I just read an article about YouTube hitting record highs in viewership while traditional giants like Fox, Disney, NBCUniversal, and Warner Bros. Discovery continue to slide. Honestly, I am not surprised. It feels like the natural outcome of where television culture has gone wrong. I have written before about how streaming is killing television, and this article only reinforces what I have been saying and feeling for some time.
Comfort Food TV Wins Out
The biggest mistake most streaming platforms have made is leaning too hard into serialized, high-intensity storytelling. Prestige dramas and tightly scripted thrillers have their place, but when every show is pitched as must-watch television that requires hours of focus and emotional investment, it stops feeling like entertainment and starts feeling like work.
Sometimes we do not want the next big event. More often than not, we want something episodic, low-stakes, and comforting. Something to throw on after a long day that does not demand we carve out half a weekend to keep up. That is where YouTube shines.
And just to be clear, there is absolutely a place for epic, dramatic storytelling. Many of the best shows of the last twenty years have been serialized masterpieces, and audiences will always want that kind of content. The problem is not that it exists, but that streaming platforms have made it their entire strategy, while ignoring the equally important appetite for everyday, relaxing, comfort-food TV. YouTube fills that gap, and that balance is exactly what keeps people coming back.
The Waiting Game Is Killing Interest
Streaming also makes us wait far too long between seasons. Take Wednesday on Netflix. I enjoyed Season 1, but then they took three years to release Season 2. By the time it arrived, three years had passed! I lost interest by that point. And when the new season finally comes out, it is a measly eight or so episodes. That is not enough. People want TV that lasts, that fills more than a single weekend binge. Short seasons and endless delays leave audiences cold. Meanwhile, YouTube never stops. New content drops daily, sometimes hourly. It is always fresh and always there when we want it.
The Death of TV’s Social Culture
The absurd gaps between streaming seasons have killed something even more valuable than audience patience: the social culture of television. Traditional TV actually got this part right. Long seasons of 20 or more episodes aired on a predictable yearly calendar. Shows became cultural anchors, shaping the rhythms of pop culture itself. People gathered around the water cooler to talk about last night’s episode. Families built weeknights around sitcoms or dramas. Popular must-see TV did not just entertain people, it connected them.
That culture no longer exists. Nothing comes out frequently enough to build that shared social experience. Even massively successful shows like Stranger Things fizzle because of the years-long gaps between seasons. By the time a new season drops, the cultural moment has already passed.
YouTube, by contrast, creates ongoing cultural conversation. Big creators drop videos weekly or daily, communities form around niches, and the social element of shared entertainment is alive and well. It is fragmented, but it is vibrant in a way streaming has failed to capture.
A Generational Shift in Media Culture
One of my students recently wrote about a particular YouTuber who was a cultural standout for their generation. For them, that creator’s videos were not just entertainment, they were formative. They built community, identity, and connection. That essay got me thinking: this is exactly what TV used to do for earlier generations, and it shows how YouTube is succeeding where streaming is failing.
For Gen Z, big YouTube creators occupy the same cultural space that Saturday morning cartoons or after-school TV shows did for millennials like me. As a kid, those shows shaped the rhythm of my week and gave me a shared cultural language with my peers. By the time YouTube exploded, I was already a young adult, so my relationship to it was different. But I can still see how creators make content social and accessible in a way streaming media does not.
From a humanities and sociology perspective, this realization was truly insightful for me. Media is not just about content, it is about culture. It is about how we connect to each other, how we form identity, and how entertainment weaves itself into the story of our lives. Traditional TV once held that role, but its decline created a vacuum. YouTube filled it. Streaming platforms, with their sporadic release schedules and thin catalogs, simply have not.
The Real Streaming Problem: Too Much Filler, Too Little Substance
Streaming platforms love to brag about the size of their catalogs, but the truth is most of it is noise. They are overloaded with shows that no one cares about, half-baked originals, and generic filler that gets in the way of the handful of things people actually want to watch.
And that is the paradox: there is both too much content and not nearly enough. Viewers have to dig through endless menus of forgettable programming to find the rare show that is worth their time. And when they finally do, it is slim pickings. Maybe eight episodes, then a wait of two or three years for the next season, if it is not canceled first. The so-called abundance of streaming is an illusion. It feels like choice, but it delivers frustration.
YouTube’s Different Kind of Abundance
YouTube could not be more different. It has dramatically more content than all the streaming services combined, but instead of feeling like an overwhelming mess, it feels endlessly watchable. The difference is that YouTube is packed with the kind of “comfort food” content we actually want.
Gaming streams, cooking videos, commentary, vlogs, reviews, reaction channels, DIY tutorials -- there is something for every mood, every attention span, every niche. The algorithms, for all their flaws, are far better at surfacing videos we genuinely want to watch than streaming platforms are at suggesting shows worth binging.
So while streaming gives us “a lot of nothing,” YouTube gives us “a lot of something.” Despite having a thousand times more content, it is always easier to find exactly what we are in the mood for. And no matter how much you watch, there is always more coming tomorrow.
Overpriced, Overwhelming, and Underwhelming
Streaming was supposed to simplify entertainment, but instead it has become another source of frustration. Every platform now has hundreds of shows, dozens of originals, and endless “recommended for you” rows. Yet somehow it still feels like there is nothing to watch.
On top of that, subscription prices keep climbing. We are paying more for less: fewer episodes, longer waits, and steeper monthly bills. Compare that with YouTube, which is free by default, endless in variety, and even with Premium feels affordable compared to the bloated costs of stacking multiple streaming services.
Our Attention Is Already Overdrawn
All of this connects to a deeper cultural reality. We live in a society that is always plugged in. Our time, money, and attention are constantly under siege. Work follows us home on our phones, social media pings us with endless notifications, advertisers chase us across every website, and even our downtime feels crowded out by the sheer number of options demanding to be chosen.
The result is simple: we have less time to focus, and even less energy to devote to complicated, serialized storytelling. The overabundance of choice is not liberating, it is exhausting. Opening a streaming platform is supposed to be relaxing, but it often feels overwhelming instead.
That is why YouTube fits so naturally into modern life. It does not demand a heavy investment of our attention. It can fill the five minutes before a meeting, run in the background while we multitask, or give us hours of entertainment when we actually have the time. It adapts to the way we already live, instead of expecting us to reorganize our lives around it.
The Bottom Line
Streaming promised us the future of television, but it is YouTube that actually matches how we live today. The streamers are offering less for more: shorter seasons, long waits, higher prices, and catalogs full of filler. YouTube is offering more for less: endless comfort food TV that is available whenever we want it.
And again, this is not to say there is no place for big, ambitious, serialized storytelling. Those shows can be incredible, and they will always have an audience. The problem is that streaming has bet everything on that model while neglecting the everyday content people crave. YouTube’s success proves that balance matters, and until streamers figure that out, YouTube will keep pulling ahead. And frankly, I think most people are fine with that.
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Culture