Ranking Taskmaster Contestants Solely Based on YouTube Views

I stumbled upon this while scanning through the videos on the Taskmaster YouTube channel.

Thusfar, 31 contestants have received their own Best Moments video (well, the ones I was able to find). Here’s all of them listed based on the number of views.

That’s… weird. Well, obviously I shouldn’t make too much of this even if Sally Phillips has 83,000 views, while James Acaster has 3,200,000. This is still interesting. Why the difference?

James Acaster was actually the first contestant to receive their own video, so they might have had an idea that he is a draw. Because I’m not in Britain, I couldn’t tell you how popular he is there, but apparently he is popular with the YouTube audience if nothing else. If we look at the average viewers of the show on TV, the ratings did get an almost 50% jump from the previous series (meaning from sixth to the seventh) and while the viewership did again grow on the next series, the jump wasn’t nearly as high.

Of course, this is the world of YouTube, not the “real world”. You never know what gets promoted by the algorithm and it’s possible that the team (or whoever controls the channel) knew he would be a good choice based on existing data. Bob Mortimer was the second video and is also second on the list.

I bet Sally Phillips would be popular among this audience, if people actually knew her approach to the tasks, but her video is the least watched. I can see how Frank Skinner is on the lower end as well, because of his age and appeal to an older audience which might not be present present in YouTube, so perhaps Phillips also has similar detriments, even if in my mind she should work for the younger audience much better. Weirdly, Bob Mortimer is the second most popular and he is from an older generation (and his views are around a third of Acaster’s). (I bet if you enjoy Bob’s work, you’d enjoy Phillips’s as well.)

Of course, you can also argue that being the first two Best Moments videos, Acaster and Mortimer have had more time to gain views, but on the other hand, subscriptions have also risen fast, so the newer videos should reach more people at least upon premiering.

In the end, I don’t think this means much, but I did find it intriguing and perhaps this does tell you something about… something.

… and just to help Sally out just a bit (although my audience won’t make any kind of dent on this):

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