The ratings war among entertainment channels may take on a whole new dimension if viewership on online platforms like YouTube is considered. With a 110% growth in viewership year-on-year for content from Indian film and television companies, YouTube is emerging as the hottest new platform for video entertainment.

A trend that started in the US, popularity of the new media is catching up in India as well. Consider this: today, the new traffic for YouTube in India, the leading video streaming website in the world, is driven by official and partner channels of film and television companies. A channel is a microsite within YouTube which offers video streaming of the content uploaded by the content producers.

For instance, Sony TV, Zee Network and Times TV all have multiple microsites on YouTtube for various genres of entertainment in different languages. These provide short clips, archive videos and catch-up programming. YouTube today has 10,000 full length films in India.

?What we have done is to create a channel-centric experience for viewers. Today everything is focused around channels for users to come and consume the content they want,? says Gautam Anand, director, (content partnership), Google APAC. He adds that while television offers only a few hundred channels, YouTube is changing that into thousands of channels, including many niche channels.

The top channels based on viewership include those of movie production companies like Rajshri, Eros Entertainment, T-Series, Shemaroo Entertainment, UTV Motion Pictures, Yash Raj Films, music channel Sony Music India and television channels like Zoom, SET India, ZeeTV, TV9, etc, all making it to the top 20 channels of YouTube in the country. From songs of new movies, news and even full length feature films, viewers are increasingly turning to YouTube for content.

?We have 100 partners in India. They have set up 1,000 channels in the country and the variety of content over the past few years has gone up dramatically in the form of film companies, television channels and music labels etc,? says Anand.

For Zoom Dekho, which mostly has Hindi film-based programmes, the number of subscribers for the channel has grown from 25,000 to 1.12 lakh in two years. ?Considering that we achieved 60% growth in traffic from a base of 70 crore viewership, we have huge potential for growth,? says Avinash Kaul of Times Television.

TeluguOne, a channel for Telugu short films, is adding 12,000 subscribers per month on a base of around 2 lakh subscribers. Ravishankar K, the founder and managing director of TeluguOne channel, says the revenue growth from ad sales is more than 25% year-on-year. ?Though the income is still not self sustaining to support content just from YouTube, it is growing rapidly,? says Ravishankar.

Anand says India is among the top five markets as far as viewership is concerned for the video sharing website. The ad sales for Indians channels are done through Google India. ?With Indian channels, the export potential is huge and they are tapping into it. There are two streams ? one the revenue YouTube generates from India and shares with its channel partners, and the second, the revenue channels generate from global viewership of YouTube,? he adds.

For Indian channels, still more than half of the traffic is coming from outside India, indicating the NRI consumption of Indian entertainment. ?These Indian channels are available to more than 45 markets of the world, giving Indian entertainment a global viewership. They are channels for international distribution,? says Anand.

Most people abroad have access to only a few Indian channels on television in their country, whereas YouTube gives them instant access to a 1,000 channels from India covering every field. ?With 3G and better broadband access, the next wave of growth is expected from within the country for these channels,? says Kaul.

Moreover, with an explosion of smartphone sales, the viewership is going mobile as well. From 20% a year ago, now 40% viewership of YouTube is happening through mobile. Last month, YouTube started having ads on mobile platforms as well, giving partner channels a chance to monetise viewership of the 40% segment, which is growing exponentially.

Recently in the US, there were protests from many independent video makers, saying that YouTube was pushing them out by giving preference to film and television companies. But, as Anand says, the platform is available to large video companies as well as individual creators. ?We are changing the user behaviour. YouTube is a platform for both niche creators and professional companies,? says Anand.