YouTube's pay channels include 'Sesame Street' and MMA

The sprawling video website, a unit of Google, said the first paid video channels would come online Thursday afternoon, with subscription rates ranging from 99 cents to $7.99 a month. The early participants include Sesame Workshop, the producer of "Sesame Street," which will stream full episodes of the children's show to paying subscribers; Ultimate Fighting Championship, the mixed martial arts league, which will stream classic fights to fans; and The Young Turks, a progressive talk show.

YouTube identified about 30 of these partners on Thursday and said other video makers would soon be able to set up their own paid channels, using YouTube's infrastructure. In a conference call for reporters, Malik Ducard, the director of content partnerships for YouTube, suggested that this "self-service feature" was the most important piece of the announcement.

"As we roll out wider and as we roll out self-serve, you'll see a lot of innovation," he said, predicting that homegrown YouTube stars with fan followings would choose to set up paid channels. YouTube's plans for paid channels were widely reported earlier this week, but the names of the participants were unknown then.

For YouTube, the paid channel plan gives the creators of videos - some of whom have been dissatisfied with the payments from the advertisements attached to their videos - a new way to profit from their popularity. The plan also gives YouTube a new source of revenue, although there are widespread doubts about whether people will be willing to pay for channels.

© 2013, The New York Times News Service