The Oscars move to YouTube in 2029

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ announcement that the Oscars will exclusively stream on YouTube starting in 2029 represents far more than a platform shift. After broadcasting on ABC since 1976, the world’s most prestigious film awards ceremony confirms what marketers have been observing for years: social media platforms haven’t just become relevant – they’ve become the primary lens through which younger generations experience culture, consume news, and engage with entertainment.

The data tells an unambiguous story

Viewers aged 13–24 now spend 21% of their entertainment time watching online videos compared to 16% on traditional TV shows. YouTube’s dominance is striking: 95% of US teens use the platform, while 88% of Gen Z watch it weekly compared to 70% for Netflix. Americans spend 26% of their total TV time watching YouTube videos – more than Netflix’s 21%. This isn’t about streaming replacing traditional TV; it’s about YouTube redefining what ‘television’ means for digital-native audiences.

The news industry already made this shift

The Oscars’ migration follows a playbook news organisations have been implementing for years. Major outlets watched as young audiences abandoned traditional news consumption, forcing them to meet audiences on social platforms.

According to Pew Research (2025), 20% of US adults now regularly get news from TikTok, up from just 3% in 2020. For 18–29 year olds, that figure reaches 39%. Over 50% of Gen Z teens use social media for daily news consumption. NowThis, a socially native news brand, has 5.5 million TikTok followers – more than double Yahoo News and exceeding the combined followings of Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, and MSNBC. News organisations now compete with influencers and creators who have fundamentally different relationships with younger audiences.

The implications for ABC and Disney

For ABC and Disney, the Oscars’ departure underscores traditional television’s diminishing cultural centrality. ABC had been paying approximately $100 million annually, but declining viewership made the partnership economically untenable. Oscars ratings plummeted from 29.6 million viewers in 2019 to 10.4 million in 2021. As Disney CEO Bob Iger prepares to exit in 2026, the company’s 50-year relationship with the Oscars exits with him.

The broader entertainment industry reckoning

Live events were supposed to protect traditional television from streaming’s encroachment. That assumption is collapsing. YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket deal, Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL games attracting Gen Z viewership, and the Oscars’ migration signal that premium live content no longer requires traditional broadcast infrastructure.

The entertainment industry is discovering what news organisations learned earlier: platform distribution matters less than audience presence. For younger demographics, that means YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram – not ABC, NBC, or CBS. YouTube will reach over 2 billion viewers globally with closed captioning and multilingual audio tracks, providing infrastructure that surpasses any traditional broadcaster’s global footprint.

Social media as the new cultural infrastructure

For marketers and brand strategists, the lesson is unambiguous. Brands and institutions that continue treating social media as supplementary distribution will find themselves increasingly disconnected from audiences that view social platforms not as alternatives to traditional media, but as media itself.

The Oscars moving to YouTube doesn’t represent social media rising to relevance. It represents the moment when the industry’s most prestigious institution finally acknowledged what younger audiences already knew: social media is relevance. Everything else is just legacy infrastructure waiting for its inevitable sunset.