YouTube will let you watch Cobra Kai free this year

Firming up a plan it disclosed last year, the video site is bringing YouTube originals like Cobra Kai out from behind the paywall.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter

Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.

Expertise Streaming video, film, television and music; virtual, augmented and mixed reality; deep fakes and synthetic media; content moderation and misinformation online Credentials

Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)

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Joan E. Solsman

May 2, 2019 5:06 p.m. PT

youtubepremium-cobrakai-trailer-macchio-zabka — Cobra Kai has been one of YouTube's most popular originals.
YouTube

Google's YouTube renewed its original show Cobra Kai for a third season and plans to make the new season and the first two available to watch outside its paywall this fall.

From here on out, all of YouTube's new originals will always have a free, ad-supported window of time to watch them, Robert Kyncl, chief business officer of YouTube, said on Thursday. YouTube made the announcements the same day at a presentation to advertisers in New York known as Brandcast. It was the so-called Newfront this year, a four-day series of events thrown by digital media companies to drum up advertiser interest.

The move means you won't need a YouTube Premium subscription to watch the Google-owned video-sharing site's original shows and movies, but you'll have to sit through ads.

It's a plan YouTube outlined last year without providing many details. At the time, though, it indicated that previously released content like Cobra Kai would remain behind the paywall.