Television beyond TV: YouTube and regional channels
La televisión más allá de la televisión: YouTube y los canales autonómicos
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How to cite this article:
González-Neira, A. and Fiaño Salinas, C. (2023).
Television beyond TV: YouTube and regional channels
.
Doxa Comunicación
, 37, pp. 401-429.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n37a1838
Ana González-Neira
. Senior lecturer on the Faculty of Communication at the Universidade da Coruña. PhD in Journalism,
a Bachelor’s Degrees in the same discipline, and a second BA in Political Science. She also holds a Master’s Degree in
International Relations and Communication. Her teaching and research activities focus on new television audiences and
the history of media. She has written several book chapters, as well as articles for indexed journals, and has also served as
the coordinator, together with Professor Natalia Quintas-Froufe, on the following projects:
La participación de la audiencia
en la televisión: de la audiencia activa a la socia
l [Audience participation in television: from active audience to social
audience] (2015), published by
AIMC
[Association for Media Research]; and
Los estudios de la audiencia: de la tradición
a la innovación
[Audience studies: from tradition to innovation], published by
Gedisa
. She has participated in numerous
competitive research projects, and has been a visiting researcher at the
Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México, the
Università della Sapienza
(Rome), and the
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
in Milan.
University of Coruña, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-6369-0323
Carlota Fiaño Salinas
. PhD student of the doctorate programme entitled
New Perspectives in Documentation,
Communication and Humanities
, at the
Universidade da Coruña
. She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Audio-visual
Communication from the same university, and a Master’s Degree in Multiplatform Journalistic Production. Her lines of
research include new audiences and audio-visual consumption models. In 2022, she won an Extraordinary Award for
her Bachelor’s Degree in Audio-visual Communication.
University of Coruña, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-6315-3296
Abstract:
Linear television channels have been forced to reconsider their
broadcasting strategy in response to the emergence of new media
players. is research addresses the oering and consumption of
videos on YouTube from the regional channels that comprise the
Federation of Regional Radio and Television Organisations (
FORTA
),
Resumen:
Los canales de televisión lineal se han visto obligados a replantear su
estrategia de difusión ante la llegada de nuevos actores emisores. Esta
investigación aborda el estudio de la oferta y consumo de vídeos en
YouTube procedentes de las cadenas autonómicas que conforman
FORTA (Federación de organismos de radio televisión autonómicos) y
Received: 30/10/2022 - Accepted: 09/02/2023 - Early access: 15/03/2023 - Published: 01/07/2023
Recibido: 30/10/2022 - Aceptado: 09/02/2023 - En edición: 15/03/2023 - Published: 01/07/2023
is content is published under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. International License.
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1. Introduction
For years, television has been immersed in a major crisis due to the emergence of new players and new ways of viewing. is
situation has forced TV stations to reconsider and change their production dynamics, audio-visual oerings, and their approach
to audiences. ey have developed various innovations that are focused on the product as well as the distribution of audio-visual
content (García-Avilés, 2021; Zaragoza-Fuster and García-Avilés, 2018). In the context of liquid television (Quintas-Froufe and
González-Neira, 2016), which describes the current situation, it has not been feasible to maintain structures from the pre-digital
era, especially when a lack of interest toward conventional television by the younger generations has been increasing (Úbeda,
2022; Forteza Martínez, de Casas Moreno and Vizcaíno Verdú, 2021; Bernal and Carvajal, 2020; Crusafón Baqués, González-
Saavedra and Murciano Martínez, 2020; García Orta, García-Prieto and Suárez-Romero, 2019; Guerrero Pérez, González-
Oñate and Kimber Camussetti, 2018). us, now that the initial phase of creating websites and social media accounts has been
completed, conventional television channels have embarked on expanding into new viewing windows that are closer to young
audiences, including social networks, apps, and platforms such as YouTube.
In an audio-visual ecosystem dened by hybridisation at various levels, such as media, content, formats and audiences, this
research focuses on one of the most recent examples of innovation in television: the presence of Spain’s regional television
channels on YouTube. As such, we have analysed the extent of television’s expansion beyond the TV set in public sector channels,
with business strategies far removed from private channels.
