One of YouTube’s top bosses has announced that he really doesn’t have anything concrete to announce, but that the company might be checking out selling subscriptions to users for access to some online videos. Those fees could allow for some cable channels to be available to consumers without buying into bundles sold by cable companies.

Salar Kamangar, Google senior vice president of YouTube and video, told reporters at the Reuters Media and Technology Summit yesterday that cable channels with smaller audiences will in the future migrate to the Web and become available on an “a la carte” basis.”

Those channels receive little or no affiliate fees from cable distributors and would be a good fit for YouTube. YouTube is also mulling over making some of its original video programs available for a fee.

“We don’t have anything to announce now. It is something that’s really important to a lot of our top existing content creators as well as ones that aren’t on YouTube today, so we’re taking very seriously and we’re thinking about it very carefully,” said Kamangar.

This is the kind of thing that is likely going to terrify cable companies, who are in the midst of being investigated by the Department of Justice over whether they’ve been purposely hampering the spread of online video.

But please, YouTube — just don’t make me pay to watch pandas sneezing. I couldn’t handle that.

YouTube chief mulls paid subscription [Reuters]

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