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This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
The YouTube app on your TV is about to undergo some massive changes, to the point where you might confuse it with Netflix, or any other paid streaming service, at first glance.
Instead of getting overwhelmed by a long, chaotic list of thumbnails as soon as you open the app, you’ll soon be greeted by massive banner images teasing the latest episodes of your favorite channels, ready for you to flick through. Those images, which are also at the top of individual channel pages, will look a lot crisper, thanks to YouTube bumping up its upload limits for thumbnails for the first time in a decade.
And, perhaps most significantly, a growing number of channels will feature shows in a more familiar format. Videos will be organized by seasons and episodes, ready to be binge-watched, just like on Netflix. “When viewers watch [this] content, they’ll go episode to episode based on how it’s organized,” explains YouTube senior director of product management Kurt Wilms. “When they turn on the TV a day later, they can continue right where they left off in the show.”
Image: YouTube
It’s all part of a move by YouTube to live up to viewers’ expectations on the big screen: Over the past few years, the service has seen massive growth of living room usage, to the point where people now watch over a billion hours’ worth of YouTube videos on TV every single day, and YouTube accounts for 12.6 percent of all TV viewing in the United States — about as much as Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus combined.
In other words: YouTube has become the new TV. Now, it also wants to look like it.
It’s all just TV shows
The rollout of shows across YouTube channels has been a long time coming: First announced a little over a year ago, the feature was initially developed several years back when YouTube began working on a channel store for third-party video services on its platform. Bringing that type of subscription content directly into the YouTube app required listing individual TV shows with complete seasons on its platform.
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