Can Professional TV Producers Make a Living on YouTube?

Why TV execs often fail at YouTube - they're digging in all the wrong places.

Ask any TV channel boss and they will tell you YouTube CPMs are a joke.

£4 to £12, if you're lucky. TikTok is even worse - sometimes pennies per thousand views. And yet, somehow creators are building brands, businesses, and sometimes empires on that.

Meanwhile, TV channels look at their rate cards and blanch and when you start comparing the tiers, it’s easy to see why some of them wince. The difference between daytime and peak, or a single vs returning series, can be eye-watering. A 30-second spot on linear TV can cost anywhere from £1,000 during daytime to over £35,000 during primetime.

On Channel 4, for example, a daytime hour might generate around £48,000 in ad revenue. This is based on ad slots costing between £1,000 and £2,100 for a 30-second spot according to the website Lambda Films. A one-hour show typically includes 3 to 4 ad breaks, each containing anything from three 1-minute adverts to six 30-second slots, adding up to 18–24 ads total over the hour. Hence the £48k gross income figure.

Sounds good, until you realise how much of that vanishes before it ever reaches the programme budget. Staff salaries, broadcast tech, scheduling, legal, archive management, building leases, compliance, Ofcom levies - the list goes on. C4 is a business, not a charity and they need to make a profit to exist - as we al do. The result - only a fraction of that ad revenue ends up funding the show.

That's why daytime shows are often made for around £20k an hour, sometimes less. Even then, the producer is just scraping by, because in truth, most TV producers make money in only three ways. For those of you that don’t know, here’s your bluffers guide to making money in TV in the good old days (of course there is more to it than this, but these are really the basics):

First, the Production Fee - usually 10% of the budget. Sounds healthy, but that’s what pays for the rent, staff, development time, and all the projects that never get commissioned.

Second, Margin, the difference between what you budgeted for and what you actually spend. And unless you’re pumping out volume and keeping overheads low, there isn’t much to skim. Employing staff helps, because they cost less than freelancers but that comes with risk and responsibility. You can make upwards of 5% if you’re wily…

Third, Back-End Share - the cut you make from selling the show internationally but that only works if your content travels. Anything too parochial, too niche, or too domestic? Good luck shifting that in global markets.

The channels, however, work in a different way. Their primary income is advertising, but of course there are a myriad of other income streams: sponsorship deals, international sales, and currency hedging if you’re an international channel.

Unfortunately, Channel 4’s linear advertising income dropped from £766 million in 2022 to £642 million in 2023 - a 16% fall in just one year. Overall, commercial PSBs have seen linear ad spend fall by 20% since 2018, with some calling it the steepest decline since the 2008 financial crash. While BVOD subscriptions (broadcaster video on demand) have grown slightly, it’s nowhere near enough to cover the shortfall from linear. Their digital platforms don’t yet replace their linear revenues, and with FAST channels, YouTube, and vodcasts pulling ad budgets in every direction, the market isn’t just shrinking - it’s fragmenting fast, and that's why channels try to have a presence on all of them.

So yes, even £48k from a Channel 4 daytime hour starts to feel like a windfall to them, but in reality, it's a disaster for the sector. There is too much choice, too much fragmentation and that’s why you’re seeing so much consolidation in the industry. The whole economic base of traditional TV is dissolving, so it’s not surprising everyone in town is talking about YouTube.

So every producer is now asking - if MrBeast can make a killing, surely I can? I mean, most of the stuff on YouTube isn’t that 'good' (compared to telly standards) and if I bring the same professional rigour to YouTube as I did making a TV show then won’t I just smash it?

Well, not exactly.

Why professionalism often fails (at first)

Professionalism is supposed to elevate. But on YouTube, in this country, it often tanks your content.

Because in digital, polish can look fake. Rehearsed lines land wrong. Editors with TV credits don't understand hook rates and producers who've worked on Channel 4 docs will still try to write a voiceover when the platform demands direct address.

Worse still, many teams try to mimic YouTube. They watch MrBeast or Emma Chamberlain and think, "Let's do that, but slicker." It rarely works, the authenticity is lost, it takes time to build an audience digitally - something the TV players have never really thought about.

You can spot the symptoms. Slow TV openings that cause the viewer to switch channel immediately. Cutaways and b-roll when the audience just wants the meat - just jump cut it instead! Scripted "authenticity" that we're used to on TV feels anything but in the world of YouTube. The video becomes overcooked, and the viewer bounces.

