YouTube’s gatekeeping model harsher than traditional media networks
In a Decoder podcast episode, comedian and YouTuber Adam Conover speaks with host Nilay Patel about how streaming and online video have reshaped the entertainment industry. Conover argues that Hollywood studios, in their rush to compete with Netflix and HBO, effectively abandoned entire categories of television programming, ceding that ground to YouTube. This matters because it challenges the popular narrative that platforms like YouTube have democratised media production and distribution.
Conover, who moved from CollegeHumor to cable television with Adam Ruins Everything, then to Netflix, and back to YouTube where he now hosts the podcast Factually!, contends that YouTube is actually a harsher gatekeeper than traditional networks ever were, since creators cannot negotiate with an opaque recommendation algorithm the way they could with a network executive. He also discusses his discomfort with the term "creator", his role as a board member of the Writers Guild of America West, and how he now runs his YouTube podcasting work as a small business with employees and freelancers amid a heavily disrupted media landscape.
- Adam Conover discusses YouTube's takeover of TV on the Decoder podcast
- He argues YouTube is a worse gatekeeper than old TV networks
- Says algorithms can't be negotiated with like human executives could
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Adam Conover is a comedian best known for the CollegeHumor sketch "Emergency Awesome" and his TV show Adam Ruins Everything, which began online before moving to cable. He later worked with Netflix and now runs his own show, Factually!, on YouTube, giving him first-hand experience of television, streaming and online video as a creator.
The wider context is the upheaval in the entertainment industry since streaming services such as Netflix and HBO's platforms took off. Traditional television networks and studios changed what programming they commissioned in order to compete, and this is said to have left gaps that YouTube and its creators filled instead.
The discussion also touches on how creators get their work seen. Unlike traditional TV, where a network executive decides what gets made, YouTube relies on an automated recommendation system to decide what audiences see, and how that system works is not made public. The Writers Guild of America West, a union representing screenwriters on whose board Conover sits, is also relevant background, as it represents the interests of writers navigating this changing industry.
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Originally published by The Verge as “Adam Conover explains how YouTube ruined everything”.