Watching YouTube

Some kid named ‘Fred’ is garnering 3 to 4 million hits every time he posts a new video on YouTube. Fred’s YouTube channel (5th most subscribed thus far) has 200,000 subscribers. I think it is probably fair to say that you have to be under 20 years old to enjoy Fred for more than ten seconds of Fred. I am not going to try to describe Fred, just see the example below.

The Web Scout blog at the Los Angeles Times asks, “Is it that our over-medicated, under-exercised, camera-toting youth see a bit of themselves in this hyper-hyper-character? If so, we’re in for a very annoying future.”

I suspect that Fred will end up on YTV.

According to a new Pew Internet and American Life Project study, ‘The Internet and the 2008 Election‘, on the political use of the Net by Americans notes that “35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos — a figure that nearly triples the reading the Pew Internet Project got in the 2004 race.” Also of note:

On one hand, 28% of wired Americans say that the internet makes them feel more personally connected to the campaign, and 22% say that they would not be as involved in the campaign if not for the internet. At the same time, however, even larger numbers feel that the internet magnifies the most extreme viewpoints and is a source of misinformation for many voters.”

The TV industry is slowly coming to terms with the simple fact that millions of people want to watch TV shows via the Internet, and the industry lives in fear of what happened to the music sector (due to piracy). This from the Los Angeles Times:

In a very short time, Hulu has rocketed from nothing to being one of the top video destinations on the Internet. We’ve all heard the years of trade-show claptrap about television-Web “convergence,” but Hulu has come as close as possible to turning your computer into a TV without actually sending a tech to monkey around with the hardware and wiring.

Maybe more important, it’s also shaping up as a key proving ground in the ongoing philosophical debate about what people want from Web-based entertainment…

The message seems clear: Viewers want online video, and studios have decided they’d better give it to them, traditional corporate strategy be damned…

Hulu delivered 63 million total streams during April, its first full month of operation, making it the No. 10 online video-streaming site, according to Nielsen Online, an audience-research company. (Yes, that’s still a long way from No. 1 YouTube, Google’s clip-sharing site, which logged a mind-boggling 4 billion streams.) …

The issue boils down to this: Will low-cost original programming, à la “lonelygirl15″ or those grainy, amateur YouTube clips, continue to dominate online video? Or will the little guys get crowded out in a new, heavily commercialized era, led by expensive, slickly produced studio shows that premiered on broadcast or cable?

A lot of money — and maybe the future of TV programming itself — is riding on the answer. After all, studios almost certainly face more years of viewer erosion on the traditional networks. Their economics might cease to work at all unless they find other ways to recapture those lost viewers. Given how much time people spend with their computers and wireless devices, the Web is going to be a key battleground.”

On a related note, YouTube is helping TV developers create platforms for viewing YouTube on your TV (anyone remember WebTV?):

We’ve heard many users say, “YouTube is the new TV!”. Well, the YouTube Syndication team is excited to now offer a number of options to actually consume YouTube on your television sets. We’re also proud to have helped many leaders in the consumer electronics space create YouTube experiences on TV.”