaster, which at least I think is fantastic quality.

Just watched one for the first time today! You are correct.

Channel 4's been doing it too, in fact absolutely loads of their shows are on YouTube now and they do it as a weekly release, so for example last week they posted the first episode of "Celebrity Hunted" season 6, and then a week later episode 2, etc.

Take a look at their playlists to see what I mean, tons of stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4/playlists

They've also got other channels, eg you can watych most of grand designs over here: https://www.youtube.com/@Channel4Homes/playlists

Guessing they realised its more profitable to use someone elses bandwidth and run ads.