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Last week was a frustrating week for me in many ways. I did a lot of analysis and reporting that I felt was distinctive and that provided a different narrative to what people were reading in the Hollywood trades and other large media outlets.
I spent a great deal of time trying to get the pieces out in front of new audiences and readers. But my leverage to do that is somewhat limited as an independent journalist because I don’t have a PR firm pushing me or a legacy media company to highlight my work.
By the end of the week, I had begun to feel as if I was doing a lot of shouting into the wind and was feeling a bit discouraged.
Then just when I needed a boost, I opened the latest newsletter from famed TV critic Tim Goodman, who wrote this as he was discussing Netflix:
(By the way, if you’re interested in the granular bits of the Netflix situation — or a number of entertainment industry issues for that matter — you would do well in following the reporting of Rick Ellis of Too Much TV, who used to have a Substack here and is now on Beehive. Whereas you’d have to be fairly selective and astute in what you glean from entertainment news sites these days — more gloss and spin than facts — I can assure you that Ellis is nothing short of relentless, often to the detriment of his own health. He writes a lot, and daily. We also share a belief that Netflix, despite its issues, remains arguably the most important streaming outlet worth the money, and he’s aware that the hysteria over YouTube and “social media” is only a part of the issues plaguing the industry — not to speak for him.)
It was an incredibly gracious take and my wife would be the first to agree that I should take better care of my health. I’ll also note that if I had a press kit, I would use the line “nothing short of relentless, often to the detriment of his own health.” as a pull quote.
I have recommended that you should consider subscribing to Tim’s newsletter in the past, and part of the reason is that we both have a lot of experiences under our belt. We’ve seen trends come and go, and remember how quickly the “next new thing” becomes the thing no wants to hear about anymore.
Perspective is an underappreciated quality in media criticism. As is the willingness to burn the occasional bridge in order to stay true to yourself. Those are qualities Tim Goodman has had his entire career and it’s something I hope I illustrate in this newsletter.
People Are Watching A Lot Of YouTube. But No One Outside The Company Knows What That Means
YouTube has a message for Hollywood, Madison Avenue and anyone else paying attention to the television business: We're the future. We're where the audiences are going. We're the new prime time. And that message is reinforced in press coverage of the video service, which is increasingly framing YouTube as the winner of the so-called “streaming wars.”
There's just one small problem. YouTube doesn't seem particularly interested in letting anyone independently verify what those audiences are actually watching.
That's becoming an increasingly difficult problem to ignore. Because without any context, without any real way to determine what people are watching - comparing YouTube’s engagement numbers to those of traditional SVODs is a bit like a service reporting that a new series is “the most watched program since 2023.” It’s an interesting datapoint, but without any context, it’s useless.
YouTube knows that lack of transparency is an issue, but at the same time, it has been aggressively pursuing any attempt to provide increased clarity on viewer behavior. Which suggests the viewing data includes some numbers that might undercut its claim to be the dominant viewing option.
In January, YouTube's parent company, Google, sent cease-and-desist letters to Barb, Britain's television audience measurement organization, and its research partner, Kantar Media. The letters effectively halted a new effort to identify which YouTube channels people were watching on television sets, just months after the platform had agreed to participate in the measurement system.
Google argued that the research violated its terms governing creator content and application programming interfaces. It also questioned whether the methodology accurately represented YouTube's overall audience.
“YouTube has a long track record of providing access to third parties for research and reporting, and all third parties must respect the necessary terms of service and policies when using our application programming interfaces,” said a spokesperson for YouTube.
“While the vast majority of our partners, companies and creators adhere to these guidelines, we will take action when these terms are violated, as was the case here.”
YouTube’s UK viewership is also measured by companies including Ipsos/Iris, while advertising metrics are measured by firms including Nielsen, ISBA’s Origin and AudienceProject.
Those are legitimate arguments to make. Audience measurement is complicated, and protecting creators' data matters. But the timing was awfully convenient for a company increasingly positioning itself as a direct competitor to traditional television.
