Rise of Indie News Creators: Less Than Half of YouTube’s Most Watched News Channels Tied to Legacy Brands
Viewers are nearly as likely to turn to independent news shows as they are big-budget news operations on YouTube — with independent creators often pulling in views that are comparable (or even stronger) than established outlets like MSNBC — according to a new study from Pew Research Center on Monday. Out of the most-watched news channels on YouTube, 42% of them are independently run, compared to 49% that are tied to legacy media, Pew found. (The remaining 9% are “associated with other types of organizations,” Pew said.) Strikingly, 70% of the most popular independent channels are built around a central personality. And a majority of the time, those creators are true YouTubers, or people who initially “gained a following through their YouTube presence,” rather than a “structured organization.” “The study finds a news landscape on YouTube in which established news organizations and independent news creators thrive side by side — and consequently, one where established news organizations no longer have full control over the news Americans watch,” Pew said. “Indeed, the survey finds that most YouTube news consumers say they at least sometimes turn to news organizations as well as independent channels for news on the platform, and identical shares...
Read original story Rise of Indie News Creators: Less Than Half of YouTube’s Most Watched News Channels Tied to Legacy Brands At TheWrap
