It seems that YouTube wants to have its cake and eat it, too—making it clear that while it does want to continue to benefit from its widespread reach among UK kids, it has no interest in commissioning content domestically for that audience.
In a government inquiry yesterday, YouTube execs including UK head of public policy Alex Rawle made a case for why the platform shouldn’t be banned for kids under the age of 16 like it is in Australia. Yet he rejected the position of many British producers and lobbyists, who say that if YouTube wants to benefit from UK views and revenue, it should give back to the local industry.
YouTube is now in a similar position to streamers, which have been facing international pressure to kick back a portion of their local revenue to fund new local content. Back in November, Australia’s government passed long-awaited legislation forcing global streaming giants to contribute to local productions, including children’s programming. The same streamers operating in Canada have been told they need to fund local programming, too (although they’ve been fighting that in court for a while). And Germany may be next.
Yesterday’s inquiry was mounted by the UK government in response to concerns that kids are being drawn away from linear TV and the country’s once-robust public media ecosystem. YouTube is the app with the most kid users, to the tune of 88% of three- to 17-year-olds in 2024, according UK media regulator Ofcom.
Parliamentarians grilled YouTube on what it’s doing to make sure kids can find high-quality content, armed with info gleaned from earlier sessions with the BBC and the Children’s Media Foundation’s Greg Childs, who discussed the implications of kids watching less linear television content and more low-quality online videos. Another session featured Blue Zoo co-founder Oli Hyatt and Jackie Edwards (who headed up the now-scrapped BFI Young Audience Content Fund) talking about the challenges of producing kids content.
On the topic of banning YouTube, Rawle argued that the platform is actually an important educational resource, and that kids from lower socio-economic classes would be hit hardest by a ban because they lack access to a replacement. And head of media and responsibility partnerships Mairi Brewis added that YouTube is actually playing a crucial role in delivering homegrown content to British kids, referencing Blue Zoo’s Alphablocks and Numberblocks as series that are available on the platform. “If the goal is to make sure that children really have access to high-quality content, it doesn’t all rest on the [public broadcasters].”
In fact, Rawle argued that local producers benefit from YouTube as a way to build a global audience for their IPs. “UK content creators for kids are punching above their weight on the platform. Over 80% of UK content is seen outside of the UK…there’s a huge export market.”
The government also asked about funding programs that YouTube has launched, including the US$100-million kids content fund it set up in 2019 after settling with the FTC amid accusations that the platform collected kids’ personal info without parental consent. YouTube doesn’t have anything like that in the UK, but Brewis highlighted a free skills training program it’s running with the BBC as one way it’s investing in and supporting the local industry.
The platform is just beginning to work with the BBC to enhance the prominence of its channels—but that strategy is still in its infancy. (YouTube is prioritizing content around British Science Week at the moment, Brewis noted).
But when the government asked whether YouTube would go a step further and invest part of its revenue into funding kids programming, the execs said that was beyond the video-hosting platform’s remit. Despite the fact that it’s disrupting the BBC and other pubcasters, YouTube is a distribution platform, not a broadcaster, Rawle argued.
And Brewis added: “We moved out of original commissioning as YouTube because it was not our core competency.”
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