That said, gun media is unkillable. I believe I heard gun magazines have been far more resilient than other print media and I believe it. There is demand and it is an industry familiar with being hated and tampered with.
Guns and American Handgunner just killed their physical magazines recently, American Riflemen switched to quarterly printing, that’s just off the top of my head. They may or may not be more resilient than some other print media, but the future of print media in general is beyond bleak.
I would venture subscription magazines, online or print, are living off of older subscribers that are going to keep diminishing.
I personally don’t believe there is much a demand for 85% of online gun content, frankly, just because most of it is the same ground covered over and over and over.
The true valuable information is in the niche forums, and even those are at least 50% garbage.
Reviews are good, if you can trust it’s not bought and paid for.
Hickok45 seems like a nice guy, but how many more videos of him shooting can he make, what’s new there? Ian seems like a nice guy, how many more obscure guns can he find that people want to watch?
YouTube fans can probably be broken into true diehards, casual, and algorithm. The diehards will follow the channel off platform wherever it goes - the harsh reality of why off platform hasn’t worked in the past is that the channels do not have the die hard fan count they think/wish they had.
This is obviously just my opinion, but I don’t know how else it could be interpreted at the end of the day.
I think back to network tv - moving a new show around the time slots was a death knell, couldn’t build an audience. But move Seinfeld to a new time slot after, say, season 2 or 3, its fans would find it.
I want as much good gun media as possible out there, more people enjoying shooting can only help strengthen support for the 2nd amendment, so I hope I’m wrong and there’s some sort of leverage over YouTube and the shit they do to you guys