YouTube adds free TV series and shows, with advertising

By Phil Nickinson March 23, 2022

The line between YouTube and YouTube TV is blurring even more, with the addition of full seasons of series — nearly 4,000 episodes in total — now available on YouTube. They’re free to watch, but there will be advertising — just like if you were to watch them on-demand on YouTube TV itself.

And YouTube also is rolling out “brand new streamlined navigation and immersive banner art,” which it says “will help you more easily find your favorite TV shows.” It also says that you’ll be able to watch many of the shows in 1080p resolution, and with 5.1 surround sound.

Hell's Kitchen promo for YouTube. — Google

That sure sounds a lot like YouTube TV, the $65-a-month linear streaming service from Google that is among the top three in the United States. (Hulu With Live TV has 4.3 million subscribers, and Sling TV last reported 2.486 million subs; YouTube TV hasn’t given an update since October 2020, when it said it had “more than 3 million.”) The big difference, of course, is that YouTube TV has live content, like sports and news, as well as all the traditional linear channels that show specific things at specific times.’

It also sounds a lot like what you get on AVOD services (that’s advertising-based video-on-demand) like Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, and more. So YouTube isn’t really breaking new ground here, it’s just muddying the waters between its products that much more. And it’s a pretty busy space in which to play. The ViacomCBS-owned Pluto TV, for example, last reported 64 million monthly active users. But YouTube basically is the home for all online video that doesn’t come from a studio, and it notes that between YouTube and YouTube TV, it reached some 135 million people on connected TVs in December 2021.

YouTube also still has more than 1,500 movies available to stream for free, from such publishers as Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, FilmRise, and more.

The free series and shows on YouTube are only available in the United States.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Section Editor, Audio/Video

Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…

Audio / Video

Amazon Fire TV Channels brings even more free TV to the platform

Amazon Fire TV Channels.

Amazon today announced Fire TV Channels, which brings even more free ad-supported TV — otherwise known as FAST — to the Amazon Fire TV operating system.

The gist is simple: You'll see even more free video promoted to you on the Amazon Fire TV home screen from the various sources within the FAST universe. That means in addition to all the content currently available on Amazon Freevee (formerly known as IMDB TV), there will be video from the NHL, Xbox, and TMZ. There will be a new travel category, too, and Conde Nast and the PGA are teed up next.

Audio / Video

YouTube TV details fixes for audio sync, better 1080p quality

YouTube TV on Apple TV.

YouTube TV — the most popular live-streaming service service in the U.S. with more than 5 million subscribers — this week gave an update on Reddit on some bug squashing and upcoming features, plus some welcome improvements. It's an interesting bit of transparency in an age in which app changelogs are all but useless.

Probably the most interesting is that YouTube TV is "testing transcoding changes, including a bit rate increase for live 1080p content." Resolution — that's the 1080p number — is just one part of what makes up the quality of the picture on your screen. Bit rate is another. Basically it refers to the amount of data being pushed to make up that resolution — like the difference between a 1,080-piece puzzle with a picture made up of five colors, or one made up of 500 colors. Think of it like that. The higher the bit rate, the better the picture. And as we've discussed before, we'll take a 1080p stream with a higher bit rate over a bad 4K stream any day of the week, particularly when it comes to sports (which is exactly what we've seen with Apple's excellent MLS streams).

Audio / Video

NFL Sunday Ticket in 2023: Everything you need to know

NFL Sunday Ticket info for YouTube TV as seen on a phone.

Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs were crowned the winners of Super Bowl LVII and closed out the 2022-23 NFL season. But that was the past. It's time to look ahead toward the 2023-24 season — and some massive changes already are taking shape. First, there's no more Tom Brady. And second is that NFL Sunday Ticket no longer will be on DirecTV and is making the leap to YouTube and YouTube TV.

That's a big deal for a couple of reasons. It'll make NFL Sunday Ticket — which lets you watch pretty much any NFL game you want every week — available to far more people because it no longer will be shackled to satellite TV. Meanwhile, YouTube TV last reported more than 5 million subscribers in mid-2022. (The company doesn't regularly give updates on subscription totals.) And then there's YouTube proper, whose availability and popularity are hard to quantify in the same terms as traditional television numbers because it's just there.