Oldest and First Home Improvement Channel on YouTube
Oldest Home Improvement Channel on YouTube - Ask the Builder
Ask the Builder was the first home improvement channel on YouTube. Ask the Builder was part of Google Video before Google purchased YouTube.
Tim Carter is the founder of Ask the Builder, one of the first home improvement websites on the Internet. The Ask the Builder website launched in September of 1995 with 200 pages of content. Most websites in 1995 had five pages of content.
This is the look of Ask the Builder on YouTube circa 2024. It looked much different in 2006!
Google Video Before YouTube
Tim Carter was invited to attend the October 2005 Google Zeitgeist. The Google Video team approached Tim, asking him if he had produced any home improvement videos. Tim responded that he had a library of two hundred 90-second videos he had produced as the home improvement expert for the ABC and NBC-TV affiliates in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Google Video team knew that video was going to dominate the Internet. They desperately needed video content to attract advertisers.
The Google Video team asked Tim to upload all his videos to Google Video, a competitor to YouTube. YouTube launched eight months before, in February of 2005. This didn't go unnoticed by Google's top management.
Tim realized video would be a major part of the Internet back in the late 1990s. He negotiated, as part of his contract with the ABC and NBC-TV affiliates in Cincinnati, that he would own the copyright to the segments since the information was created from Tim's knowledge, not that of the TV stations. Tim also negotiated that the affiliates had to provide him with a copy of each segment on VHS tape with a custom close where Tim said, "I'm Tim Carter, Ask the Builder." Tim knew how important it would be when the videos were shown on the Internet instead of local TV.
Google Buys YouTube
Google purchased YouTube in February of 2006. Google Video was folded into YouTube. The Ask the Builder channel was one of the first 50 partners on YouTube. YouTube grew and, within a few years, being a partner, lost all of its prestige. Tens of thousands of channels became YouTube partners.