YouTube Isn’t Just a Competitor—It Is the Future of TV
For the last few years, Netflix was the future, the king of streaming, lavishing billions on prestige dramas, Hollywood talent, and sleek algorithms. It called itself a studio, a platform, a disruptor. But it’s now facing a sobering truth: the real disruptor already won.
That disruptor is YouTube.
The confusion starts with defining YouTube. Is it a channel? A platform? A studio? And app? A website?
I think the simplest answer in the months to come is that, for most of the world, it is TV.
In a recent New York Times essay, the narrative frames Netflix and YouTube as locked in a pitched battle for dominance over the living room TV screen. But if you actually read the numbers, the conclusion is unavoidable: YouTube isn't neck-and-neck with Netflix. It's laps ahead.
In May 2025, YouTube captured 12.5% of all television viewing time in the U.S., while Netflix pulled 7.5%, according to Nielsen. Two years ago, the gap between them was a rounding error. Now, it’s a canyon. No other platform—Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, or Apple TV+—even comes close.
And this isn’t just about percentages. YouTube is winning in raw presence. On any given day, more Americans are watching YouTube on their TVs than are watching Netflix. In prime time, it’s a near tie: 11.1 million for YouTube, 10.7 million for Netflix. But that’s just the TV screen. Add mobile and desktop—YouTube’s natural habitat—and the scale becomes Jurassic.
Netflix still clings to its old framework: big budgets, prestige content, top-down programming. But YouTube operates like the internet itself—messy, vast, radically open. Anyone can upload. Anyone can monetize. The algorithms are faster, more precise, and more personalized. YouTube doesn’t just have content—it is content. All of it. All the time.
Jimmy Kimmel, arguably the king of late-night, recently celebrated a huge milestone. It wasn’t celeb guests, neilson ratings, or Emmy noms… it was that he reached over 20 million followers on YouTube.
It’s TV reimagined not as a service but as a mirror—reflecting everything from expert education to amateur comedy to global subcultures. Netflix curates. YouTube absorbs.
The article notes that Netflix has started signing YouTubers and licensing their shows—“Ms. Rachel,” “Sidemen,” “Dude Perfect.” That’s not competition. That’s capitulation. Netflix is now raiding YouTube, hoping to stay relevant by poaching talent.
It’s surprising the talent is going for it. But TV still holds two things: a glimmer of Hollywood’s old alure, and a level of professionalization. For the successful YouTube TV offers:
A big paycheck up front
Professional production support
A branding and prestige that their moms would recognize and appreciate as a legitimate job.
Some runway, to do and think and plan beyond the daily grind of content upload without mercy.
A buffer between them and the sometimes needy, cruel, and relentless, and unforgiving audience.
If YouTube can solve these five weaknesses, which it can, at least for its top tier of talent, legacy TV, and Netflix included, will ultimately just be channels on YouTube slugging it out with the hoi polloi.
Netflix’s Ted Sarandos is still in a country club mindset. He called YouTube “passive,” as if people weren’t choosing to spend hours watching tutorials, commentary, and creator content. YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, shot back: “Who am I to say what’s ‘killing time’ versus ‘quality time’?” Not the best comeback ever. Every new media technology made one specific claim — that it would revolutionize education. YouTube quietly did it. Not in the elementary classroom looking after kids sense, but in the sense that there are now few things in the world that need done where you can’t find a step by step how to video on YouTube. Or a hundred different ones. It’s a big deal and we’re not talking enough about its value. Partly because it doesn’t cost much. But its information people would once have paid dearly for. Netflix still thinks viewers are there for dinner and a show. YouTube knows they live and learn there — from getting the latest news and views to setting the timing on that vintage Volkswagen.
Netflix can be the world’s biggest studio as long as the money lasts. But YouTube is the world’s biggest network. The biggest library. The biggest broadcaster. The biggest talent agency. The biggest classroom. The biggest cultural commons.
If the battle for TV is over.
YouTube? YouTube is the screen.