Man City's YouTube channel just hit 1 million subscribers, "making this season's Premier League trailblazers the first English club to reach the milestone," according to Simon Gwynn of CAMPAIGN LIVE. Man City is, "in fact, as far ahead on Google’s video platform" as it currently is in the Premier League. Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool each have around 700,000 followers, while Tottenham is a "long way behind" with 200,000. ManU, meanwhile, does not have an official YouTube presence, "but fan channel FullTimeDevils is at almost 400,000." Most of the other EPL clubs, meanwhile, "have followings under 100,000." Head of CityTV & Social Media Michael Russell said that "a lot of the success of the channel’s content" is thanks to a way of thinking he learned "while working on reality TV behemoth Big Brother at production company Endemol." He said that when the City channel started, the approach "was conventional: slick and tightly edited." But Russell found that in the process of editing, "we were taking out all the good stuff," meaning the "kind of content that Big Brother thrives on: people doing nothing that seems very interesting, on the surface." Russell said, "We changed our strategy completely and decided to bring a bit of a reality look and feel to what we’re doing. We made a decision very quickly, that all the stuff that would hit the cutting room floor, should be kept." One "example of this approach is Tunnel Cam," a video shot in the players' tunnel at every domestic home game and that typically runs for 12 to 15 minutes. Russell: "The first time we ever did that I stood in the tunnel and filmed everything we did there. I thought some of the stuff that happens in here is just gold and people should see this" (CAMPAIGN LIVE, 11/3).
