THIS WEEKEND WILL BE AWFUL (FOR ME)

Hello, gang.

Quick Tuesday update about the channel.

Hopefully, there should be some sort of video this week, even if it’s just for Patrons only. It might just be a bit of fun, as we’re also putting together one of our epics, as well as a shorter video about a lighter subject that fascinates me.  We’ll also likely film something this weekend at the Teletext Block Party. 

Don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but my old boss is going to be there. Yes. I am shitting myself, thanks for asking. Come along and watch me die as he’s inevitably asked about me and Mr Hairs being troublemakers, while I’m in the fricking room with him.

Yeah. Can’t wait for that.

THE EPIC

We want to get the epic right, as we both think it’s going to be something special. The story is INSANE, and we want to do it justice with the best presentation we can. It’ll kind of be Part 3 of our unofficial “Illuminati Trilogy”.

I recorded some stuff for it at the end of last week, but we also need to head out to film on location, as well as shoot a few other cutaway moments at home. It’s probably our most involved, most heavily researched, video yet – but we’ve also structured it in such a way that there’s a ton of us just arsing around being us.

We’ve also kind of tweaked the YouTube channel layout. The old videos are now unlisted, but you can still find them all in playlists at the bottom of the channel. We’ve not deleted anything – god forbid - but… given we’ve sort of gone in a new direction, and we’ve been studying the analytics, it’s clear the channel’s remit was confusing some newer people.

This isn’t in any way disowning the old desk videos. It’s purely about giving the channel its best chance, and not to confuse potential new viewers with what we’re about. We’ve never, since the Digi Channel started, bothered trying to grow it.

We were happy with our audience as it was, but the Milton Keynes video going viral(ish) showed that it is possible with our out-and-about vids, so we at least want to try. We want to improve, and we want to get better at balancing Digi humour with Digi factoids.

We've not had a "big" attention-grabbing topic for a while, but the new videos are continuing to do better than the old ones - generally, even the lower ones, about twice as many views. They're continuing to grow the channel for us, and other metrics are up across the board. I just want to keep exploring ways to perfect the format, so that all of what Digi is can come through.

Weirdly, strong back catalogue performers recently have been the Pluckley and Sellafield videos, so we see the vids as evergreen.

HOMOGENITY

I’ve also cancelled my VidIQ account. It was leaving me confused, it was making me doubt myself and second-guess everything, so we decided to knock it on the head and go back to trusting our gut more.

I learned some useful stuff from it – and Sanja has been doing a deep, deep dive into thumbnails, titles, and all that to help our videos get pushed out - but broadly I don’t feel VidIq dramatically helped us.

 I’ve said it before, but I can’t stand how it basically encourages “creators” to steal ideas and formats from other “creators”. There’s no room for creativity, just endless, recycled, homogeneity.

They encourage everyone to drill down into a very narrow niche – which, yes, there’s good reason why that can be successful – but I still want to have the freedom of a fairly broad niche, and not get too locked into covering just one topic.

We built up a loyal audience – that’s you! – by banging our own drum, and we want to keep going with that. If that limits how big we can grow, then so be it!

Anyway. Sorry, Sanja. Will be back soon with a less boring update.

Paul