1.1. e television context
Television channels have lost the leading role they held until a few years ago in the audio-visual landscape. ey are no longer
the only broadcasters, as they have lost their monopoly and now share the market with new players that are highly diverse,
such as hardware and software producers, agents of online businesses, or over-the-top media (
OTT
s), which is a
media
service
oered
directly to viewers by the
Internet
(Andò and Marinelli, 2018). e emergence of these new players, together with the
improvement of mobile devices and connection quality, have led to new consumption habits that have broken down time and
which are inuenced by budgets and resources that are very dierent
from those of other audio-visual actors. In the rst phase, an analysis
was carried out regarding the oering of these channels on this
platform. Afterward, viewing was monitored and compared with the
audience data collected by comScore, in order to conrm the strategy
used by these traditional broadcasters in oering new viewing outlets.
e results point to a wide variety of format oerings, yet with a lack
of exclusive content. Moreover, the most prevalent access route is
through the smartphone.
Keywords:
Digital video; audience; television; YouTube; innovation;
FORTA
.
que están condicionadas por unos presupuestos y recursos muy diferentes
a otros actores audiovisuales. En una primera fase se realiza un estudio
de la oferta de estos canales en dicha plataforma. Posteriormente se
monitoriza el consumo y se contrasta con los datos de audiencia que
recoge comScore, con el n de comprobar la estrategia de estos emisores
tradicionales hacia la apertura de nuevas ventanas de visionado. Los
resultados indican que existe una gran variedad de modelos de oferta,
con una ausencia de contenido exclusivo. El acceso desde el smartphone
es mayoritario.
Palabras clave:
Vídeo digital; audiencia; televisión; YouTube; innovación; FORTA.
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space barriers that have existed until recently. In this new environment, the audience is embracing consumption patterns to
which conventional television channels must respond (D’Arma, Raats, and Steemers, 2021). Faced with strong competition, they
have experimented with new viewing windows such as the web or social networks (Peñael and Echegaray, 2022), in which the
target audience is often the youngest segment of the population. As pointed out by Andò and Marinelli (2018), it is a question
of searching in this media ecosystem for all points of contact with consumers. us, a few years ago the three largest free-to-
air television groups in Spain decided to launch three platforms aimed primarily at young digital users: Playz (RTVE), Flooxer
(Atresmedia) and Mtmad (Mediaset). As highlighted by Mendieta Bartolmé (2022), regional channels have taken several steps
to promote the process of digitisation of their audio-visual content. e case of Public Television of Castilla-La Mancha bears
mentioning, as it was the rst among the all the members of
FORTA
(the federation of regional radio and television organisations)
to launch a regional
OTT
on 18 October 2018.
e alliance with YouTube has also emerged as a new way of conducting business for traditional television stations. In fact,
according to Ha (2018), YouTube is a genuine alternative to traditional television for young people, although in recent years
Twitch has also increased its prevalence among younger audiences.
Nevertheless, this approximation has been a two-way street. In fact, as pointed out by Kim (2012), TV channels approached
YouTube in the same way that YouTube approached the media in order to become mainstream. Since 2008, media companies
have seen this platform as a promotional tool (Del Campo and de Lara, 2016). In some cases, it has even become part of the cross-
media framework of some television productions that lead viewers to other platforms or social networks (De Lara and Arias,
2015). A clear example of this concept of
Television beyond TV
is the phenomenon of
TVE
’s talent show known as
Operación
Triunfo
, which has its own channel on YouTube with a 24-hour live broadcast. is channel managed to increase the audience of
Operación Triunfo
by more than 200% in 2018.
However, this has not been the only alliance between traditional and new players in the media ecosystem. Recent experiences
by some groups show that the expansion of viewing windows has not diminished linear broadcasting. In fact, Mediaset has
reached agreements with Amazon Prime Video to broadcast some of its series before airing them on its television channels, just
as Atresmedia
has done with Netix in order to give new life to its ctional series, such as
La Casa de Papel
(Neira, 2020). In the
case of regional channels, there are numerous alliances between TVG, Aragón TV, EITB and platforms such as Netix, or between
TVG, EITB and IB3 in the case of Amazon Prime Video.
On the other hand, the eect of the pandemic on the proliferation of digital video consumption should not be forgotten. During
the connement, the viewing of audio-visual content in digital format increased by 55%, especially among children’s programmes
(Pérez, 2020). ese viewing habits have become reinforced to the point where one in ve, or 20% of the consumers worldwide,
see no dierence between YouTube and linear television consumption, according to research by AudienceProject (2022). e
gure rises to 42% in the US and 29% in Norway. is is a reality that broadcasters must acknowledge when dening their future
strategies for growth.
