[skksjsnaahs]

Aren’t TV ratings based on how many people watched each episode, during its initial airing? And the same episode is sold in multiple venues, like DVDs and paid streaming. To apples-to-apples compare traditional TV production budgets to the YouTube stat of revenue per views per month for a whole channel, you might need need to multiply by 10 or 100.

YouTube’s cut is reportedly 45% - I am skeptical that the traditional media industry gives such a revenue share to its creators.

[ghaff]

With traditional network TV, the vast bulk of the money is in how many people watch the show when it first airs. Syndication revenue, DVDs, etc. are relatively trivial. Obviously the whole model is shifting to a more fragmented and on-demand market with fewer, but often more valuable, eyeballs per show. Seinfeld peaked at over 30 million average views for first-run episodes. Game of Thrones is about 10 million for a comparison on cable today.

I agree that apples-to-apples is hard but the bottom line is that very few people make a real living from YouTube views.

[skksjsnaahs]

I think if a YouTube creator is getting four hours of attention per month from millions of viewers (like a popular weekly TV show), they are probably getting pretty good revenue. I don’t think creators who earn less are getting ripped off, their market is just divided between many more attention-seeking channels.