I sympathize with what's been lost, but what happened was people realized they didn't actually want to build a web page, they wanted to converse on a forum and share pics, and be entertained. Sure, you could publish anything you can imagine that's less than 4 MB on Geocities, but I'd rather have Wikipedia.
Though there doesn't seem to be a huge difference in practice between "youtuber" and "television presenter" other than the broadcast medium. One thing that youtube adds to television is an easy way to interact directly with viewers.
I find it pretty inspiring that we live in a time where someone who really loves doing, like, aerial yoga can reasonably make doing aerial yoga their job just by learning how to edit videos and engaging with other people who are also into that thing.