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Five different YouTube channels got at least one billion weekly views during the second week of December. Only one channel, however, eclipsed the two-billion mark: CoComelon topped our ranking after collecting 2.14 billion weekly views.
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Overall, it was a competitive week in the Global Top 50. Channels needed to snag at least 300 million weekly views to crack the ranking, and the easiest way to reach that number is through YouTube Shorts. Creators are learning to keep it short and sweet — here are some of the trends they’re following:
The rural life is getting big city-level viewership on YouTube
For many families, Hallmark Christmas movies are integral to the holiday season. If you’ve seen one of those flicks, you’ve seen them all: The typical plot involves a high-achieving city slicker who ventures out to the sticks, where they discover a humble way of life that conveys the magic of Christmas. It’s a tale as old as time (or at least as old as 2009, when Hallmark introduced its “Countdown to Christmas” branding).
Hallmark Christmas movies might not get a ton of play on YouTube, but the central thematic ideas shared by those films have inspired some of the biggest channels on the platform. If the latest traffic figures are to be believed, YouTube Shorts viewers have become infatuated with the pace, industriousness, and natural beauty of rural living — and they’re willing to travel across the world to witness that lifestyle.
CY is one channel delivering the bucolic scenes viewers desire. The Indonesian hub describes itself as a font of “rural moments” that depict “authentic farm life.” That focus touches popular categories like cooking and DIY, but most CY viewers seem to be showing up to witness farm machinery in action. The most-watched short-form uploads on the channel all feature the heavy equipment that supports the farming profession — and it just so happens that a lot of those tools are very satisfying to watch.
CY only has a little more than 400,000 subscribers, but even if its base audience is lower than most of the other channels in the Top 50, it is outranking nearly one-third of them. The Indonesian channel collected 363.6 million weekly views to reach 35th place in the Global Top 50. Its lifetime view count is above 1.8 billion — a far bigger number than the population of the rural areas it depicts.
The Global Top 50 is still dominated by South Asian family channels, but even those hubs are using rurality as a way to draw in new viewers. One notable example is RYT Anisha Gamer, an Indian channel that finished 32nd in the latest Global Top 50. RYT Anisha Gamer has pushed its lifetime view count above one billion by combining two dependable short-form subjects: Cute kids and rural builds.
Data via Gospel Stats
This is one of those chicken-or-egg situations. It may be true that Indian family channels are favoring rural settings because viewers have indicated that they prefer that background to a more urban environment. At the same time, some of these creators are part of a shift that is bringing YouTube culture out of the cities and into the countryside.
That phenomenon has turned rural Indian villages into YouTube production hotspots. There’s no evidence that the trend will slow down, as long as farmers continue to have access to oddly satisfying equipment.
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
- India: 21
- United States: 10
- Australia and Indonesia: 2
- Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, Pakistan, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and United Kingdom: 1
This week, 39 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
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