New Rockstars

Been a fan of New Rockstars for a while now. Enjoy the channel, miss MT. It is predominantly a movie review and Easter egg Youtube channel and does well- with the most viewed video being 15 million views and average around the 100k-1 million views- which is a bit of a range.

Some stats (as of 2024):

3.3k videos
4.6 million subs
tons of social interaction with Reddit being the main base (apart from obvious Youtube main channel)

The positives of New Rockstars

Now this is from our perspective and we don't know the ins and outs of whats happening behind the scene. We also want to be nice and offer potential help rather than just be negative. So what is going for New Rockstars.

There is passion in their work. With some videos Erik can be emotional and quite passionate about what is being said. This is a positive because there are some commentators who drone on and on. They don't have that fire to their material
It has a difficult job to do. There are a lot of channels that offer very similar content and the playing field for a lot of content is very flat. To come up with content and to be "liked" or to be "better" is very hard to do.
They are good by themselves but when you add some collab sauce then you see some magic. MT and Erik was great. Jessica when she gets going and on a roll can be great fun. Generally she just seems very down to Earth and having fun in what she does and that is very much welcomed.
There is detail in those Easter eggs. More so than some channels, but detail around the actual eggs can be quite fascinating. The huge MT crafted Infinity Stone explanation is something that really works and explains this point. Now condense this video to small Easter eggs and you get what we mean:

They have a merch store and those merch items can be pretty cool
Sometimes they give shout outs to other channels in the same space

Now with all this, it should be a trailblazing channel with tons of views per video. It does in some aspects but a lot of the videos hover in the hundreds of thousands of views which is odd for the amount of subs.

When you have a look at similar channels, they have the same issue. This recurring issue is what is wrong with New Rockstars.

What is wrong with New Rockstars?

Remember that "wrong" is a matter of opinion. Having hundreds of thousands of views per video is a good thing in anyones book. What we are suggesting is the New Rockstars could actually do better with what it has.

MT. When MT and Erik were together it was fun. You were experiencing the comedian and the striaghtman working together. When the straightman gave it back it was fun. This is repeated in this article because when you build content for a very level playing field there has to be something to differentiate yourself from competitors. And other channels are friends but, in the light of day, they are competitors. The flipside to this is if the group dynamic doesn't work or doesn't gel. Erik and Tommy don't do it for us. 2 comedians are OK but Tommy is just not fun in the position, it doesn't seem to come off well. For us, we don't watch those videos because they aren't fun. When you put a split screen on and just talking with no background then the video is boring. I understand that Tommy is present to be the main WookieLeaks person to give the videos some credibility- which is a great idea, also brings over a new audience. But the chemistry just doesn't go, for us.
Erik. I think Erik is great fun, a good host and a cornerstone to New Rockstars. Should he be in most of the videos? Maybe...but probably not. I see him as a Ryan Seacrest character- a host who then passes along the torch to others to do their thing. So you have Erik and Tommy with WookieLeaks/ New Rockstars. Deep Dive with Erik. Main channel with Erik. Breakroom with Erik. Erik is cool, but ease up on the use. Have Erik on the main channel- throwing over short intro sessions to the other channel hosts. Some interaction here. In one video it was noted that he had time off because he was tired. Really, you don't say.
What is the channel content. Now this was the one we were undecided about. Was it comic book movies- no. Was it movies in general? No. Nerd movies? Hate the term nerd, so no. We could not generate an accurate description of New Rockstars. On their Youtube site? "break down movies & shows from Marvel, Star Wars, DC, Godzilla, Game of Thrones, The Boys, Invincible, Stranger Things, Dune, and other beloved nerdy fandoms!". So nerd..urggh. It seems a mix of genres and audience. There's also Planet Of The Apes, Civil War and Fall Guy...so more mainstream? So do we know that DC audience will like Game Of Thrones? Maybe, maybe not. Which then flips us to the next point:
Who is the audience? We will watch New Rockstars when they talk about movies we have watched and same goes for their other channel- Deep Dive (which is a cool idea). However, some of the other videos have already been talked about on the main channel so going over to say WookieLeaks doesn't really do anything for us. And when you look at the views they are coming from people who want to know about Easter eggs of new trailers and of movies of important movies. But the audience that goes to New Rockstars is probably the same audience that goes to other very similar channels. We would also assume that the audience does what we do- wait for a movie that they like to appear and then watch it. It can only be the way when you have 4 million subs and 80k views on some videos.
News. If it wants to be a movie news channel (which I am unsure what it wants) why don't we have a weekly roll up of movie news. Or how about what happened today news? Here is E! and their news (2 millions subs) for the past 24 hours:

4 videos within 24 hours stating the news of the day. Average 40k views in the day. Now these could also be shorts (they are only roughly 2 mins on Youtube). You can put up different news items and see which one generates the most interest- more future content without indepth videos :)

It seems like the new, anticipated or welknown breakdowns and news articles get the most views.

Blog. I have tried looking for the blog but can't find it anywhere. Now it may be hidden somewhere but having some grounded online base would be a cool idea. Some people might not want to go on Reddit to interact. Sometimes people just need one place to check on bios, background, info etc.
Merch. Now the merch idea is great. But unsure why NerdRiot is promoted. Now they might be hosting your merch (with other similar channels) but wouldn't it be better to have a redirect from New Rockstars.com/ merch?
Subs. Now when someone bought merch they could say something and that info could be put on a video and you interact with the hosts. I am unsure if that is still there but more interaction is required. The subscribers have shown an interest in you and your channel so we are unsure why there aren't more subscriber interactions, giveaways.
Writers. There are tons of writers out there that do create good online content. Can you possibly hire one to do a collab for just one video? Maybe "test" different bloggers and have a sub channel within New Rockstars about their opinions of movies which you haven't got around to. It would be a nice way to introduce people to you. You get their audience, different perspectives and wider videos.
Interviews? Not that many channels of "niche" news do interviews. It might be hard, might be costly, but somewhere along the lines an interview would be a cool way to start to differentiate from other channels. This again could be in the weekly news segment or a bit on the movie/ series that is coming out. If you can't find the actors then the FX, Sound, Editors would be a cool catch and know a lot of behind the scenes stuff- it also promotes an under promoted groups of media stars. I believe that is how the extended cut of Justice League was found- the behind the scenes artists knew of its existence because they had worked on it!
Multi-channel? I am not sure about multichannel when it covers content similar to what is posted. New Rockstars Plus might be a nice one to cover the long interviews, reacts etc- with the edited version being on the main channel. I think if you are making a new channel then that has to be slightly related but not the same. So Deep Dive is nice (could be promoted more) but nothing has swayed us too much to check out the other channels. This is likely due to the fact that we know little of the other channels because it is not necessarily covered in the videos that we have watched. Also, there is that huge question of why. Why that channel? So for WookieLeaks NR we havent gone into that but we have looked at other StarWars channels. Reason? The videos came across more informative and not a (seemingly) random chat about what was seen. The format is different from what we are used to. But that is just us. Breakdowns seem to be a good viewer generator. Quick news bits - like a new version of Sneak Peak is cool.

New Rockstars

We find that New Rockstars needs to find some identity. It has tons of good ideas but those seem to be spread quite thin. If it wants to be a news channel then those bits of news need to be present on the main site- jumping around to people to get their comments.

Oh, and get a website or blog up and going- then you can collect email.

As always, we wish New Rockstars all the best.

Want to check out more online studies, click here. More articles and updates? Check out the Jasonera blog here.