As YouTube Strives To Be TV, News Eyes YouTube Audiences

Increasingly, YouTube wants to be seen as TV. And perhaps as a result of that shift, TV wouldn’t mind if audiences saw their news products as YouTube programming, too.

On Friday, AdAge shared exclusive data from Tubular Labs, revealing the shifts from U.S. TV news publishers over the last 13 months. Among the bigger shifts quantified: Unique YouTube viewers have been soaring for the likes of Fox News, ABC News, NBC News, CNN and CBS News.

Fox News has the largest shift in unique viewers during the time frame, and minutes watched have ballooned similarly for the cable news network (up 147.4%) as well. Interestingly, though, Fox has actually uploaded fewer videos in the timeframe — a 4.25% year-over-year decrease — which also coincides with a larger share of videos that are 20 minutes or longer.

Beyond Fox News, other networks have been uploaded more, and longer videos, in part to mimic the typical cable news experience in a move to court cord-cutting audiences. For ABC News, Jan. 2025 represented the highest share of videos (16%) lasting 20+ minutes over the last 13 months. NBC News has seen 19% or more of its monthly YouTube uploads last 20+ minutes in that timeframe as well.

At the same time, the allure of shorts is also strong for these publishers. In January 2025, Fox News hit 13-month highs for both videos longer than 20 minutes and videos running one minute or shorter. And NBC News hit a high in January as well, with 20% of its videos running for 60 seconds or less.

In all, it’s a fascinating shift for these networks as they go from desperately efforting to keep viewers on linear, to in some cases, just handing over the linear feed on digital and hoping ad revenues make up the difference. You can check out even more analysis of the data over on AdAge.