Advanced Television

YouTube lines up channel expansion

October 31, 2011

By Colin Mann

With parent company Google revealing a software update to its Google TV service, YouTube has announced the arrival of a range of channels aimed at bringing an even broader range of entertainment for the site’s users.

Writing in the official YouTube blog, Robert Kyncl, Global Head of Content Partnerships, suggests that “wonderful things happen when cool technology meets great entertainment. Cable television expanded our viewing possibilities from just a handful of channels to hundreds, and brought us some of the most defining media experiences of the last few decades– think MTV, ESPN and CNN. Today, the web is bringing us entertainment from an even wider range of talented producers, and many of the defining channels of the next generation are being born, and watched, on YouTube.”

He revealed that “even more talented creators and original entertainment will soon join YouTube’s existing channel lineup, including channels created by well-known personalities and content producers from the TV, film, music, news, and sports fields, as well as some of the most innovative up-and-coming media companies in the world and some of YouTube’s own existing partners. These channels will have something for everyone, whether you’re a mom, a comedy fan, a sports nut, a music lover or a pop-culture maven.”

According to Kyncl, YouTube’s goal with the channels expansion, along with the grants and educational programmes it has launched in the past year, is to bring an even broader range of entertainment to YouTube, giving users more reasons to keep coming back again and again. “And for advertisers, these channels will represent a new way to engage and reach their global consumers,” he advises.

The first of these new original channels will appear on YouTube starting next month and will continue over the next year. They will be available on any Internet-connected device, anywhere in the world, with all the interactivity and social features of YouTube built right in.

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