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

(tedium.co)
641 points shortformblog | 2 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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timmg ◴[05 Feb 25 15:22 UTC] No.42949719[source]▶
I assume they get "monetization" from Youtube and they don't need to worry about hosting or discovery. Probably better than doing nothing with these films.
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browningstreet ◴[05 Feb 25 15:27 UTC] No.42949826[source]▶
I'm a little surprised there isn't more of this. Building a streaming service is pretty expensive.. a lot of the platforms lost money doing so and really only made it back when they merged into an umbrella of other services.

I'm also a little surprised no one has yet (AFAIK) done the "viral indie release to Youtube" path. I feel like it's sitting there waiting to be exploited.

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eptcyka ◴[05 Feb 25 15:34 UTC] No.42949960[source]▶
Movies are capital intensive, a movie is less likely to go viral than a video that is made to be viral. Thus, doing this is risky. Also, people wanting to create viral movies probably do not want to make viral videos.
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1. al_borland ◴[06 Feb 25 15:45 UTC] No.42963451{3}[source]▶
These old movies have already made their money. Anything they can get now is just gravy.

It’s a Wonderful Life is popular because the copyright expired and TV stations could play it for free. Playing it so much got people to watch, and now it’s a classic. It bombed originally.

Putting old movies on YouTube gives them a chance at a second life, and the studio doing it, means they can still earn some money on something that would otherwise just sit in a vault somewhere.

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2. eptcyka ◴[06 Feb 25 18:13 UTC] No.42964944[source]▶
I don’t disagree with you, but the original commentor posed the qeustion Why don’t indie film producers choose to premier on YouTube?.