In this globalised digital landscape, regional public channels are trying to nd their place as public service broadcasters (PSBs).
is is not an easy task, as they are competing with large corporations with far more economic, technological and professional
resources, as well as commercial interests that are far removed from public service (Rosique Cedillo, 2021). It bears recalling that
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PSBs have a public service mandate that inuences any strategic decision they make (Miguel, Zallo and Casado, 2017). Diverse
laws, including 46/1983 and 7/20109, as well as various framework mandates of each of these autonomous regional organisations,
determine programming guidelines in which public service, attention to minorities, the universal nature and access of the content,
and the values of political pluralism, social cohesion and cultural diversity are very much present (Peñael and Echegaray, 2022).
As highlighted by Mendieta Bartolomé (2022: 354), “With regard to the social aspect, the new digital scenario is forcing public
broadcasters to review their public service mandate in a process of adaptation that involves expanding their strategy toward
multiscreen communication, and increasing their transparency and accountability”. Moreover, limited budgets, as will be seen
below, hinder the strategic plans of these channels (Table 1).
In this sense, within the abundant corpus regarding PSBs, public regional channels have been studied from dierent perspectives,
among which convergence stands out (López-Olano, Soler Campillo and Marzal Felici, 2022; Del Campo Lozano and Fernández-
Gómez, 2020; Fontenla Pedreira, 2019; Rodríguez Castro and López Golán, 2018; Gómez-Domínguez, 2016), as well as audiences
(Mendieta Bartolomé, 2022; Latorre-Martínez, Orive-Serrano and Íñiguez, 2018; Medina, Portilla, 2016). Special mention should
be made of the reports carried out by various researchers within the framework of the project entitled,
Los retos de la televisión
pública ante el Mercado Único Digital Europeo estrategias multipantalla, innovación y renovación de los mandatos del servicio
público
[e challenges of public television in the European digital single market: multiscreen strategies, innovation, and the
renewal of public service mandates] (2021), directed by Professor Carmina Crusafón (Carniel Bugs, 2021; Crusafon Baqués, 2021;
Pérez, 2021; Rubio García, 2021 and Subires Mancera, 2021). eir peculiar nature in the European scenario makes them an
interesting object of study within the current media ecosystem. Sacaluga Rodríguez, Pérez Sánchez and García have pointed out
the following:
us, with increasingly segmented content and consumers who have turned into prosumers, regional public television must nd
its place given the context of a new type of viewer who consumes what they want, when they want, and where they want, and does
not accept imposed scheduling. Moreover, such viewers feel more comfortable accessing content through social networks on the
recommendation of other like-minded users, and they respond to the multitasking stimuli of the social audience (2018: 1722).
Based on previous studies, such as that of the
Observatorio Iberoamericano de la Comunicación
[e Ibero-American Observatory
of Communication] (2021), which have pointed out a notable increase in the consumption by regional organisations on YouTube,
it is necessary to delve deeper into the parameters related to the oering, and to carry out monitoring over a four-month period of
time, in order to discover which content is the most successful, which device is used for its consumption, and which age groups
comprise the highest number of followers.
1.2. YouTube
Since its creation in 2005 by three young Californians (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim), the success of YouTube has
increased exponentially. It has become the world’s leading video website and the second in terms of trac after Google, with
more than one billion hours of video played, 2 billion users per month, and more than 500 hours of content uploaded every
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minute
1
. Its leading role in the Spanish audio-visual market is also evident. According to the EGM (2022), the site was the most
visited by Spanish internet users in the rst and second wave of 2022, when it had nearly 29 million unique visits. According to
Barlovento (2022a), the 18-24 age group consumes 67 minutes on average; this number decreases by age to a low of 16 minutes
of average viewing for people over 55. is platform is the clear leader among the 18-24 category, as one in every three minutes
of audio-visual content viewed by individuals in this age group is from YouTube. Given this situation, it is necessary to look at the
strategies of the oering, as well as the consumption of regional broadcasts on YouTube in Spain.
As this platform initially focused on the exchange of videos by anonymous users, its relationship with traditional television
channels was stormy in the beginning. e latter viewed it with some mistrust (Rodríguez-Ferrándiz, Tur-Viñes and Contreras,
2016), and there were even major legal disputes (Viacom in 2007; Mediaset España in 2008). is was the
resistance response
proposed by Napoli (1998). However, due to YouTube’s success, in the end most of the channels chose to sign agreements with the
platform and open their own channels, because “after seeing the evidence, if their fragments were on the Internet, it was better for
them to have control over those pieces” (Antolin-Prieto, 2012: 553). In Spain, within the national television system, the rst station
to create an account was a public regional channel. In January of 2006, the IB3 channel was launched, and just two months later
the accounts of TVG and TV3 were created. e public corporation RTVE joined on 30 March of the same year. Consequently,
although its presence on this platform dates back several years, its major nancial benets have been obtained more recently.
us, the initial user-generated content (UGC) eventually coexisted with material developed by professionals (Vonderau, 2016;
Lobato, 2016), up to the point where some authors, such as Kim (2012), have stated that YouTube became a kind of institution Kim
(2012), and even asserted that YouTube would eventually become the prototype of a ubiquitous online video library.
