Success Stories – How some of the biggest household names in TV are using YouTube
More than a home video platform – YouTube is a Swiss Army knife for media owners. Building on our article “Marketing Meets Revenue Generation” which discusses how YouTube is both a marketing tool and a revenue driver for old IP, today we’ll analyze how two major TV shows are taking advantage of the platform.
01.17.2025
The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon
The Tonight Show is a viral content machine. Taking a different approach than the other show mentioned in this article, The Tonight Show primarily posts short, single segment videos on YouTube. They focus on viral ready clips of popular segments like “Lip Sync Battle,” “Wheel of Musical Impressions,” “Classroom Instruments” as well as celebrity interviews.
This strategy works very well for The Tonight Show primarily because the show itself is designed around viral content. With a constant stream of celebrity interviews and unique segments, the easily digestible format makes sharing their content incredibly easy. Further, by having well established SEO, the show’s interviews with celebrities consistently show up when people search the names of their favorite celebrities, which has helped establish the show as a cultural hub.
While exact percentages fluctuate, NBC has credited YouTube’s viral clips with helping maintain TV ratings despite declining live TV viewership in late-night television. Viral segments like “Lip Sync Battle” and celebrity games have reached hundreds of millions of views.
The short, single-segment format used by The Tonight Show, however, does not work for most TV shows. Without celebrity interviews and unique challenges, it is hard to consistently make a 2–5-minute segment of a TV show go viral. Most shows will need to introduce a level of curation with each video to find the same success.
America’s Got Talent
AGT activates several different YouTube channels simultaneously to capitalize on the benefits YouTube can provide. Contrary to The Tonight Show, AGT’s YouTube channels put an emphasis on strong content curation; Meticulously selecting and combining short segments from different episodes across several seasons into a long form video that tells an entirely new story. These stories are designed specifically around what fans are searching for, and what will spark discussion on YouTube.
The channel Talent Recap serves as a centralized fan hub where they can go to watch their favorite moments and engage with other fans in the comments. Designed specifically to spark debate, videos like ‘They Deserved a GOLDEN BUZZER! When the Judges Got it WRONG on AGT’ (insert link) effectively encourage fans to watch each episode entirely so that they can join the debate in the comments.
Consistency is key for America’s Got Talent on YouTube. By posting consistently throughout the year, they keep the AGT community engaged between episodes and seasons. This consistency has helped the entire Got Talent franchise drive viewership year after year and increased viewership is, of course, in addition to the direct revenue they receive from the millions of views on YouTube.
These two shows have been able to turn long form TV content into internet gold. While The Tonight Show and AGT use completely different strategies, both have found YouTube to be an immensely profitable content distribution platform. While the winning strategies will vary for different TV shows, there is no doubt that any successful TV show has it’s place on Youtube.
