Genres Stretch, for Better and Worse, as YouTube Takes On TV

YouTube announced a 100 or so new channels in October and those new channels — which for the first time are receiving money upfront from YouTube, rather than just a share of advertising revenue — have been seen as this video site’s first major effort to take on the television industry, and television-and-film-based competitors like Hulu and Netflix, for advertising dollars. With regular weekly shows and viewer-friendly playlists, they are indeed slightly more televisionlike than the millions of mostly homemade videos that surround them. But the harder they try to resemble television, the less interesting they are. About 60 channels are active, and during a week spent rooting among them like a truffle hog in the YouTube forest, I unearthed more than a few tasty morsels.