Indeed! Especially now since there aren't any practical limits on youtube video size, duration, or quality.

There is already a lot of pretty high quality original content on youtube. Some of that content is more popular than some cable content. There are youtube channels which have weekly updates and see millions of viewers on every episode. They are under the traditional media radar though since they don't have a promotional budget and they don't appear in a program lineup anywhere.

This trend can only accelerate from here. Producing a "show" or a "movie" requires a teeny, tiny amount of effort and resources these days, and can be done without spending more than 4 figures on equipment and whatnot.

We are nearing an inflection point in this process, soon there will be a critical mass of shows and viewers such that word-of-mouth recommendations start exploding viewership and more importantly that it begins to become cemented in the zeitgeist that making an "internet tv show" is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, regardless of how talented you are, and more so is a quite feasible thing to do. That will lead to a spiraling increase in both content and viewership which will likely catch a lot of the traditional media folks off guard. I don't think they realize that there is a bubbling cauldron out there which is poised to spew forth the equivalent of hundreds of channels of content. Content that people will watch. And talk about. And value at the same level as traditional TV content.

The biggest potential danger I see is to Google's brand image. Google is respected as producing high-quality... stuff. Television networks aren't respected because they produce... an awful lot of garbage. If google starts being directly responsible for the Jersey Shores of the world then surely their brand image takes a hit.

Producing a "show" or a "movie" requires a teeny, tiny amount of effort and resources these days, and can be done without spending more than 4 figures on equipment and whatnot.

Though it must be said that the only way you can produce a movie really cheaply is if you can persuade folks to work for peanuts in the hope of breaking into the industry.

But if low-budget stuff becomes the industry, then the supply of folks willing to work for nothing in the hopes of being the next George Clooney will die up when George Clooney starts taking home five hundred bucks a film.

Good point, that is a concern. Maybe google should create a subsidiary brand for just that purpose.

As far as low-budget productions, I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. The key is lowering the cost of entry. What this enables is not just "low-budget" productions but also "start-ups" with members who have decided to defer compensation in exchange for equity in the "start-up". This is the dominant way that bands get started, for example.

> This is a REAL potential game changer

There is one problem. Google is going to spend $150 million on content, to earn about $10M in ad sales, and then will cancel the program. Cable companies charge an average of $1000/year per household and have 90% penetration. The economics of web video just can't compete.

It's up to traditional cable companies to embrace this disruptive technology we like to call "the internet" and find a way to build a better business model using it. This would inevitably undercut their own "traditional" models for content delivery, but as more and more people cut the chord because more options are available, their refusal to innovate simply means that other players are going to come in and take the share they could/should have had.

I think it will be the extreme exception for them to embrace it. I'm not even sure if they are capable of doing so. So much of the way the cogs mesh together in the traditional tv business world is very much dependent on the technological limitations and specifics of broadcast television. They would have to change so very much to adapt. A lot of that change would have to be shrinking, which they will fight.