YouTube is shuttering its YouTube Originals division, with lead Susanne Daniels expected to leave in March.
YouTube Originals was the company’s foray into original content, began in 2016. Susanne Daniels headed up the division, and helped it create award-winning content.
According to a tweet by Robert Kyncl, YouTube Chief Business Officer, YouTube Originals is shutting down.
Today, there are over 2M creators in the YouTube Partner Program and our creator community has never been more successful: we’ve paid more than $30B to creators, artists, and media companies over the last three years.
However, with rapid growth comes new opportunities and now our investments can make a greater impact on even more creators when applied towards other initiatives, like our Creator Shorts Fund, Black Voices Fund, and Live Shopping programming to name a few.
Separately, Susanne has decided to leave YouTube and her last day will be March 1. I want to thank her for her vision, creativity and leadership.
Together, these factors contributed to our decision to reduce our YouTube Originals slate. Going forward, we will only be funding programs that are part of our Black Voices and YouTube Kids Funds. We will honor our commitment for already contracted shows in progress and creators who are involved with those shows should expect to hear from us directly in the coming days.
— Robert Kyncl (@rkyncl), January, 18