As The Guardian reported in January, the dispute came after YouTube had begun allowing viewing of 200 channels to be measured alongside established broadcasters and streaming services. When the measurement started getting more granular, the legal brakes went on.
And let’s look again at that statement from Google. Companies such as Nielson are blocked from reporting anything other than YouTube’s total share of the viewing audience. It can’t report on the most-watched channels or even a breakdown of the types of content that are being consumed on the video service.
What, exactly, is YouTube afraid independent researchers might discover?
To be clear, there's no evidence that YouTube is hiding some specific scandal in its viewing figures. The problem is that the company's resistance to greater transparency makes it harder to know what conclusions we should draw from the data it does release.
And that's a pretty significant problem when the entire television industry is being told to reorganize itself around those numbers.
Consider Nielsen's Gauge monthly viewing reports. YouTube has established itself as a leading destination for television-screen viewing in the United States, reaching a record 15.8% share of connected-TV viewing in August 2026. That's an extraordinary figure, and it has helped frame the argument in the Hollywood press as well as from industry analysts that YouTube is the future of the streaming industry and SVODs such as Netflix and Disney+ are nothing more than tired legacy artifacts that are destined to pick up the scraps.
But the uncomfortable truth that YouTube wants to gloss over is that a share of viewing time tells us how much people watch, not necessarily what they're watching.
Are viewers spending hours with professionally produced television shows and movies? Are they watching podcasts, gaming streams, reaction videos, children's programming or short clips pulled from other people's television shows? How much of that viewing is concentrated among a handful of enormously popular creators, and how much is spread across millions of channels?
Those aren't minor distinctions. They're the difference between YouTube being a direct replacement for traditional television and being something considerably more complicated.
Yet media executives, advertisers and journalists routinely use YouTube's overall viewing numbers to support sweeping conclusions about the future of entertainment.
Traditional television has spent decades building measurement systems that allow networks, advertisers and independent observers to debate audience performance at the program level. Streaming services have been less forthcoming, but even Netflix releases territory-by-territory Top Ten breakdowns as well as an annual look at every title on the service.
YouTube's position that activity as one enormous television audience is convenient. It is not particularly illuminating.
And when journalists try to look beyond the headline numbers, they encounter a company that has demonstrated a willingness to restrict the tools used to investigate its audience.
Jen Topping takes a good overview of this problem on her BusinessOfTV newsletter.
The consequences of this behavior extend beyond Hollywood's quarterly earnings. Independent research has repeatedly raised questions about YouTube's recommendation systems and users' ability to control what they see. Better access to audience data would help researchers examine how viewing habits develop, which kinds of content gain traction and whether the platform's public claims match the behavior of its users.
YouTube deserves credit for building an extraordinarily successful business. But success shouldn't exempt a company from scrutiny, particularly when its executives are asking advertisers to treat it like television while resisting some of the measurement practices that make television accountable.
Here's the uncomfortable possibility: The less we know about YouTube's actual viewing habits, the easier it becomes for everyone to project their preferred narrative onto the platform.
Hollywood can declare that YouTube is killing television. Advertisers can assume they're reaching audiences who have abandoned traditional entertainment. YouTube can celebrate its enormous viewing share without providing a comparably clear picture of the programming behind it.
Everybody gets to tell the story they want to tell. And nobody outside the company can confidently establish whether that story is true.
YouTube may have perfectly reasonable explanations for its objections to particular measurement systems. But if it wants the advertising dollars, cultural influence and industry credibility that come with being called the new television, it should be willing to accept the scrutiny that comes with the title.
Until then, the missing information is a very good reason to stop taking its success story at face value.
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Even The Smartest Person Can Get Caught Up In Their Own Conventional Wisdom
One of the uncomfortable truths of life is that even the smartest people can get caught up in their own version of “when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” It’s not a character flaw, it’s just the unintended side effect that comes from building a specific point of view. The temptation is to try and fit more and more data into that POV, and sometimes you find yourself making claims that you wouldn’t accept from someone you disagreed with.
