YouTube is now an essential part of the content offering from news brands. The BBC, ABC and CNN are among the most successful on the platform, per recent analysis by Press Gazette. While legitimate concerns about any news outlet become too reliant on a third-party platform exist, there is general acceptance that brands must meet the audience where they are. And these days, that is YouTube.

Taking videos previously posted elsewhere or aired on TV and uploading them to the Google-owned video platform is ineffective. Success comes from creating original content and packaging it in the way YouTube demands. This includes running multiple channels and playlists to host different types of work. Longer content is finding success, too,

Fundamentally, publishers need to decide whether YouTube is for distribution, marketing, or both. Then they must commit the resources required to meet that challenge. Failure to do these things means videos do not break through, wasting time, money and effort.

Channel strategy: divide and conquer

Having separate channels and playlists for different types of content is essential to satisfy viewer appetites. Abi Watson, Head of Publishing at media analysis firm Enders Analysis, described the BBC’s effective approach, in which it offers multiple channels for different aspects of its output. “All your sport, all your news, everything on one thing, it wouldn’t work,” explains Watson, “But because they have BBC News, BBC Football, BBC Cricket, whatever, it works better because they’ve split it up.” People know where to find the type of coverage they want, and YouTube knows exactly what the channel is about.

Jon Lloyd, The Sun’s Director of Video, echoes that sentiment. “We quickly understood that keeping everything on one main YouTube account was throttling some shows.” He offers the example of royals coverage, which struggled to reach interested audiences when housed within a channel that also contained hard news such as defense, particularly during wartime.  Though it reaches a large audience, “a single channel for The Sun meant there was a clash”

Part of the reason for this was demographic. “The main channel skews male, looking for breaking news, conflict, and military analysis,” explained Lloyd. “Recognizing this, we let a separate Royal Exclusive channel break away. It now skews heavily female and is growing both in the UK and US.” He added that, “By breaking out into separate niche channels and curated playlists, we cater directly to distinct, highly engaged communities.”

When Harry Cole was appointed The Sun’s Editor-at-Large and dispatched to Washington D.C., part of his task was to present an evening show that was not just aired on TalkTV, owned by joint parent company News UK, but also on YouTube. It is an important example of embracing the platform natively, and The Sun has given the show its own channel.

Other senior Sun talent has also been given space on YouTube, too. Defense Editor Jerome Starkey’s The Frontline show is designated as a separate podcast/playlist on the main Sun channel, where the paper’s Originals can also be found.

It seems to be working for The Sun. In April 2026, it ranked in the top 30 news brands on the platform. A 7% year-on-year increase had seen it reach 6.4 million subscribers. Lloyed also pointed out, it is now the most successful UK print publication on YouTube in the UK.

Across the Atlantic, Fox News is hugely successful on YouTube, accumulating 15.4m subscribers and publishing 139,000 videos to date. It has similarly split up its output into multiple channels and playlists, as well as broadcasting live.

Fox News has not only developed a separate “clips” channel, for the most eye-catching moments of its output, but also offshoots relating to its most popular personalities. For instance, the “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” podcast is standalone and featured on the main Fox News channel.

Dividing things up in these ways is essential, reiterates Watson. “If you don’t do that, you’re really going against the grain of how the algorithm itself works,” she explains. 

On TikTok, a clip can break out, even from a very small channel. On YouTube, developing the channel itself and its playlists matters much more. You have to ask “how do people actually watch this,” says Watson. “If you have a playlist, people could potentially roll through and binge if they wanted to.” That’s less likely to happen if the next video is unrelated to the one a viewer has just finished.

Resources and format matter

Key to YouTube success is news brands putting meaningful resources into the video work.  Previously, the focus from these publishers was putting bulletin-style clips onto YouTube, according to Watson. Increasingly, though, they “are adopting a bit of a production mindset on the platform.”

She notes that a lot of videos are now “essentially like mini formats and mini documentaries”. In general, anything that is not a Short has got longer, especially with YouTube gaining prominence on connected TV. “You’ve got that bifurcation between Shorts and not Shorts, essentially,” adds Watson. “Anything that’s not a Short is growing longer.”

The Wall Street Journal provides some good examples of this. It has several repeated formats. There is, for example, “The Economics Of,” an explainer format. One of these videos discussing Haribo candy has accumulated 2.2 million views. It has also published documentaries. A 54 minute-long one on global supply chains, released four years ago, has racked up over seven million views.

That can also be seen at The Sun. Lloyd explained that “at the beginning of the strategy, we built around two distinct pillars: Originals, premium quality, long-form episodic formats, available for sponsorship in lifestyle and sport, and News, short breaking news stories linked to big events as well as long-form coverage on topics like defence and royals.”

Furthermore, “instead of chasing fleeting platform algorithms, we focus on building a 20-minute hero show for YouTube,” he said.

Just because the original work is longer, that doesn’t mean short vertical video is insignificant on YouTube or elsewhere. The Sun’s Lloyd explained that his publication  “uses a 360-content model: we cut clips for TikTok and Instagram, transcribe the video via AI, and have our journalists turn it into written articles for The Sun’s website and app.”

Watson’s Enders Analysis colleagues Niamh Burns and Aimee Montague published a paper earlier this month on how broadcasters are using YouTube. In a section focusing on news brands, they note that, “News strategies are primarily optimized to maximize reach and discoverability (with particular attention to younger and fragmented audiences) while maintaining quality and trust standards, and are less oriented toward monetization.”

For instance, Channel 4, a UK Public Service Broadcaster, has found success by quickly posting breaking news stories and being part of the news cycle. Similarly, commercial rival Sky News has found speed is key, but also posts “platform-native explainers, correspondent-led videos, and livestreams,” according to Burns and Montague’s research.

The payoff for getting YouTube right

Ultimately, the lesson from the publishers finding success on YouTube is that the platform rewards commitment. The BBC, Fox News, The Sun, Wall Street Journal, and others are not simply repurposing television clips or website videos. They are building dedicated channels, investing in original formats, creating content specifically for YouTube audiences, and organizing their output in ways that align with how viewers discover and consume video.

The payoff can be significant. Press Gazette analysis found that the most-subscribed English-language news publishers on YouTube grew their subscriber bases by an average of 16% over the past 15 months. That growth comes at a time when many publishers are grappling with audience fragmentation and declining referral traffic from other platforms.

YouTube is increasingly a core audience platform. Publishers that treat it as a destination — with dedicated resources, clear channel strategies, and platform-native content — are finding new ways to expand their reach and build audience relationships. That does not eliminate the risks of building on a third-party platform. But many publishers seeking audience growth are incorporating YouTube into their strategy.