Is Television Losing Its Audience to YouTube? Maybe We’re Asking the Wrong Question

For decades, watching television meant something very specific.

You sat on the couch, turned on the television, and entered a world that someone else had chosen for you.

The network decided the time.

The network decided the program.

The network decided how long the story would last.

The network even decided when you had to go to the bathroom because the commercial break was starting.

And, most importantly, you did not have many choices. You chose among whatever happened to be available at that particular moment.

For a very long time, this seemed completely natural.

Television was the great window to the world.

Soap operas, news programs, talk shows, cartoons, sports, movies, series, reality shows, Sunday programs... entire generations built their cultural references around the schedules of major television networks.

But something changed.

And perhaps the most important change is not simply that people are watching less television.

Maybe it is that people are becoming less willing to accept that television should decide what they watch.

That difference may sound small.

It isn't.

In December 2025, data from Kantar IBOPE Media indicated that online video platforms accounted for 37.2% of total video consumption in Brazil, while broadcast television still represented 55.8% of total measured audience. Within online video consumption, YouTube alone accounted for 21.6% of total measured device usage.

In other words: traditional television is still enormous.

But the behavior has changed.

And when behavior changes, the entire market has to adapt.

Television Didn't Disappear. Control Changed Hands.

Perhaps the simplest way to understand this transformation is to imagine two living rooms.

In the first one, there is a traditional television.

You turn it on at eight in the evening.

A soap opera is playing.

You watch it.

In the second living room, there is a television connected to the internet.

You turn it on at eight in the evening.

And open YouTube.

You might watch a three-hour interview.

A documentary.

A podcast.

A class.

A news channel.

A cooking video.

A football analysis.

A creator talking about history.

Someone restoring an abandoned house.

A woman teaching crochet.

A teenager playing a video game.

A specialist explaining quantum physics.

A stranger telling the story of how they survived something completely absurd.

And if you don't like it, you switch.

No waiting for the next program.

No dependence on the schedule.

No need to ask which channel is showing it.

That freedom may seem completely ordinary today.

But culturally, it represents a gigantic shift.

For decades, audiences were organized around programming.

Now programming is increasingly organized around audiences.

Prime Time Is No Longer Quite So Obvious

There is a television expression almost everyone knows: prime time.

For a long time, it represented one of the most valuable moments on television. It was when a huge portion of the population was at home and available to watch.

That is why the biggest soap operas, news programs and shows were placed there.

The problem is that today's audience is not necessarily waiting for prime time.

People can watch whenever they want.

They can pause.

They can rewind.

They can speed things up.

They can watch tomorrow.

They can binge five episodes of a series at two in the morning.

They can discover a video published six months ago and decide it is the most interesting thing they will watch that night.

Content no longer completely obeys the clock.

And that changes everything.

Television Can Be YouTube Now

There is a wonderful irony in this story.

When YouTube first appeared, it was often perceived as a platform for computer videos.

Then came smartphones.

And many people imagined the future would be about watching short videos on tiny screens.

But history took a different turn.

In 2025, YouTube reported, based on Kantar IBOPE Media data, that connected television had surpassed mobile phones as the main screen for YouTube consumption inside Brazilian homes. Among viewers aged 18 and over, television and connected-TV consumption represented 53%, up from 41% three years earlier.

That is much more significant than it may initially seem.

Because it means YouTube is not necessarily replacing television as a physical device.

It is occupying television.

The screen remains in the living room.

What changes is who provides the content.

The television remains.

The television model begins to change.

And Does That Scare the Major Networks?

It is understandable that there is concern.

Brazil's major television networks built enormous businesses around a relatively predictable model: concentrated audiences, linear programming, major events, commercial breaks and the ability to deliver millions of viewers simultaneously to advertisers.

When audiences fragment, that model becomes more complicated.

That does not automatically mean a network becomes irrelevant.

It means it has to compete for attention in an environment where viewers have far more alternatives.

And the competition is no longer simply between Globo, Record, SBT, Band and other broadcasters.

Now the competition includes Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, proprietary platforms, podcasts, social media, streaming services, independent creators and countless individual content producers.

The living room has become an arena.

And nobody told the couch.

The Audience Decline of Major Networks

The numbers help illustrate the transformation.

At the end of 2025, for example, Kantar IBOPE data showed significant audience declines for Globo during certain periods. According to a comparison published by Metrópoles, the network's average audience in Greater São Paulo fell from 12.1 points in the final full week of December 2023 to 9.01 points in the corresponding period of 2025.

But there is an important caveat.

A television network losing audience does not automatically mean that all of those viewers moved to YouTube.

Some may have moved to Netflix.

Some to TikTok.

Some to other platforms.

Some may simply be consuming less video.

And some may be dividing their time among several options.

That distinction is fundamental.

Because the transformation is not simply:

“Television lost viewers, YouTube gained them.”

It is:

“People began distributing their attention across many more places.”

And fragmented attention completely changes the advertising game.

Advertisers Want Audiences. But They Also Want Attention.

For a long time, television sold something extremely powerful:

scale.

If you wanted to put a message in front of millions of people at the same time, television was an extraordinary tool.

But today, an advertiser can build much more targeted campaigns.

They can choose audiences.

Test different creatives.

Track clicks.

Measure conversions.

Work with specific creators.

See which video generated results.

Adjust campaigns quickly.

