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

(tedium.co)

641 points shortformblog | 1 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.22s | source

Show context

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.

replies(12): >>42950694 #>>42950872 #>>42950880 #>>42951141 #>>42951145 #>>42951447 #>>42951871 #>>42952649 #>>42956486 #>>42956621 #>>42960083 #>>42962040 #

SteveNuts ◴[05 Feb 25 16:17 UTC] No.42950694[source]▶

>>42950057 #

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.

replies(12): >>42950809 #>>42950826 #>>42950879 #>>42951020 #>>42951166 #>>42952128 #>>42953063 #>>42953304 #>>42954303 #>>42957205 #>>42964930 #>>42965743 #

1. dumbfounder ◴[05 Feb 25 17:36 UTC] No.42952128[source]▶

>>42950694 #

I agree with parent that the bigger issue is distribution. Installing random apps sucks. YouTube has distribution. If they can make more money off esoteric movies by using YouTube then that makes more sense than having an extremely long tail of content in your app that probably no one will discover.

↑