As pointed out by Van Es (2019), YouTube has been the subject of multiple studies, as summarised by Arthurs, Drakopoulou
and Gandini (2018), or in the monograph by Snickars and Vonderau (2009). It has been approached from dierent perspectives,
including the following: the culture of participation (Strangelove 2011; Burgess and Green, 2009); the political economy point
of view (Abuljadail et al., 2018; Cunningham, Craig and Silver, 2016; Vonderau, 2016); as part of studies related to algorithms
(Bishop, 2018; Rieder, Matamoros-Fernández and Coromina, 2018) with an emphasis on user preferences (Paolillo, Ghule and
Harper, 2019); and regarding the study of uses and gratication of the audience (Steiner and Xu, 2020). Likewise, various authors
have studied formal aspects of the content oered by this platform, such as the features that contribute to the popularity of
a video (Altman and Jiménez, 2019; Bentley, Silverman and Bica, 2019; De-Aguilera-Moyano, Castro-Higueras and Pérez-Rufí,
2019; Bärtl, 2018).
In the study at hand, this platform will be examined as a current example of technological convergence (Jenkins, 2008) based on
traditional television channels. In this sense, there are other studies from previous years that refer to dierent media contexts,
including analyses carried out by Budzinski, Gaenssle and Lindstädt-Dreusicke 2021; Marín Pérez 2021; Lobato, 2016; Sánchez-
Olmos and Hidalgo-Marí, 2016; and Gallardo-Camacho, 2013.
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2. Methodology
2.1. Objectives
is research focuses on the presence of regional television channels on the YouTube platform, which has the largest audience
share in Spain, in order to assess whether they are making the most of the new opportunities to broadcast content, given the
challenges posed by digitisation.
e specic objectives of this research, grouped into two large sections related to supply and demand, are as follows:
(O1) To analyse the oerings of regional television channels on the YouTube platform in Spain.
(O2) To verify how the audience follows these oerings, or in other words, to reveal how the content is consumed, as well as
the characteristics of the content that has the largest audience.
e research questions of this study are as follows:
Q1: Is the oering merely a transposition of content previously broadcast, or is there unique material that diversies the
oering of this distribution window?
Q2: Does the oering use a repository or archive strategy, or does it use an approach that is more focused on a corporate and
advertising communication window?
Q3: What is the audience prole of these channels?
2.2. Sample and methodology
is research focuses on the regional channels that comprise
FORTA
2
(Table 1). e combined channels of this federation account
for 8.6% of the linear television audience in Spain (Barlovento, 2022b).
Table 1. Regional channels that comprise the sample
Logo
NameCorporation
Autonomous
Region
Budget for 2020
in millions
(budget/inhab.)
TVG
Corporación radio e Televisión de Galicia (CRTVG)
Galicia
111.2
(41.18 €)
EITB
Radio Televisión Pública Vasca (EITB) Basque country
148.8
(67.20 €)
TV3
Corporación Catalana de Medios Audiovisuales
(CCMA)
Catalonia
248.3
(32 €)
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Telemadrid
Radio Televisión Madrid (RTVM)
Madrid
83
(12.16 €)
Canal Sur
Radio y Televisión de Andalucía (RTVA)
Andalusia
164.8
(19.30 €)
CMM TV
Ente Público Radiotelevisión Castilla-La Mancha
(CMM Media)
Castilla-La
Mancha
51.6
(25.17 €)
7 Televisión
Radiotelevisión de la Región de Murcia (RTRM)
Murcia Region
5.3
(3.49 €)
Aragón TV
Corporación Aragonesa de Radio y Televisión
(CARTV)
Aragón
54.3
(40.20 €)
TPA
Radiotelevisión del Principado de Asturias (RTPA)
Asturias
24.4
(24.40 €))
Televisión
Canaria
Radio Televisión Canaria (RTVC) Canary Islands
50.4
(23.19 €)
IB3 Televisió
Ente Público de Radiotelevisión de las Islas Baleares
(RTVIB)
Balearic Islands
33.7 €
(27.63 €)
À Punt
Mèdia
Corporación Valenciana de Medios de
Comunicación (CVMC)
Valencia Region
64
(12.65 €)
Source: budgets from the Ocial State Gazette (BOE) and corporate websites. Created by the authors
e data collection was carried out in dierent phases. Initially, an analysis was made of all the YouTube accounts of the regional
channels that comprise FORTA by means of a le that included the following items: channels, sub channels, playlists, date of
incorporation, views, number of subscribers, and videos published. Regarding the videos, their duration and updated status was
analysed. It was also determined whether the material was unique or not, or in other words, whether they had previously been
broadcast on a linear channel through the matrix of the transmedia universe (Rodríguez-Ferrándiz, Tur-Viñes and Contreras,
2016; Jenkins, 2012). e data related to the oering of the more than eighty channels and sub-channels that the eleven media
groups have on YouTube were collected in December of 2020 (Table 2). e comparison between regional channels in terms of
subscribers and views, which are audience indicators, cannot be made in absolute numbers. e reason is, although YouTube
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does not always have limited geographical coverage like the linear versions of the channels, it is true that these broadcasts are
mainly viewed from their autonomous regions of origin due to the identity-related nature of these regional corporations. For this
reason, the decision was made to draw up a ratio between inhabitants and subscribers (Table 2).
