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Comment by michaelbuckbee | Hacker News Reader

If you want to see a really crisp example of this it's with food shows.

Look at this disparity:

"In 2015, more than 400,000 people on average are watching Food Network at some point during the day." [1]

Then check out Nerdy Nummies (a YT channel I found out b/c my 6yo loves it). [2] which is regularly breaking 1M views per episode, has 8+Million subscribers and lifetime has generated 1,949,110,170 views for YouTube [3]

And all of those numbers in a demographic that doesn't even realize the Food Network exists, with a pittance of the resources, no outside marketing and compensated a fraction as well.

1 - http://brandongaille.com/40-captivating-food-network-demogra...

2 - https://www.youtube.com/user/RosannaPansino

3 - https://www.youtube.com/user/RosannaPansino/about

View on HN

Even the more niche creators are getting pretty good attention, I've been watching Binging With Babish [1] and he recreates dishes seen on movies and tv shows. They taste bad mostly so he fixes them. Has been getting good amount of views consistently.

1 - https://www.youtube.com/user/bgfilms/videos

A great example. He has a Patreon [1] that's making him $6k / month as he's getting pretty near 1M views per video.

1 - https://www.patreon.com/bingingwithbabish

My wife and I have stopped watching food/travel shows. Instead, we just put on some of our favorite food channels on YouTube - like FoodRanger (Trevor James) or Migrationology (Mark Wiens).

I don't even get what TV channels are doing anymore. Trevor James' video on street food in Mumbai has around 8.5M views. He is also awkwardly affable and a great, gracious host.

Why aren't TV execs giving people like him TV deals is beyond me.

Here, you have a guy who has nearly 700,000 subscribers, is fun to watch and averages over a million views for each video...and you hire some no-name moron to host your TV travel shows instead?

Thanks a lot. Trevor James was fantastic! Do you have more recommendations?

Try the StrictlyDumpling channel for Japanese and Chinese food

I'm a big fan of Hellthy Junk Food.

Maybe these people do get offers but prefer to work on their own schedules and without cumbersome contracts.

If you were making really good money making youtube videos, why would you want to sign on with food network (who probably demands things like good behavior clauses and stuff in their contracts), have to shoot a real tv show on the networks schedule, doing reshoots and promotional events, etc at the beck and call of some executive?

I absolutely agree that these youtubers are underpaid for the value that they create/the audiences they have accumulated; im just not as surprised that we arent seeing them convert into tv and movie personalities

> If you were making really good money making youtube videos, why would you want to sign on with food network

because they'd pay you even better money!

> because they'd pay you even better money!

That's assuming money matters :-)

Often people who are running their own world and in control of their own destiny are happy to stay that way regardless of better money.

How "valuable" is a viewer of YouTube channel like that versus a viewer of the food network. For example, I've heard that many viewers of various toy unboxing videos are young children. I can't imagine most advertisers want to pay money only to have their ad viewed by somebody with basically no disposable income.

Edit: My comment was not about advertising to children directly. I was using that as an example. I'm not sure if a view on YouTube has the same value as a view in more traditional media (e.g. Television).

You don't think advertisers want to market to children? I hope this was sarcasm and I'm just missing the joke.

Have you walked down the cereal aisle in a grocery store?

Have you seen YouTube advertisements? Half the time the ad has nothing to do with the video. I've seen ads for cement mix in front of video game videos.

If I want to advertise my stand mixer, I don't want to have to pay when my ad is seen by a 5 year old just because a video about gummy bears was tagged "culinary."

I understand advertisers want to "get 'em while they're young" and want children to pester their parents to buy things, but 2 million views from children is not the same thing as 2 million views from the 18-35 bracket.

I think Youtube advertisements are very targeted toward you, and not necessarily relevant to the video. Google uses the information it has on you and plays the products that have paid the most for your demographic from what I understand.

My 3-year-old illiterate child keeps saying "skip" and pounding the skip button until it becomes available, every time he sees an YouTube add.

Hypothesis: maybe they're all like that?

(I do limit and monitor his YouTube use)

Considering just how susceptible children are to advertising brainwashing, you might shed the guilt of skirting video ads on YouTube by installing an ad blocker (ex: uBlock Origin). Morality of blocking ads aside, I wouldn't want my children watching the number of pre-roll ads that YouTube pushes out. As a side effect, your child won't spend an hour a week clicking a skip button, or sitting though the ads that aren't even skippable.

yes but I would argue that product endorsements and advertising to young impressionable minds is extremely valuable.

The example I'd like to highlight is the success Apple gained through placing Macs everywhere in education. Students almost certainly cannot afford these machines but everyone has one and that's better marketing than anything else.

I'm guessing by this comment that you don't have children? Kids are great customers. They are impulsive and buy into whatever flashy thing is on the TV or the current toy their friend has they must have too. The money flows from the pocket of mom, dad, grandparents, and other adult family members directly into junk for the kids. The kids are then bored of hot new toy X after a week and the cycle repeats.

The toy unboxing channels exist entirely because they are so effective for attracting advertisers. Those weird 'Spiderman vs. pregnant Elsa' style videos are so popular for the same reason. Kids are perhaps the most valuable demographic for Youtube.

All in all I get the impression that Youtube had difficulty commanding the kind of money that TV advertisements generate, even before the recent ad crisis.

Is there any practical/economic reason why mainstream TV channels aren't broadcasting episodes from such creators?

I mean, there's a bunch of hassle and negotiations to organize licencing, but that's kind of what these organizations know how to do.

The content is so different in terms of format and length.

Well, 400,000 viewers on average over 24 hours translates into 9.6 mil unique viewers a day (I estimated a standard Food Network show to run at 60 minutes, hence the 24 hour multiplier). Miltiplied by 365 days that translates into 3.5 bil annual views. Not lifetime, just annual.

And that's just the US Food Network before international syndication rights (as well as rebroadcasting rights through venues like YouTube or cable channel's on-demand), so a relatively clean and monetizable demographics.

It doesn't say 400,000 viewers per hour. Rather, it could be interpreted to say that an average day has a maximum peak viewership of 400,000.

The _on average_ was across days -> that on a typical day maybe 400,000 unique viewers have watched something on Food Network.

Not surprised, considering the producer is HuskyStarcraft, and Rosanna isn't exactly "slacking off" herself. Basically what should be considered the benchmark for high production value on both ends.

If you were to make a food show worth mentioning, your standard for a presenter and production should be no lower. Take that with a different format, food, and possibly a theme and I'd say "general success" for one or two people to make a normal, middle class living is attainable.

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