Title: Video Length | Pew Research Center
Headings: 
YouTube & News
Video Length
Footnotes
Pagination

Content: In a television platform that allows the video to be as long as makes sense for that particular story and in which audiences can render clearer judgments about what length of content they will watch, what is the verdict? The answer, at least according to this analysis, is that audiences are willing to watch content of differing lengths. Indeed, there was significant variation in the length of the popular news videos on YouTube. The median length of the most popular YouTube videos was 2 minutes and 1 second. That is significantly longer than the 41-second median length of a local television news story, but less than the most common length of a network evening news package at 2 minute and 23 seconds. [ 3]
But the median does not fully tell the story. There is fairly little variation in the length of stories in the format of a commercial television broadcast. Most packages fit into fairly strict formulae in terms of length. We see a good deal more variation in the most watched videos on You Tube. More than a quarter were fairly short.