It was found that the number of subscribers to the MBC News YouTube channel increased by 1 million during Yoon Seok-yeol’s administration. It is a figure that overwhelms the increase in other broadcasters’ news channels during the same period. MBC also comfortably outperformed the second-placed channel in terms of cumulative views. JTBC was found to do well on YouTube channels compared to fixed TV viewers.
YouTube statistics website ‘Playboard’ checked the number of people watching and subscribing to YouTube’s major broadcast news channels for 11 months from June to April last year. The total number of subscribers to the 8 YouTube broadcast news channels was 20.92 million (including duplicates, as of the end of April), and by channel, the order was YTN>SBS>MBC>JTBC>KBS>Channel A>MBN>TV Chosun .
Since the beginning of last year, MBC has built its own YouTube content production system rather than just distributing news on fixed TV. We also tried to organize colorful corners such as ‘Subtitle News’ which allows you to watch news while listening to music, ‘News.zip’ which bundles several reports on a specific issue, the textual ‘This News Today’, and ‘News Kkuk’ which you can read lightly. he did The number of subscribers increased by 1 million from 2.29 million in June last year to 3.29 million from the 10th. Considering that the number of subscribers to other broadcasters increased by 300,000 to 600,000 during the same period, this is a remarkable achievement.
After surpassing 400 million cumulative views in July last year, MBC set a new record of 564,298,328 views in August. Since then, it has been consistently maintaining 400 million units, and since March, it has been on the rise again and facing 500 million units. Over the past 11 months, MBC has accumulated about 4,798,750,000 views, which is about 1.7 billion more than news channel YTN, which has more than 600,000 more subscribers than MBC. It is twice the cumulative number of SBS views during the same period. MBC was chosen as the ‘news channel most enjoyed by Koreans’ in a Gallup Korea survey at the end of December last year.
YTN, the number 1 subscriber among YouTube broadcast news channels, was recording the 2nd position in cumulative views after MBC, but the number of views dropped significantly from December last year. SBS and JTBC views are on the rise in March and April. In particular, in the case of JTBC, it is worth noting that it has been shown to maintain the volume between KBS and SBS in terms of cumulative views on YouTube, although it is the lowest among the seven broadcasters in terms of fixed TV viewers. for the main news over the past year. JTBC needs to find a way to further leverage its YouTube competitiveness.
On the other hand, KBS ranks first in the number of fixed TV viewers, but is the lowest among the three terrestrial broadcasters on the YouTube platform. Channel A, TV Chosun, and MBN formed the bottom ranks with a large gap from the leading broadcasters. Specifically, in the case of TV Chosun, the number of subscribers is half that of MBC, but the cumulative number of views is less than one-tenth.
According to the ‘Digital News Report’ released last year by the Reuters Institute of Journalism UK, Korea is the number one country in the world for watching YouTube news. In terms of news consumption behavior by social media platform, Korea’s YouTube news consumption rate is 46%, well ahead of the average (30%) of the 46 countries surveyed. Compared to abroad, the burden of data charges is relatively low, and this seems to be the result supported by fast and uninterrupted internet speeds.
The use of YouTube news in Korea has increased dramatically since 2017. The habit of watching live broadcasts on YouTube channels broadcast news or individual reports of interest without time and space limitations is becoming common, and the number of subscribers YouTube channel and the views are gradually becoming more meaningful as indicators that can confirm the influence of other broadcast news than the number of fixed type TV viewers. . On September 22 last year, there were not a few people who first encountered President Yoon’s comments on smartphones through MBC News’ YouTube channel, saying, “What if Biden is embarrassed if these bastards don’t approve? ” The video has 6.2 million views as of May 10.
