YouTube is cancelling premium original shows ahead of Apple’s streaming service event

Just as Apple gets ready to announce its streaming service, complete with original programming, another tech giant is preparing to bow out.

According to , YouTube is cancelling many of its “Hollywood-quality” shows and plans to pull out of producing most of its original content for its YouTube Premium subscription service. Shows like sci-fi thriller Origin and comedy series Overthinking with Kat & June are said to be among those being cancelled by YouTube. 

YouTube is looking to renew at least one of its most popular hit shows, however. The company is currently in negotiations for a third season of it’s The Karate Kid-based TV Series, Cobra Kai. 

Premium series content that exists on YouTube will also soon no longer require a paid subscription. The Google-owned company announced that it would eventually move its existing library of shows to its free platform.

Even after launching its ad-free YouTube Premium subscription service , YouTube has seemingly been doubling-down on its ad-supported model. The company has experimented with ad over the and even doubled down on free premium content when it launched a on its paid “Moves & Shows” vertical.

The video platform doesn’t look to be giving up on its subscription service as a whole. YouTube Premium still provides users with an ad-free YouTube experience. The video platform also runs a subscription-based music service, , which was basically spun off of the company’s original subscription model, YouTube Red.

YouTube’s real paid push going forward is likely its YouTube TV service. The company has its live TV service over that past few months, as cord cutting becomes increasingly popular. The service currently offers more than 60 channels to the top 100 U.S. television markets and unlimited DVR without the need for a cable subscription. YouTube charges $40 for the service — as opposed to $11.99 for YouTube Premium — and doesn’t need to take risks on financing expensive TV productions.

The video streaming service market has become an extremely competitive market. Apple is set to announce its own video streaming service, complete with its own original content. Disney is readying the launch of its own streaming service, , with its library of classic family films as well as original series’ based on its Star Wars and Marvel characters. In order to hold its top spots in the industry, Netflix and are committed to creating even more big-budget original content for its subscription services. Given the timing, it’s still especially interesting to see YouTube and, along with it, Google, scrap its efforts to compete in the video streaming space.