Pay attention to Pluto TV and Tubi: it seems youtube is ready to join the free streaming TV party.
Long known for viral user-generated video content, YouTube seems poised to try its hand as a free streaming source for full-length TV shows and movies.
The Google-owned streaming giant already has a popular paid live TV streaming service called YouTube TVbut it recently announced that it will make entire seasons of popular TV shows available for free on YouTube.
Team Clark has the details of how it works and what content is already available to stream for free.
YouTube is adding full seasons of TV shows to the free content selection
YouTube announced on Wednesday March 23, 2022 that it is now offering entire seasons of TV shows for free to all users.
The library offers more than 4,000 full-length episodes of popular TV shows from yesteryear. There are commercial advertisements that are intermittently inserted throughout the content.
As is usual with free streaming services, you trade your time and tolerance for commercials in exchange for the lack of a monthly subscription fee.
The content list includes some names you’ll likely recognize, like celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and rapper-turned-actor, Ice-T.
Here are some of the TV shows that are free to stream right now:
- hell kitchen
- nightmares in the kitchen
- heartland
- Unsolved Mysteries
- 21 Jump Street
- wildfire
- The Carol Burnett Show
- The Death Zone
In case you didn’t know, YouTube already offers a selection of more than 1,500 full-length movies that are free to stream.
Some of the most popular titles are:
- The sandbar
- Gone in 60 seconds
- Naturally blond
- 10 things I hate about you
- Dance with wolves
- Grumpy old men
- The Runaway Bride
Access to free TV shows and movies on YouTube
Finding the free content section in the YouTube apps is actually pretty easy.
How to access YouTube app content on your TVyou simply need to access “Movies & Shows” from the menu on the left side of your screen:
YouTube illustration
Accessing content on a mobile phoneI used the following path on my iOS device:
- From the YouTube home screen, tap on the “Library” tab in the lower-right corner of your screen.
- Select “Your Movies & Shows” from the menu that appears.
- The menu that appears shows a “Purchased” tab by default, but you should switch to the “Browse” tab.
- Once inside the Browse tab, you should see Free to Watch Movies and Free to Watch Shows as options.
- Tap the content type you want to browse through the collection of free, ad-supported options.
YouTube’s Free TV menu on an iPhone
To access content from the YouTube websiteyou simply need to access “Movies and Shows” from the menu on the left side of your computer screen.
YouTube.com
YouTube vs Popular Free Streaming Services: How Does It Score?
Prior to this announcement, Team Clark already considered YouTube the best free streaming option for original content, thanks to millions of creators producing content (both live and recorded) on almost every topic of potential interest.
But YouTube was severely lacking in traditional movies and TV shows compared to the other free streaming services out there.
Does this announcement change that? Probably not right away, but it’s certainly a signal that Google could be a major player in the ad-supported streaming TV space in the near future.
content library
YouTube still has a long way to go when it comes to catching up with The Roku Channel, Pluto TV or Tubi when it comes to movie and TV show volume.
These ad-supported services have a several-year head start on curating content and have libraries with thousands more titles available for free than what YouTube currently offers.
And in general, the quality of the content available is also better. The Roku Channel has its own original TV series, and all three services above are doing a good job of bringing some “newer” titles to their services for a limited time.
However, the good news for YouTube users is simple: more content for zero dollars.
YouTube offers access to many popular titles for purchase or rent. All it takes is an agreement with the content providers and a shift in strategy to put more of that content in the free column as an ad-supported stream.
How bad are the ads?
This is where YouTube could really beat the competition in advertising-financed streaming.
It already has the infrastructure, both through Google’s ad services and YouTube’s existing video advertising system, to make streaming old TV episodes lucrative without having to sell traditional, big commercials.
I decided to watch an episode of Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen to see what the ad situation was like on YouTube and was pleasantly surprised by what I found.
I was only exposed to two ads before the show started, and I was able to “skip” those ads after five seconds, like watching a YouTube video (see bottom right corner below).
After that, I was able to watch the entire 44-minute episode without a break. That’s pretty impressive!
For comparison, here’s a look at the ad placements I experience in a typical half-hour sitcom on The Roku Channel.
Each of these scheduled commercial breaks was approximately 30 seconds long. So in the end I experienced about 2.5 minutes of advertising for 24 minutes of content.
That’s still a lot better than regular TV, but nowhere near as good as what I’ve experienced with YouTube.
Final Thoughts
If you haven’t already, it might be time to throw YouTube into your free streaming rotation.
Not only do you get live streaming content and endless hours of archived content based on your interests, you now have ad-supported access to free TV shows and movies.
The app is free to download on Android and Apple devices, as well as most smart TVs and streaming dongles. Even if you can’t download it, you can access the content on the web at YouTube.com.
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