YOUTUBE IS TV...
And everything else that happened in 2025.
Happy Monday Peaceniks. Ready to grade our 2025 homework?
A year ago, I made Ten Predictions for 2025:
2025 would be the Year of YouTube on TV
In 2025 M&A Mania Would Shake the Big Media Landscape
2025 would also be the Year of The Creator
In 2025 LIVE Would Rule
2025 would start a wave of Ads In Games
2025 would see SVOD, AVOD, FAST, and Pay TV Meld into One
2025 would prove AI both an Unsexy Success and a Huge Bubble
2025 would see a Rise of Retail Media
The 2025 Media Job Market Would Suck Worse than 2024
As I reread and graded the predictions, the results (right, wrong, or in between) spoke volumes about how Media changed this year and how the Media Universe will transform in the future. So, to wrap up the year behind us and peek at the year ahead, below, we’ll assess each of my 2025 prognoses and update them for 2026.
OUR YOUTUBE YEAR
First prediction: 2025 would be the Year of YouTube On TV.
In the year since, we published a detailed report on Video in The UK; dropped an exclusive Landscape Analysis of YouTube; offered numerous case studies on disruptive content distribution with Channel 4, the CBC, ZDF, Youtube, and BBC Studios, and gave masterclasses in NYC and Cannes on social video as Broadcast and fandom as a business model.
Simultaneously, the audiences, data, and culture of 2025 proved that social video is redefining broadcast and that YouTube on the television is, in fact, TV.
Yet, many out there (in my comments) still argue that “YouTube is not television!!!” Naysayers focus their case on what people watch on YouTube, or the cost at which each impression is sold, while ignoring the will of the audience and the ad money moving swiftly from Trad TV to social video.
Now, at the end of 2025, let’s put the debate to rest.
At least one billion hours of YouTube is watched on televisions - each day. In the US (the world’s largest television market), YouTube has been the #1 channel on TV every month since April 2025. YouTube now handily beats all Disney’s channels combined, on television. YouTube now has more viewership than all NBCU’s platforms, greater than Paramount and CBS together, and larger than the combination of Fox plus Fox News. Please note: this is without the added benefit of viewing on YouTube TV, without mobile, without desktop, and without Shorts.
Our three youngest generations make up 70% of the world’s population. For them social video is the next generation of broadcasting. Period.
Whatever their current subscriber count, Netflix’s viewership is flat. As a collective, even including streaming, Trad TV is down. Even where free public broadcasting remains dominant, traditional television’s share of audience falls faster each year.
Meanwhile, on TVs, YouTube continues to grow audiences (of all ages) and Creators have become Broadcasters, on television.
More mainstream Media mavens will get the memo in 2026 and move more premium, long-form content onto YouTube. In the next twenty four months Instagram and TikTok will both lean heavily into television streaming. The lessons we learn now from YouTube will create core competencies for a larger social television business. Or you can ignore them and stay in 2024.
PREDICTION GRADE: A+
M&A MANIA SHAKES THE BIG MEDIA LANDSCAPE
