As many of you know, the Center for Innovation in Population Health (IPH Center) at the University of Kentucky and the Praed Foundation have created ‘The TCOM Channel’ on YouTube to facilitate improved communications about the good work happening in the international TCOM collaborative. Many of you have watched some of our videos and have subscribed to this channel. In the first ten months, more than 1580 people have subscribed and we have nearly 40,000 views of the various videos posted on the channel.
Because of your interest and support, The TCOM Channel has become one of the 0.25 percent of the more than 500 million existing YouTube channels that has been successfully monetized. As you all know, YouTube supports its open access by having advertisements on videos. Once a channel has more than 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of viewing, YouTube agrees to become partners with the channel and shares 55 percent of advertising revenue. The TCOM Channel is now a YouTube Partner.
You might wonder why we are interested in pursuing this partnership, since the ethos of TCOM is to give things away. That, in fact, is precisely why we decided to pursue monetization. We have found that both the brief video features and the longer presentation videos are a great way to communicate within the collaborative. However, there are costs associated with creating content and managing these communications. Rather than seeking funding, donations, or increasing fees to support this work, it seems to us that sharing revenue from advertising with YouTube offers a potential source of continued funding for the work of TCOM.
There has been much discussion about how social media platforms monetize conflict and hate. Angry or controversial videos appear to generate the most views. That makes hate and rage into click bait, further worsening the trend. We want to help reverse that. Perhaps social media can also monetize working in the best interests of people who need our help. We know that the commercials on the YouTube channel can sometimes be annoying. Please know that the majority of the revenue is now going for a good cause. Thank you all for your continued support and viewership. Please tell your friends and colleagues to view, like and subscribe to The TCOM Channel. Thank you all for what you do for others.