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Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

This guy is an amazing content creator why doesn't the BBC pick him up?

There's a guy called 'Captain Disillusion' or something like that who makes these amazing shows about visual effects that remind me of some of the scientific programming on CBC when I was younger. Why don't they pick him up? His 1-man show is better than most of their expensive content.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Disillusion

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It's entirely possible they wouldn't be interested. The successful youtube channels can easily pull in more than they would be paid on the BBC, and they would have less control over what they are creating. (For an example who have explicitly talked about this: the people behind the Corridor Digital channel recently got very close to signing a deal to produce a film with a traditional hollywood source, but decided against it to go their own way independently)

That makes sense, but that gives him a lot of leverage.

He can get a fat cheque, with a big production team and set his own terms if he's in a position to do it.

Or - he can literally make the same stuff, but have it under BBC terms.

I feel there is something better than YouTube for these types of shows.

I think the jump between TT/YT and broadcast is too big.

I think that specifically for this type of show, YT is better in almost every way than broadcast TV. It has a much, much larger audience, they can reach an international audience, the creators have more direct control, they can use formats that just don't fit right into a TV schedule, they get direct feedback on the success of their shows instead of relying on market research and 5th hand accounts.

Assuming they are making good money, I really don't see an upside to moving the show to broadcast television.

The "assuming they are making good money" is an important phrase here. Unless they are doing livestreaming, where they can make quite a bit of money on "Superchats" and memberships with a smaller audience, or have a 3rd party money making tool like Patreon, with members only content, you need to have a very large view count to get enough money on just Ad revenue.

Though I completely agree with what you are saying as whole, being picked up for television could be a bad thing for content creator. If they can manage an audience and can work out ways to monetize not just on Ad revenue that can be a lot better in the long run.

They have put together separate service - nebula

I'm not sure his audience is that big. Cable TV audiences are big and consistent, and they bring big advertising dollars. I'm not sure if 1.5M views is that much.

When a network backs you, the advertising, promotion, reach is substantial.

Just because someone is on YouTube and theoretically 'anyone' can see him is not actually material reach.

When you're making a BBC/Sky show, that opens up doors to significantly more places, whereas today he's just 'some youtuber' which is nice, but it's not big.

And of course follow on deals and residuals.

For example: he gets booked on the Talk Show circuit, BBC interview circuit, his profile is raised. He maybe can get access to CERN, or the Moscow Ballet or whatever, things like that.

The various auto enthusiast shows from the UK are massive. Those hosts make a lot of money.

Tom Scott had a TV career I think? I doubt he'd be interested in taking it up again, seeing that he does quite well for himself on youtube.

This video by Captain Disillusion [1] and this bonus clip [2] seems worth mentioning in this thread.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO3JgPUJ6iQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=807rSw8wyGA

For a long time I thought Tom was from BBC. He speaks so well and the things he speaks are so well thought out.

He also very explicitly says to not blindly trust everything he says, because he does make mistakes. While he does try to correct mistakes when he becomes aware of them, nobody's perfect.

I wish more people would be so aware of their own flaws and foibles.

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