YouTube Becoming a Paid Service

According to YouTube Chief Salar Kamangar, the company is working on selling subscriptions so that some of its video offerings can be accessed, which will eventually provide some sort of facility for cable channels to offer their services outside of cable network providers.

While speaking at the Reuters Media and Technology Summit on Thursday, he said that in the coming days, cable channels with smaller viewers will be subscribing to the Web and be “available of an a la carte basis.”

Although Kamangar did not talk about the names of those channels, but he did say they receive nominal amount of fees or sometimes no fees from cable providers. This will eventually be one of the viable offerings for the company. Besides, YouTube is considering charging some fees from viewers who watch original programs on its recently launched channel.

“We don’t have anything to announce now. It is something that’s really important to a lot of our top existing content creators as well as ones that aren’t on YouTube today, so we’re taking very seriously and we’re thinking about it very carefully,” said Kamangar, Google senior vice president, YouTube and video, to Reuters.

“The top network executives are really taking notice. They’re asking questions about who is doing well, about who is building a professional management team. And I think eyes are very much on this space now,” said Kamangar

According to him, channels are also taking interests from huge businesses such as Toyota and Unilever that used to spend millions on advertising on the channels.

Kamagar’s comments clearly coincide with a Department of Justice investigation regarding whether cable TV providers are the main hurdles in development of online video sector.

YouTube is believed to be the best video website having more than 4 billion video streams on a daily basis. Presently, the website generates revenue by selling advertising including pre-roll video ads and sponsorship of a few parts of the site.