e second phase focused on audience behaviour. Between January and April of 2021, monitoring was carried out through the
monthly viewing of fteen videos published by each of the 30 YouTube channels and sub-channels of regional television, with
a total of 1,260 videos. Forty-ve videos were monitored on each of the main channels and most of the sub-channels, although
some of them did not publish fteen new videos each month.
For their analysis, we selected the most heavily watched proprietary channel in each group, and all the sub-channels that reached
at least 10% of the subscribers of the main channel, based on the rst sample (shown in Table 2).
Likewise, during the months mentioned above, the data oered by comScore
to its subscribers regarding digital video
consumption through Videometrix
3
was analysed in order to estimate the user prole according to age groups. e company
comScore is the multinational that was in charge of digital measurement in Spain at the time. Finally, once all this information
had been collected, we contacted all the heads of the digital divisions of each of the regional channels under study to compare
the data collected and gain knowledge regarding the strategies of these companies. Unfortunately, however, only four directors
responded to the semi-structured interview: Esther Medina, head of Innovation Service in the digital environment at TVG; Joan
Carles Martorell Velásquez, director of IB3 Televisió; Isaías Blázquez, head of digital content at Castilla-La Mancha Television;
and Iñaki Gurrutxaga, director of digital content at EITB. e questions addressed the approach of each regional channel to other
viewing windows, the objectives of their presence on YouTube, an analysis of consumption, and future plans in the new and
evolving television landscape.
3. Results
3.1. Oering
After the research was carried out, it was conrmed that of the twelve regional groups that comprise FORTA, only Televisión del
Principado de Asturias does not have an institutional account on YouTube. us, the overwhelming majority of these types of
public companies are present on this platform.
Another important point bears mentioning. e analysis shows that the oering is not simply a transfer of the programming
oered on linear channels. Instead, there is variety in the oering (Table 2). Most of the sub-channels created use an online
strategy and do not simply copy the existing linear programming to the online world. On the one hand, some organisations such
as Radio Televisión Madrid and Castilla-La Media have no sub-channels whatsoever. On the other hand, some groups have a
large number, such as Corporación Aragonesa, which has 32 sub-channels (although some with only a few dozen subscribers),
3
e comScore tool collects data related to digital video consumption, both streaming and downloads, on smartphones, tablets and desktops, while avoiding
duplication.
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and Radio-Televisión de Andalucía with eleven sub-channels. After analysing the more than 80 channels and sub-channels, the
following trends have been observed in this regard:
–
e sub-channel belongs to a linear channel: this only occurs on 3Kluba (ETB’s children’s channel which reproduces ETB3)
and Catalan Super 3, which uses the same name as the namesake of its linear television.
–
e sub-channel belongs to a programme broadcast in linear mode: in general, these are star slots in linear programming.
Examples are the following:
Tierra de Talento
,
Los Reporteros
,
Toros para todos
, and
Al Sur
on Canal sur,
APM? TV3
and
Polò-
nia TV3
on the Catalonian broadcaster;
Aragón en abierto
,
Oregón TV
, and
En ruta con la ciencia
on Corporación Aragonesa.
–
Other examples of sub-channels belonging to linear programmes are
De Grana y Oro
on Murcian television,
Informativos
TVC
and
En Otra Clave
on Televisión Canaria, and
Uep! Com Anam
? on Balearic television.
–
e sub-channel reects the broadcasting of several examples of the same format:
Enserie
(TVG) groups together TVG’s own
ctional productions, as does
Ficción Aragón
in the case of
Maño
, although the latter only includes promotional videos.