Evan Shapiro is a really smart guy. I interviewed him earlier this year and it’s nearly impossible to attend an industry conference without finding him there as a speaker. He rightfully is seen as someone who is clear-eyed about the future of entertainment and his opinions are well respected.
But that doesn’t mean he can’t have his own hammer/nail problems, and some recent comments about television’s handling of live football games jumped out at me.
He recently wrote again about his premise that “television will be enshittified” and he makes some good points. But I find myself perplexed by some of his comments:
Ad loads make Trad TV nearly impossible to watch. The sports business, a core value proposition of mainstream television, now spreads leagues and teams across a complex corn maze of platforms. Streamers have baited and switched subscribers into oblivion — continually raising prices while also adding ads and simultaneously banning friends-and-family password sharing, thus exponentially increasing consumer costs. Viewers now spend so much time searching for something to watch, they often give up before watching anything.
I don’t think it’s accurate to argue streamers have “baited and switched” subscribers by “continuously raising prices while also adding ads.” It’s true that nearly every major streamer (aside from Apple TV) has added an ad-supported tier. But those tend to be cheaper than the ad-free alternatives. And in the case of Netflix, one problem it is having is that most of its subscribers aren’t willing to trade a cheaper subscription price in exchange for watching advertisements.
But I wanted to focus on Shapiro’s comments on live sports - specifically NFL games. His argument is best illustrated in the chart at the top of this story. He highlights the wide gap between the length of an NFL game and the amount of actual time the ball is in action. He uses that comparison as a way to illustrate how TV has enshittified live football.
I don’t mean to be snarky, but that’s the kind of argument you would make if you have never watched a live football game in person. Yes, the percentage of gametime that involves moving the ball is small. But that’s a function of the way football is played. It has very little to do with the impact of television.
To be fair, advertising on TV does add about 30 minutes to an NFL broadcast. But that ad load has remained pretty consistent for the past twenty years.
Shapiro then argues that this enshittification of live sports broadcasts is why so many younger viewers are going to YouTube to watch short recap videos.
That may or may not be true. As I mentioned above, we have no way of knowing that. And you certainly can use YouTube’s wonky public viewing numbers on the videos as a way to judge their effectiveness.
I will note that I have spoken with people at the NFL and they don’t believe that’s the case. They believe those videos reach an audience that for whatever reason wouldn’t watch the full game. But the bottom line is that we have no way of judging whether that is accurate or not.
As I noted above, Shapiro is a really smart guy. But I don’t think this is his best argument.
ICYMI: Just Posted On TooMuchTV And Forbes
Here is a rundown of other stories recently posted on TooMuchTV.com and Forbes:
There is something almost impressively misguided about Netflix’s decision to revisit the Stanford Prison Experiment. The original 1971 study has spent decades being presented as a cautionary tale about the corrupting influence of power, even as researchers have increasingly challenged its methodology and the conclusions drawn from it. So what better way to revisit that controversial legacy than to turn it into a reality show?
There is something particularly unsettling about the story of the Alexander brothers. Not simply because of the horrific sexual abuse described by women who say they were victimized by the three men, but because of the world in which the brothers operated — one where extraordinary wealth, professional success and access to the powerful appeared to provide a remarkable degree of protection from scrutiny.
What’s Coming Tonight And Tomorrow
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27TH:
Everybody Hates Series Premiere (Vice)
In Pursuit: Lessons Of American Leadership (PBS)
Kordell Stewart: Slash/Burn (HBO)
The Boulet Brothers' Dragula (Shudder)
The One About Matthew Perry (Netflix)
Toxic: What Happened in the Haight House? (Investigation Discovery)
Zainab Johnson: Toxically Optimistic (Netflix)
ZOMBIES: The Re-Animated Series (Disney)
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28TH:
The Gift Of Deceit (Netflix)