Move over, Hollywood—YouTube’s army of creators is coming for your lunch money. The platform just announced plans to develop new TV shows starring its homegrown talent, and network executives everywhere just choked on their overpriced lattes.
Remember when YouTube was just a place for cat videos and awkward vlogs? Those days are as dead as Blockbuster. The platform is throwing its considerable weight behind original scripted series that will feature its biggest stars. It’s like watching your weird cousin suddenly announce they’re running for president—and actually having a shot.
YouTube’s strategy isn’t exactly subtle: they’re taking creators with millions of loyal fans and giving them shiny new toys to play with. The platform plans to launch these shows by 2025, which gives traditional TV just enough time to write its will. Some of these creators already pull more viewers than primetime network shows, all without network censors or million-dollar marketing budgets.
The move makes perfect business sense. Why pay Hollywood writers millions when you’ve got an army of content creators who’ve already proven they can hold an audience’s attention? These are folks who built empires from their bedrooms, armed with nothing but ring lights and questionable editing software.
“We’re building a new path for creators to expand their creative universes,” said a YouTube executive who definitely practices saying things like “creative universes” in the mirror. What they mean is: “We’re coming for Netflix’s throat.”
YouTube isn’t the first to try this crossover magic trick. Remember when Vine stars got TV shows? Yeah, me neither. But YouTube’s approach feels different—they’ve got deeper pockets, bigger stars, and the attention spans of an entire generation.
Industry analysts suggest these shows could actually work because the platform already knows exactly what viewers want. They’ve got more data on audience preferences than the NSA has on… well, everything. Traditional networks still rely on outdated ratings systems and executive hunches, like cavemen trying to predict the weather.
The real genius is that YouTube doesn’t need these shows to be “good” by traditional standards. They just need to leverage existing fanbases. When MrBeast can get 100 million views for burying himself alive, the bar for “entertainment” becomes wonderfully flexible.
For Hollywood, this is like watching your replacement get trained in real-time. The industry already lost the battle for young viewers’ attention—now they’re about to lose the content war too. These creators speak the language of Gen Z and millennials fluently, while network TV still sounds like your dad trying to use slang.
Let’s be honest—many of these shows will probably be terrible by conventional standards. But “conventional” stopped mattering somewhere between TikTok dances and mukbang videos. Today’s viewers want authenticity over production value, relatable faces over polished performances.
The question isn’t whether YouTube can make good TV shows—it’s whether we still care what “good TV” even means anymore. And judging by how many hours I spent watching strangers react to other strangers on the internet last week, the answer is a resounding “nope.”