That's why professional TV teams often drown on YouTube. They're heavy. They're slow. They start to use TV methodology to make content that actually needs to monetise over 52 episodes. Minimum. When was the last time you got that kind of commission on TV?

So you need to think different not only about how you make your content, but also about how you fund it. Youtube is a long tail game - the more you make, the more you will see the money, hopefully, if you can find an audience. So you need to have guts.

But why are YouTube’s CPMs so bad? Isn’t it impossible to make content that monetises with those numbers?

Well it’s worth remembering why those CPMs are so low in the first place. YouTube might feel free to use, but it’s one of the most expensive digital infrastructures in the world to operate. Massive data centres, astronomical electricity bills, server farms running at scale, global delivery networks, constant upgrades to playback and compression - the cost of ensuring your video loads in 1080p without buffering is staggering. Also, unlike a broadcaster that monetises a finite number of ad breaks around one or two live channels, YouTube is funding playback on millions of videos simultaneously. That overhead crushes margins. So even with billions of views, the money per view stays low.

So you have to realise that producing volume at scale, cheaply, is the name of the game in YouTube. Remember, if you can create a library, that stays relevant, your videos will keep earning money - long after you have stopped making them. So the more you make, the more all those tiny CPM’s actually add up.

But don’t be fooled, this isn’t about lowering quality it's about knowing where that quality matters and that’s where most TV producers have a head start…you know how to tell a story - you just need to avoid the mistake in thinking that the audience is the same as British TV audiences - it's not.

Global audiences are different

Here’s where things get more interesting.

While Gen Z in London might crave chaos (I wrote about that in last week's piece), there are enormous global audiences, especially those who grew up in foreign public broadcaster cultures, who still want structure, clarity, and emotional payoff. These are viewers raised on dubbed documentaries and narrative-led factual TV.

They may not have Netflix because they can’t afford it, but they do have YouTube and they’re hungry for content that feels familiar.

In this light, traditional TV values start to look like a secret weapon. Story arcs. Thoughtful editing. Presenter-led formats. All still have value but only if you treat YouTube as an International platform, not a dumping ground where you hope that something will stick.

And here’s the commercial angle: if you can make traditional-feeling content resonate in Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, or the Balkans? That might be more valuable than a hundred thousand UK views.

The trick is to stop thinking locally. Dub your content. Add subtitles. Learn cultural nuance. Public broadcasters have done this for years with syndicated content. Now producers can do it directly and YouTube is the gold standard global delivery system.

Which brings me to my second observation.

Tastes change (even for Gen Z)

Right now, short-form rules the roost. But the fatigue is definitely creeping in and we’re seeing that right now.

There are signs of a new appetite for depth. Long-form interviews. Character pieces. Narrative arcs. Diary of a CEO now outperforms many TV talk shows. Slow TV, journaling vlogs, long YouTube essays, all of them reward patience over punchlines.

Just as punk gave way to post-punk, the high-friction TikTok age will mellow. Maybe not entirely, but enough that audiences begin seeking something quieter. Richer. Slower.

Traditional skills won’t go out of fashion. They’re just waiting for the culture to catch up again. And when it does, it won’t turn to TV first, it will look for that emotional clarity - on digital.

And this is why I think pros can still win

Some producers are already getting this right.

Real Stories. Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date. History Hit. Sorted Food. LadBible. Tom Scott. They bring rigour, but they’ve built a YouTube-native muscle. Structure without bloat. Detail without dead weight. And, crucially, volume.

That’s the part most TV folk forget. You can’t make 6 beautiful episodes a year and expect to build an audience. You need to think 52. You need a publishing mindset.

Build lean. Trust your instincts. Let your storytelling carry you, not your lighting rig. Think about IP from day one and stop waiting for a commission to validate your idea. Publish it. Own it.

So professionalism can work on YouTube - you just need to be clear who you're making it for.

Don't think of your audience as single territory. Have a unique voice - mimicry does not work - and make it as slick, and as cheap as possible..

The job now is to bring everything you’ve learned from years in production - the story sense, the instinct, the emotional pacing and wrap it in the speed, honesty, and global openness that YouTube rewards.

If you can do that? You won’t just survive this new world. You might actually build the next one.