I like to keep across comedy news. Partly because I’m a huge fan and partly because I like to try and keep myself in check, by not being TOO overly enthusiastic about Mr C’s accomplishments. Keep some perspective in relation to what others are doing and try to get an angle on what releases / platforms seem to deliver the best results.

Looking at Fackham Hall, for example – at the UK box office it took $1,931,306. Compare that to James Acaster releasing his documentary Cinemagoers Welcome (6 weeks ago) and the BFI site says it’s taken £116,567 (to April 12^th). I don’t know whether it’s planned to be moved to VOD but I’ve not seen it on any charts (and I look at lots) and I also don’t know whether those numbers are a reflection of the draw of the comedian – or the subject matter not being a good fit for cinema. Or both.

I’m just interested in how, as linear TV dies off, people are diversifying into trying all kinds of different formats. Even Ant and Dec have moved into podcasting (see here).

What drove me to do a quick look at YouTube figures this week was that Ricky Gervais started posting “live to camera” videos on March 11^th (see here). It’s been a while since I listened to the first one but I vaguely remember him saying he was considering using it as a communication method, instead of X.

As of today, the 5 videos posted have garnered 343,000 views. In the past he’s focussed more on X / Instagram posts and this is kind of reflected by his YouTube channel only having 715,771 subscribers.

My last look at YouTube Subs / Views was February 23^rd (here). Earlier statistics related posts had a lot of caveats and explanations on them that were getting repetitious. To improve efficiency, I’ve moved all of that text to a Reporting page (hidden from search engines) so that I can link to it from within posts.

If you want to know more about why some comedians are not included in reports, how I gather the data, which I stated with 100+ names and am now down to only 29…then see here.

Just a reminder that Jimmy’s numbers are across his 5 channels as they are all posting content and much of it is unique to each one.

Usual thing – Gold is Top 3 Brits, Blue is Top 3 for USA / India.

Most Videos

Nothing much to say here other than – WOW. Looks who posts the most. And by one heck of a margin.

Most Subscribers

Highlights from the below:

• Variance column shows growth in a little under 1 month
• Jimmy has now drifted over the cumulative 2m total
• Jimmy is #1 of Brit comedians, half a million above Russell Howard at #2
• Gervais, McIntyre and Kay are down at positions #19 and below
• Jimmy’s accounts have gained 36,942 followers in a month. All the other Brits combined have only added 27,877 (to put that number into perspective).
• Jimmy has some way to go to catch up Andrew Schulz, but that channel has lost -12,516 since January.
• Jack Whitehall was down to 1,300,430 in Jan, regained some ground and then dropped to 1,300,507 again in March. Not sure what is going on there.

Most Views

The views totals are a similar story to Subs – with Jimmy #1 Brit, Russell #2 and Jack #3.

If we look at the order sorted by growth this month – Jimmy storms into 2^nd place, overall, with over 46m.

The Brit at #2 is Sarah Millican and that’s only with a relatively teeny 5m. Mind boggling numbers.

What’s interesting is comparing the views growth number of Jimmy / Matt Rife, since January:

• Matt – 72,899,545
• Jimmy – 152,165,382 – more than double