There's huge gap between "they need to get paid" and "viewers need to pay for viewing".

There is this thing called mécénat in French that translates to patronage or sponsorship. Which means that whoever has the money and wants to see the thing created, pays. And everybody can enjoy it.

And this doesn't need to be a single rich person. In modern times communitites can fund millions for projects they want to see created.

And YouTube doesn't create anything at the moment except wonderfully popular YouTube Rewind videos.