It’s Friday and YouTube’s got the beat. It’s willing to pay to stay on rhythm, too—in fact, the platform doled out $8 billion to the music industry in just one year.

Today’s News

TV TIME

Is YouTube’s TV viewership plateauing?

The switch-up: Over the last couple years, YouTube‘s ascension on television screens has redefined conversations around the decline of traditional media. But has the video platform hit its limit when it comes to TV viewership?

According to Nielsen‘s The Gauge report, YouTube got a larger share of TV traffic than any other content provider during most months of 2024 and 2025. That upward trend had wide-ranging effects, from helping YouTube reach more senior citizens to establishing the platform as a “realistic destination” for TV consumers.

By the time July 2025 rolled around, YouTube had pushed its share of TV traffic to 13.4%—but since then, things have taken a turn. For the first time in years, YouTube’s performance in The Gauge has seen a noticeable downturn. The platform’s percentage dropped to 13.1% in August and fell all the way to 12.6% in September. Now, YouTube’s TV market share is sitting around where it was in May.

The context: The timing of that plateau could suggest that back-to-school season is impacting YouTube’s TV performance. It makes sense: kids and teens watch more YouTube when they’re not busy with classes, homework, and after-school activities. Even adults pack in more watch time during summer months.

Still, that theory isn’t quite airtight. During summer 2024, YouTube’s results in The Gauge were relatively flat—so if there is a summertime peak on YouTube’s TV app, it’s a new finding for 2025.

Another possible explanation could be that YouTube has achieved such a high level of saturation in the U.S. that it’s running out of new customers to reach. That phenomenon isn’t without precedent: years ago, Netflix’s customer count got so big that it started accounting for subscriber losses in quarterly earnings reports. Will Nielsen soon need to factor similar stats into its own YouTube reporting?

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• The 15th edition of international digital film festival Marseille Web Fest handed out eleven awards to exemplary online-first series before wrapping up on October 11. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Meta is bringing text-based AI prompts to Instagram Stories. (TechCrunch)
  
  

• Netflix, Amazon, and Apple are rumored to be among several potential buyers who have expressed “unsolicited interest” in acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery. (The Verge)
  
  

• Sora head Bill Peebles says the platform is preparing to debut “character cameos,” video editing capabilities, and quality-of-life improvements that will “reduce excessive moderation.” (Bill Peebles via X)

SHOW BIZ

Creator Camp’s first movie just hit theaters

The film: Creator Camp—a film studio that aims to challenge Hollywood by taking digital video creators to the big screen—is releasing its first public project in theaters. Made in 100 days on a $100,000 budget, Two Sleepy People comes from writer/TikTok filmmaker Baron Ryan and writer/actress Caroline Grossman, who co-star as “a couple that’s married every night, but by morning—they’re strangers.”

A four-theater premiere run of the film will include screenings at Seattle’s Majestic Bay Theatres, San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, Los Angeles’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre, and El Museo de Barrio in New York City.

The studio: As for Creator Camp itself, the studio was founded in 2021 by creators Max Reisinger, Simon Kim, and Chris Duncan. Their mission statement: to shape a “better internet by fostering deeper connections and providing more space for meaningful stories online.”

To achieve that goal, Creator Camp joined forces with entities like Switzerland Tourism to bring creators on retreats to beautiful locations, where they would complete short films in a matter of days. (The studio’s 2024 partnership with Switzerland Tourism resulted in a social media campaign that it says generated 92M+ impressions, 1,500+ posts, and $9M+ in ad value.)

Creator Camp kicked things up a notch earlier this year, when it partnered with Patreon, armed 10 creators with cash to make their own films, and held a festival at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas. The first screening of Two Sleepy People took place at that festival, which welcomed over 1,000 attendees and generated $150,000 in ticket sales.

Soon after, the Creator Camp team rented a permanent studio space where they can continue offering production resources to creators. The team says they’re now working with 300 “curated creators,” who together have generated 3 billion views in the last year.

PLATFORM HEADLINES

YouTube’s new timer could keep you from getting sucked into Shorts

The tool: Stuck in a Shorts rabbit hole? YouTube’s latest tool could be the solution. Earlier this week, the platform published a blog post to announce a new timer that puts a hard stop on Shorts activity after a fixed period of time. (If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because Android Authority first reported on the timer earlier this year, when the feature was still in development.)

Now that YouTube’s Shorts timer is up and running, interested users can put a cap on their scrolling by venturing into the Settings tab in the Shorts app. When the chosen limit arrives, a pop-up notification will display on screen (although users can promptly dismiss if they want to keep watching).

That timer joins several other YouTube products designed to discourage doomscrolling. In 2018, the platform invited users to “take a break” after reaching a certain amount of watch time. A sleep timer arrived years later to assist viewers who want to wind down by watching videos, but don’t want to get sucked in for hours on end.

The context: Mounting pressure from parents has helped motivate Big Tech to make feeds less addictive. In its coverage of the Shorts timer, eMarketer cited data from Pew, which found that 55% of surveyed parents were “extremely or very concerned about teen mental health.”

YouTube isn’t the only platform taking action in response to those concerns. Other hubs, like Instagram, have rolled out their own controls to curb marathon scrolling. That trend has always had an ironic edge to it, since the platforms themselves are the ones making their feeds so hard to quit—but at this point, even a simple pop-up notification is a step in the right direction.

WATCH THIS 🎙️

Ludwig is (most likely) going to be in a video game

The reveal: From Twitch to YouTube Gaming and back again, Ludwig has been streaming video games for seven years. Now, he’s finally making his way inside a video game.

During a recent stream, the creator revealed that he’s been invited to play a character in the next Road to Empress game. That invitation came after the game’s dev team left a positive comment on Ludwig’s playthrough—and the streamer promptly responded by offering up his services as an actor.

The caveat: As Ludwig pointed out, traveling to China and mastering lines in Mandarin is no easy feat. So while Ludwig says he is “ACTUALLY going to be in a video game,” fans might want to keep an eye out for final confirmation before getting too hyped.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.