Fans of the “Cobra Kai” series on Netflix may have already forgotten that the show first originated on YouTube. That platform was once in the business of making scripted originals of its own, but it hasn’t put out anything new in that department since 2018. Since then, YouTube has ascended to the dominant streaming platform in the United States, but does that mean a return to scripted originals is now in the cards? According to company executives, the answer is an emphatic, unambiguous no.

Key Details:

• This week, YouTube executive Pedro Pina said the platform had “no interest whatever” in making original content.
• YouTube shifted away from scripted originals in 2018 but kept making unscripted titles until 2023.
• The streamer wants to continue the practices that led it to the top of the streaming heap.

YouTube vice president of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa Pedro Pina had the chance to speak about YouTube’s original content strategy at the TV market and networking event MIP London on Wednesday. Despite the increasing usage of YouTube on smart TVs, there are no plans to bring back original content on the platform.

“We have no interest whatsoever in producing our own content,” Pina said.

He alluded to past experiments in this space, but said the company was willing to accept its failures in original content and move on. YouTube hasn’t put out a scripted original since 2018, but it was still producing unscripted content of its own until 2023. Pina says the company will continue to focus its efforts on providing user-created content, instead.

“For us to be successful, we need other people to actually put the content in,” he said. “Our commercial success will only exist with other people’s content. Our mission is to give that content to users around the world, but in order to do that, we need to have it.”

That strategy, not the creation of original shows, is what helped YouTube reach its current lofty heights. In September 2024, Nielsen recorded that YouTube was the biggest distributor of TV in the United States, beating out even legacy media companies like Disney that have both linear TV channels and streaming services.

User-generated content will continue to reign supreme on YouTube. There’s no need for the streamer to spend its revenue on making its own original TV shows, and it’s no longer interested in trying.