And, perhaps most importantly, create a more direct relationship between content, audience and brand.

That does not mean television has lost its advertising value.

It remains important.

But advertisers have gained alternatives.

And when buyers have more alternatives, sellers have to demonstrate their value in different ways.

YouTube itself has been expanding advertising opportunities around connected television, including large-screen ad formats and shopping features designed to connect viewing with action.

So the question is not necessarily whether brands are “leaving television.”

The more interesting question is where brands can find attention — and how they can turn that attention into something measurable.

YouTube Discovered the Living Room

There is another particularly important change for anyone working with content.

For a long time, a YouTube creator might have thought primarily about one person watching on a smartphone.

That is no longer enough.

The content may be playing on a 55-inch television in a family's living room.

It may be running while someone cooks.

It may be watched by two or three people together.

It can become a television program without ever passing through a television network.

That changes the language of content itself.

Long-form videos make sense again.

Podcasts can last three hours.

Independent documentaries can find audiences.

Specialized channels can build communities.

One person can produce content from home and reach an audience that, decades ago, would have required a television production structure.

It is an enormous democratization of production.

But it also creates brutal competition.

Now everyone can publish.

And precisely because everyone can publish, attention has become harder to capture.

Is Television Dying — or Is an Era Ending?

Perhaps neither.

Broadcast television still represents a majority of total video consumption in Brazil, according to December 2025 data.

So saying “nobody watches television anymore” would simply be false.

What is disappearing is the idea that there is one single place where everyone is.

It used to be possible to imagine that a popular soap opera, a major football match or a Sunday television show could put millions of Brazilians in front of the same programming at the same time.

That still happens during certain major events.

But everyday attention is much more fragmented.

While one person watches a soap opera, another watches a podcast.

While someone follows the evening news, someone else watches a documentary.

While one family watches football, another watches travel videos.

And perhaps someone in the same room is doing something completely different on another screen.

The audience did not disappear.

It spread.

And Perhaps That Explains the Power of Creators

There is an important difference between a television network and an independent creator.

A network needs to think about a broad audience.

A creator can speak directly to a very specific group.

A network might produce a technology program.

A creator can spend two hours talking exclusively about 3D printers.

A network might produce a documentary about food.

A creator can spend months researching forgotten recipes.

A network has to think in terms of millions.

A creator can build a business around hundreds of thousands of people who are intensely interested in one subject.

It is a different logic.

And advertisers have noticed it.

Not necessarily because “television is dead,” but because the internet makes it possible to find communities.

And communities have value.

The Curious Case of YouTube Becoming Television

Perhaps the greatest irony in this transformation is that YouTube is increasingly resembling what traditional television has always been.

Long programs.

Huge audiences.

Advertising.

Celebrities.

News.

Sports.

Documentaries.

Live broadcasts.

Interviews.

Sponsorships.

Major events.

But there is one fundamental difference:

On YouTube, programming does not have to follow a single universal schedule.

You create your own.

Your prime time begins when you press play.

And perhaps that is the real revolution.

Television Is Not Necessarily Losing the Screen. It Is Losing Exclusivity.

That may be the best way to summarize the moment.

The screen remains.

The couch remains.

The habit of watching video remains.

What is slowly disappearing is the exclusive control television networks once had over that space.

Television is no longer simply television.

It has become a window.

And through that window can appear broadcasters, streaming services, YouTube, TikTok, independent channels, podcasts, live streams and content produced by people who have never had a television studio.

That changes culture.

For decades, only a relatively small number of companies had the ability to decide what millions of people would see.

Now millions of people can choose among millions of pieces of content.

That does not automatically mean the new reality is better.

Abundance brings problems too.

There is misinformation.

There is shallow content.

There is algorithmic manipulation.

There is platform dependence.

There is the difficulty of distinguishing quality from popularity.

And there is a curious phenomenon: when we have too many options, choosing can become exhausting.

Perhaps that is why major broadcasters still possess important advantages.

They have established brands.

Large professional teams.

Structured journalism.

The ability to broadcast major events.

Sports rights.

High-budget productions.

Experience.

Infrastructure.

Their challenge is not simply competing with YouTube.

It is figuring out how to remain relevant when viewers no longer need to choose only one source.

Perhaps the Future Is Hybrid

It is entirely possible that broadcast television will continue to exist for many decades.

But perhaps it will have to stop thinking of itself only as television.

The same is true for YouTube.

It is no longer simply a website where people upload videos.

It is a media platform.

It is connected television.

It is search.

It is entertainment.

It is education.

It is advertising.

It is community.

It is podcasting.

It is an archive.

It is live broadcasting.

And increasingly, it is also a living room.

Perhaps the future will belong exclusively neither to television nor to streaming.

Perhaps it will belong to whoever best understands one very simple thing:

the audience no longer belongs to the channel.

It belongs to the viewer.

And viewers can leave.

They can return.

They can divide their attention.

They can watch a soap opera on Monday, a podcast on Tuesday, a YouTube documentary on Wednesday and spend Thursday watching videos of people renovating old houses.

There is no longer a single doorway into entertainment.

There are thousands.

And perhaps that is the greatest cultural transformation of our generation.

We are not simply replacing television with YouTube.

We are leaving behind the idea that we need to choose one single place to watch the world.

Television is still in the living room.

It just has to share the couch now.

And apparently, nobody needs to ask permission to sit down.

Writhen by: Cinthia Lacerda