“Premium” YouTube Channels Coming to France

YouTube has been rolling out new "professional" channels for the past few months and more are scheduled to debut this year. They're all part of a new program to fund shows that go straight to YouTube but are produced by pros with experience in the field. Whether that's an advantage over the people that started out on YouTube and got big there or not remains to be seen.

However, YouTube is comfortable with creating premium content for the site and it's paying hundreds of millions of dollars to get it. In fact, it seems to be spending some euros as well, as it's looking to launch several French channels too.

The site is already in talks with several local producers and celebrities, including The Artist's Jean Dujardin. 13 shows are slated to launch in October, Le Figaro says (translation). What's more, the program is expected to expand to the UK and Germany next.