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It costs that much because the people creating it fought for it. The youtubers are massively under paid for their work.

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But then you love the indie content so much, so the creator gets more money and starts pumping out mediocre content. Circle of Life.

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I've been loving Helluva Boss recently

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You mean the faces and executives are paid; the people doing the actual work often get the shaft.

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I always think about this. Like a lot of the engineering youtubers I follow do some pretty dangerous stuff. They take the necessary safety precautions, but I have no idea how insurance can work when you're flagrantly disobeying OSHA regulations.

As an independent operator, you can abuse yourself in a way that legally nobody else is allowed to.

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Their original webseries...serieses?...with actual actors, were crazy good, especially if you account for them coming from a $15,000 kickstarter.

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oh I adored the first webseries they made! Hope they will get it again going, but until then For the Empire will have to do

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Because small creators are basically forced to take chances and be creative to survive with limited budgets while big corpo can take the boring safe bet and the big money attracts people that have a lot of talent for personal marketing and not much else while the number of people involved makes everything a design by committee.

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I've yet to see a "high quality YouTube Show that's not just copying stuff that's been researched by real journalists or documentaries on TV, cobbled together with cheap stock photos and/or Blender Animations

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What's interesting to me is the lack of crossover between the two. As far as I'm aware, no popular Youtube creator has ever successfully transitioned to doing Hollywood movies or TV shows. Sure there's been the occasional cameo, short-lived series, or direct to streaming movie, but none of them had any staying power. Why isn't Hollywood treating youtube as a farm league for new talent and IP that they can snatch up and exploit after the market for it is proven?

To be clear, I'm not saying I want that to happen. The good content creators deserve better as far as I'm concerned. But the opportunity seems so obvious that I'm truly baffled at the apparent lack of interest.

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Dropout and Nebula are making some insanely high quality content, and those are just the two obvious examples that came to my mind. Both also exhibit a more progressive business model and are less capitalistic in their thinking.

I’m sure there are plenty of similar examples.

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Check out Real Engineering. He does good research and a lot of his own interviews.

Practical Engineering writes hits own material and makes a lot of mini models to demonstrate the effects he is talking about.

Red Letter Media has a ton of movie discussion and analysis.

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The amount of indie games in my "best games of the year" list is increasing year by year.

Corpos are skilled at wringing any and all interesting bits out of something and reducing it to harmless, overdone slop that still sells. They don't take risks because that may make them $5 less. But indies do.

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I think there are plenty of channels that aren't just using "cheap stock photos and/or blender animations", and I can list some examples if you'd like. The first criterion is harder, though, because sci-com by its very nature isn't going to be original research, so channels in this category tend to be more creative or opinion-based (i.e. multi-hour video essays).

That said, if I'm trying to really get at the gist of what you're saying, I think you're looking for shows that have a lot of original work and high production value?

Some random examples I can think of (I'm sure there's plenty more):

3 Blue 1 Brown
Captain Disillusion
Gamers Nexus (specifically their investigations)
Smarter Every Day
Every Frame a Painting (inactive but with a huge catalogue)
PBS Eons
Technology Connections
Montemayor
Taylor Lorenz
Climate Town
Tantacrul

(this is excluding so many great video essayists and artists since the original comment seems not to be referring to those)

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David F. Sandberg aka "ponysmasher" comes to mind. He started doing largely horror films himself on no/low budgets. One of his own films got opportunity to become a feature film. That then gave him future opportunities, the largest of which was Shazam! (2019).

Additionally when YouTube Premium (YouTube Red at the time) first launched they also launched YouTube Originals. Many of those programs were created by YouTubers.

The "Originals" eventually stopped being made, but it's not clear if the issue was the content, the service or a bit of both.

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Just rewatched it a few hours ago! I can only recommend it, it is my favorite webseries. Still mind blowing how they put out this amazing content for free.

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RIP battle of Axanar and Star Trek continues.

best Star Trek content in a while

why are they sending cease and desist instead of offering to produce their content. are they allergic to money?

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It may just be a factor that a lot of YouTubers don't want to give up creative control. Working with Hollywood ultimately usually means giving up a lot of control on the type and content of your work. They're paying for the big production budget; they get final say in all creative decisions.

YouTubing is a career type that naturally attracts those that want creative independence. And by the time someone would be of the clout to make a deal with a studio or network, they're probably already earning enough money to be making a comfortable living from their work. 10,000-follower YouTube channels aren't getting calls from Discovery, Nickelodian, or Fox News. They're only going to be recruiting from the top channels. And people at that level are probably already earning a nice full-time living. Channels of that level are often entire miniature production companies. The biggest YouTubers aren't individuals, but creative teams.

That's a level of success many people would consider ideal. You get to live comfortably, you get to have a decent amount of social esteem, you get to pursue what projects you want. And you get the personal satisfaction of providing incomes for a whole bunch of your closest colleagues and maybe even closest friends. Many would call that about as perfect a life as there is possible. And you want to maybe give all that up to go work for a cable network?

I suppose for enough money, you could buy people out. But there's more to life than money after all. If you're already living quite comfortably, already very financially secure, would you really want to give up what you have - complete creative independence*, just to make a bit more? YouTube's top ranks are filled with people who left the rat race to get into YouTube. Many simply won't want to go back into that big corporate world, regardless of how gilded their chains may be.

*Obviously, creative independence is relative. All forms of ad-funded content will have to pander to the whims of advertisers. Even completely audience-funded works are subject to the whims of the audience.

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Olan Rogers made Final Space and he's working on Lightspeed right now. It had a pretty successful run and has a loyal fanbase, despite it being cancelled.

But yeah, stories like these are very rare.

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It's not that they're allergic to money but rather the inflated sense of self-importance and ego. To rightsholders and executives, it's unthinkable that fans could come up with something better and profitable using the intellectual property that they earned (read: bought) fair and square. And if someone somehow did, it's a threat to the bottom line, not something to embrace and encourage.

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