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Major media companies are making big moves in the U.S. Top 50, but the top channel in the chart belongs to a company operated by an ubiquitous individual creator. The firm in question is MrBeast, LLC, which hauled in more than a billion views on its primary YouTube channel to finish first in the U.S. ranking.
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MrBeast tries to appeal to viewers regardless of their political persuasions, but bigger media operations are targeting siloed viewers on either side of the aisle. Here are two case studies to show what I mean:
Live from YouTube, it’s Saturday night!
The sketch comedy special that celebrated Saturday Night Live‘s 50th anniversary got a lot of viewership on NBC and Peacock as well as a lot of post-viewing discussion on the internet. The reactions to the star-studded spectacular have drawn a lot of new viewers to the official SNL YouTube channel, which just returned to the U.S. Top 50.
SNL has made it into our rankings before, and the star who brought it there before also provided a big boost for the 50th-anniversary special. All of the sketches from the show can be found on the official digital home of the Not Ready For Primetime Players, and one of the bits receiving the most attention is a star-studded edition of “Close Encounter,” which puts Kate McKinnon front and center as a filter-free woman who experienced an alien abduction.
YouTube viewers love to watch McKinnon do her thing, which is why the SNL 50 Close Encounter sketch has received more than 6.5 million views on the platform thus far. Of course, that bit was one part of a flurry of YouTube traffic that brought the official SNL channel up to 38th place in the U.S. Top 50. The venerable sketch show probably won’t repeat its 109.5 million weekly views seven days from now, but may the 60th anniversary special will be even bigger.
What about the rest of America? SNL has long been perceived as having a liberal bias, even if that may not be true. But if conservatives aren’t tuning in to watch ridiculous punchlines from the woman who portrayed Hillary Clinton, what are they watching?
Yup, you got it, it’s Fox News. The main right-wing news source in America enjoyed a viewership spike around the time of the 2024 presidential election, and it is still going strong more than a month into Trump’s second term.
It would seem that politics are informing viewership decisions for a lot of Americans, personally, I would rather watch Meryl Streep portray Kate McKinnon’s mom than take in a histrionic news report, but to each their own.
Channel Distribution
This week, there are 35 YouTube Shorts channels in the U.S. Top 50.
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