“Youtube is the leading television channel in France”. This is what the CEO of Youtube said during the company’s annual conference on Wednesday. And what irritates me is this need to compare itself to TV channels when Youtube has been wanting to free itself from them for years. Already, the video platform boasts of its audience figures which are certainly increasing, but which are difficult to compare with those of TV. Internet consumption is not measured in the same way as television consumption. We cannot compare the views of a video published on YouTube, available for years, to TV shows broadcast at a specific time, which are also replayed and excerpted on the internet.
It’s communication. Obviously Youtube is a hit. What’s especially changing today is that we consume the platform on our TV, like a real channel. Youtube viewing time on connected TVs increased by 19% in 2024, that’s no small thing.
But Youtube is not a television channel. It’s a video platform. It’s difficult to put it in direct competition with TF1 or France 2 for example, knowing that they themselves have channels on YouTube where they post content. YouTube helps them reach another, younger audience, even if the replays of their shows remain on their own platform. Moreover, even the star journalist from France 2 Elise Lucet has just opened her channel on the platform in addition to his television shows. And in her first video, she returns with Squeezie to France television archives. Proof that TV serves YouTube and vice versa.
And then, Youtube owes a large part of its success to the fact that it is precisely NOT a television channel. It’s not part of the habits of young people to follow a TV program today. They prefer to watch what they want when they want on their video platform like Youtube. Besides, for many of them, TV is old-fashioned.
Because of the success of one of their “Kaizen” videos, the ascent of Everest by YouTuber Inoxtag. He was the star of the back-to-school conference. His documentary has been viewed more than 37 million times on the platform. It even broke the record for the most viewed video in 24 hours. And for Youtube, it’s very good advertising. Because this time it’s a program that’s closer to a TV documentary than a YouTube video. The proof: TF1 even programmed it in the second half of the evening the week after its release and almost 3 million people watched it. And according to testimonies relayed in the media, many teenagers watched Kaizen with their parents in the family living room, like the Sunday evening movie. This is the first time that a French YouTube program can boast of being so intergenerational.
But the Inoxtag doc remains a special case. It cannot summarize what Youtube represents in France today.
Youtube is the leading video platform for 15-24 year olds. Those that 7 million consume per month according to Médiamétrie figures, ahead of Instagram and Tiktok. Particularly thanks to the success of shorts, these short videos in the style of reels. A format 100% made for social networks which could not be adapted to television. In fact more than a television channel, Youtube could more be compared to a production company. 20 years ago, for example, it was KM, the production company of the major newspaper which discovered new talents. Today it’s YouTube. And again, the difference is that the talents come by themselves. They are the ones who create their channel on their own like adults. Youtube didn’t come looking for them. The company gradually identifies those who stand out for their number of views, and benefits from their success. In any case, the world of Youtube is rich, the videos are of quality, the YouTubers are real stars… In the end I think it does them a disservice to compare themselves to TV, when the two are rather complementary.
