At the start of 2022, UCTV reached a major milestone with the acquisition of our one-millionth YouTube subscriber. For weeks and then days (and then hours) beforehand, we eagerly checked our channel’s latest subscriber numbers, waiting for the day to finally arrive. Then, on January 23rd, we made it. After contributing educational content to the platform for over a decade, YouTube awarded UCTV the coveted Gold Creator Award, which we unboxed in a small ceremony among friends and coworkers.
Like many YouTube success stories, UCTV’s began in the platform’s earliest days. In 2006, UCTV partnered with Google Video to become the largest provider of educational content on its platform with 1,000 hours of video – all of which migrated to YouTube after Google acquired it later that year. In 2008, YouTube awarded UCTV an “original channel” slot, setting the stage for its upward trajectory.
Remember when YouTube videos were limited to 10 minutes? In addition to being one of YouTube’s first educational channels, we were also one of the first allowed to provide long-form content. Would viewers be interested in lectures, documentaries, and research symposia that lasted 30, 60, even 90 minutes? Would people watch videos that provided niche medical and scientific information? How about deep-dive discussions among experts on everything from poetry to politics, world history to world music… and more? The answer was a resounding Yes!
It has been a wild, wonderful, and sometimes surprising ride. Who would have guessed that a detailed lecture on the dangers of sugar would be one of our most popular videos? Or that so many people were interested in cataract surgery? Or clutter? In March 2020, we suspected people wanted more in-depth information about the new and surging COVID-19 virus, but we didn’t expect a 90-minute discussion among a handful of distinguished biology professors to earn over 400,000 views in its first 2 weeks.
What we’ve seen again and again, is that people are hungry for unique, in-depth knowledge. They want to hear enlightening interviews with artists and writers and watch inspirational dance and musical performances. People are curious about what experts have to say about the state of the world today, and they long for comprehensive information about the issues that matter to them.
In response, UCTV has uploaded nearly 10,000 videos that have reached millions of people across the globe. Thank you so much for being a part of our success story and for helping us to achieve our goal of distributing this terrific content, worldwide. We truly couldn’t have done it without you. (And if you haven’t already, check out the short YouTube video of our unboxing ceremony… and subscribe!)