Google, Inc.’s online video service YouTube is having problems with its planned paid subscription service, with the site said to have failed to land any content from television networks.

The service, first mooted back in March, is aiming to follow in the steps of services from the likes of Hulu and offer programming that’s a mixture of existing television content, coupled with original content, something YouTube doesn’t have a problem in sourcing.

Partners accounting for more than 90 percent of YouTube viewing have signed on to the paid service, the company said in a statement: “We are progressing according to plan…we have support from the overwhelming majority of our partners, with well over 90 percent of YouTube watchtime covered by agreements, and more in the pipeline about to close.”

Bloomberg, however, reported that “people with knowledge of the matter” have said that YouTube so far doesn’t have any deals with TV networks such as Fox, NBC and CBS.

The new service though may include music videos, with the same report noting that YouTube may fold its current music and music video subscription service Music Key into the as yet unnamed new service.

YouTube’s paid video service is also said to be offering other incentives for users to sign up, besides the promise of a commercial-free environment: the ability to be able to store and watch videos without an Internet connection, and while using other applications on a mobile phone or tablet.

There’s also some suggestion that on top of exclusive first-look (or even exclusive content) access to popular existing YouTube creators, Google may also follow in the footsteps of Amazon Prime and Netflix, Inc. in creating its own serious content, with a possibility that the service could debut with as much as a dozen original titles at launch.

TV is needed

While YouTube has rightfully boasted in recent times that it is now bigger than individual cable networks, there’s a world of difference between providing an epic amount of free, primarily user made content (some of it, to be fair, very professional,) versus getting people to subscribe for a paid subscription service when there is already a range of competitors vying for those very same dollars.

The reality is, like it or not, YouTube needs television content to make the forthcoming service deliver.

Very few people are going to pay a subscription to watch videos they can already watch for free, just because they can now save those videos, and not deal with YouTube’s ads.

You wouldn’t count YouTube out yet though when it comes to eventually signing deals with at least some of the TV networks, but given the service is due to be launched by the end of the year they’d want to get a move along with it.

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