Effect of Hollywood Writers Strike to YouTube etc Video?

I was thinking of this as last night's David Letterman was in rerun here in Hong Kong. Due to the Hollywood writers' strike most live nightly talk shows, Daily Show, Colbert Report, Letterman, Leno, Conan O'Brian etc are all in reruns. Shortly many game shows will follow, then soap operas, eventually most scripted TV shows and movies. I believe the main points of contention in the strike relate to payments to writers about content sold on DVDs, the internet and mobile.

Early analyst opinions suggest this could be a very long strike. So we're in for a long spell of reruns. I was thinking how will this impact YouTube and other video sharing sites?

I would think that at least in the short run, if all the nightly talk show/comedies are in reruns, wouldn't it drive those viewers ever more to YouTube. Rather than watch the one episode selected by CBS or NBC or Comedy Central for my nightly dose of comic relief, why don't I go find something really funny to my taste, from YouTube?

So in the short run at least, likely YouTube and other video sharing sites should benefit.

In the longer run, probably the owners of this comedy material are likely to be ever more diligent about their content being illegally on YouTube and other sites and then they will probably also remove most of that content, which will probably diminish over time the relative value of YouTube, that there won't be much new content added (as in professional comedy content, that from the nightly TV shows) and some of the older content would be removed over time.

We'll have to see. I'm afraid when the writers' strike is over, the networks and writers will return to work and find their TV media world has changed enormously in the time of their absence. We will have to see..

Comments

[Stephanie]

That's a great point. It didn't really cross my mind, but now that you brought it up, my youtube channel did get quite a boost the past few days. As always thanks for the insight!