Each month, our partner Visible Measures compiles a list of the top ten most popular web video series, and we share those results with you and provide analysis.
In January, the threshold for entry into the list was the highest it’s ever been, but viewership for the top 10 shows dropped 26% as compared to the record-breaking month of December.
If you’ve been keeping track in previous months, you won’t be surprised to see that Fred and Happy Tree Friends have again topped the list. Also notable: CollegeHumor and video game-themed shows collectively took up half the list. There weren’t any new series on the list in January, but a couple that dropped off in the past made a comeback. We also learned that the majority of viewers for the top 10 shows were male.
Here’s the complete chart with video clips included for each series. We provide some deeper analysis below.
The Most-Watched Webisodes of January
| Rank | Last Week's Rank | Title | Studio | Genre | Current Week's Views*
| % Change in Views** | Watch |
1 | 1 | Fred | NA | Comedy | 24,719,556 | -28% | |
2 | 2 | Happy Tree Friends | MondoMedia | Animation | 17,697,316 | -15% | |
3 | 4 | Smosh | Deca TV | Comedy, Sketch | 13,151,356 | 13% | |
4 | 5 | The Station | The Station | Comedy | 4,317,575 | -24% | |
5 | Back On Chart | POV | CollegeHumor | Comedy | 4,146,733 | Back On Chart | |
6 | 10 | Hardly Working | CollegeHumor | Comedy | 3,562,906 | 32% | |
7 | 9 | Jake & Amir | CollegeHumor | Comedy, Sketch | 3,275,001 | 6% | |
8 | Back On Chart | Red Vs Blue | Rooster Teeth | Animation, Comedy | 3,224,802 | Back On Chart | |
9 | 8 | The Guild | NA | Comedy, Gaming | 3,209,027 | -17% | |
10 | 7 | Key Of Awesome | Next New Networks | Comedy, Music | 3,150,905 | -39% | |
Source: Visible Measures
Consistently On Top: Fred
The teenager with the high-pitched voice has topped the list again, and he managed to do it even though he only put out one new video in January. That new episode garnered 1.7 million views, so the rest of the 24.7 million were all thanks to old content that people are still discovering or re-watching.
You can’t fault Fred completely for dropping from his December high of 34.2 million views; he didn’t have topical holiday content to work with this time. It’s still impressive that a 16-year old actor with a webcam is beating each and every show from web TV networks like Next New Networks and CollegeHumor.
CollegeHumor's Mark Is Hard To Miss
CollegeHumor is straight up mainstream now thanks to two cable TV deals in the works with MTV, and its online performance is as impressive as ever. It’s the only network with three series on the list — POV, Hardly Working, and Jake & Amir. They’ve all appeared on the list before, and together they racked up just shy of 11 million views.<./p>
All three of these CollegeHumor series saw growth since last month; POV didn’t appear on the December chart at all, but now it’s back. Hardly Working is actually working hard; it cranked out several new videos in January and grew 32% as compared to last month. Jack & Amir experienced a modest 6% growth.
We mentioned earlier that the majority of top 10 show viewers are male; it’s interesting to note that Fred has the highest ratio of female viewers at 45%.
The Guild And Red Vs. Blue: The Gamer Niche
Video game-themed programming has always been a significant genre in web TV. Because web series are usually cheaper to produce and viewership expectations are lower than would be the case with over-the-air shows, web series find it advantageous to serve a deep and narrow niche. Gamers are a great audience because there are just enough of them, and because they have their own dedicated ecosystem of social media and blogs to spread the word.
The Guild and Red Vs. Blue aren’t performing as well as they used to, but the gamer audience is still obviously alive and well since these gamer shows take up two of the top 10 spots. Red Vs. Blue just started airing new content, so it returned to the list after a hiatus. Conversely, The Guild is off-season so its numbers have declined.
A greater portion of Red Vs. Blue’s audience is male than any other show on the list. That should be no surprise since the series is based on the science fiction action shooter Halo.
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The data used for the Top 10 Webisodes Chart was sourced from Visible Measures
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Samuel Axon is a Staff Writer at Mashable. You can read the original post here.
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