HCM CITY– Television stations and channels are investing money and human resources to produce more shows on YouTube, with most of them targeting young Vietnamese viewers.

Vĩnh Long Television (THVL), which has four channels in addition to a channel on Youtube launched in 2014, has invested funds to produce quality reports, documentaries and entertainment programmes.

From September 2014 to the end of this year’s first quarter, its YouTube channel attracted more than 295 million viewers, according to POPs Worldwide, a leading digital company and multi-channel network in Việt Nam.  

Last year, THVL won the 2015 POPS Awards for its YouTube channel, which attracted the highest number of viewers.

Its biggest competitor is Vệt Nam Television’s VTCTube, which launched in 2013. It offers dozens of theatre and music programmes as well as films produced by TV stations such as VTV, HTV and TTXVN.

VTCTube now attracts more than 80 million viewers.

In HCM City, the leading cable provider, SCTV, is also working to produce a series of cultural and entertainment programmes on its Youtube channels, which is expected to launch this year.

SCTV, jointly owned by Việt Nam Television and state-run Saigon Tourist Corporation, is the first domestic cable TV operator to receive approval to deploy its own telecommunications network infrastructure.

SCTV offers its own cultural programmes for children and young people on channels such as SaoTV, Yan TV, Yeah 1 TV, and Style TV.

“Viewers are willing to use YouTube anywhere and at anytime. We began producing programmes just for YouTube to meet the increasing demand of customers a few years ago and they have become popular,” said Hoàng Anh, a PR representative of Yan TV. 

Mai Duy Long, deputy director of the IMC Group, which manages Today TV, said: “A show on YouTube would immediately attract several million viewers. So,  Youtube is the fastest way to expand your programme to the public.” 

“YouTube is changing everything,” he added.

Today, TV’s young producers and technicians are sent to Singapore and Korea to improve their skills.

Though the local industry has developed rapidly in recent years, the task of balancing social responsibility and commercial success remains a difficult task to providers on YouTube.

The market tendency has led TV stations and channels to work with organisations and private companies to produce TV films, game shows and ads. In some cases, they have failed to provide products appropriate for the education level of young audiences.

Copyright infringement has occurred to many music and film shows on YouTube.

“This way of doing business has brought the industry down,” said a representative of SCTV .— VNS