From 20,000 Views To 4.5 Million: The Maury Povich Strategy

Holly is in charge of Maury Povich's new YouTube channel, On Par with Maury Povich.

I've been working with Maury for, I'd say, about 25 years. Maury, before starting the talk show and becoming a host, was a hardcore news journalist. He was at the fall of the Berlin Wall and covered MLK's speech on Washington, you know, covered Watergate. So I set out on this mission to create a new platform for him, bring him into the digital age. So On Par with Maury Povich was born.

She started with old episodes that were getting only 20,000 views.

While the old Maury Show was present, on YouTube, it was just that. It was the old show. It was clips. It wasn't anything that he was, you know, running. That was all done through NBC.

Then she came to our YouTube Mastermind and learned the real science of YouTube and has grown the channel to over 4.5 million views.

So really important for us that we didn't just want to copy and paste a legacy television format. We wanted this to feel vastly different. Television is changing. Everything, you know, streamers are sort of the new mainstream. Cable, the daytime TV brand, is nonexistent anymore. We took him over to YouTube and we literally used those same journalistic pillars that defined his early career. And it's been working for us.

She stopped guessing and started testing her thumbnails, titles, and formats.

When we started this, I knew nothing about YouTube. I was a television producer. So when I— to say I was like, you know, starting from scratch, I was truly, truly starting from scratch. And I had a legacy broadcast television icon, and I thought that the subscribers were just gonna come, you know, the numbers on the videos in season 1 should have been through the roof. You know, we weren't focusing on thumbnails or titles, none of that was even on the forefront of my mind. It was like, oh, we just want to put together a good interview, tape it, let's pop it up. Brandlytics allows you to, you know, re-hone in and fix the things that you maybe didn't know about the first time. Time around. And I think it's such like an awesome tool because it really has breathed new life into a lot of our existing content.

And in this presentation in our YouTube Mastermind group, she's sharing exactly how her small team created a massive digital show.

From that very small team from season 1, where literally it was probably just like 2 of us doing everything, we've grown tremendously. Right now we're at about 4.5 million plus views. The biggest thing when it comes to YouTube is Patience, right? Like, we all have to be patient. We all have to be vested to want to continue to evolve and try new things. And that can just be like a hard pill to swallow. But I think that is what really pays off when it comes to this digital space.

You'll learn how to boost your watch time by 2,300% and build a deeply loyal audience.

You really have to put the puzzle pieces together to figure out everything working the right way within each other. So that starts with, you know, obviously we have our interview, but then that's how are we going to formulate the perfect thumbnail? What is the graphic on that thumbnail going to look like? How does the title relate to said thumbnail? Once we were able to figure out that it is like this holistic, like connecting all of the dots, we started to see the trajectory change. And all of these things have increased our watch time by over 23%. 100%. Thank you guys. I'm so happy to be here. This is William. William is head of digital for On Par with Maury Povich. And yeah, we're so excited. This is our first mastermind. So I guess we'll start at the beginning. Let me tell you guys a little bit about, um, On Par with Maury Povich. So just kind of a brief background on myself. I've been working with Maury for, I'd say, about 25 years. And about 3 and a half years ago, the main original Maury show was coming to an end. And he took a little bit of time off. But during that timeframe where he had way too much time to just play golf all day, I came up with this idea, which was, I, you know, obviously had worked with him for so long, and I knew all these incredibly amazing stories that he would tell us. Maury, before starting the talk show and becoming a host, was, you know, a hardcore news journalist. He was at the forefront of really amazing historical events. He was at the fall of the Berlin Wall, and covered MLK's speech on Washington, you know, covered Watergate, was at Andrews Air Force Base when Jacqueline Kennedy came off that plane and, you know, her bloodied suit. And so all these incredible stories, I felt like nobody knew those things about Maury, right? So he wasn't gonna write a book. So I set out on this mission to create a new platform for him, bring him into the digital age, and create what was going to be a, really a living memoir where he could tell his own stories and experiences, take him full circle, back to where he began, which was journalism, which was his original first love, and actually be able to inflect his own stories this time around. So On Par with Maury Povich was born. All right, so we obviously were going to have to hit an entirely new digital format. While the old Maury Show was present on YouTube, it was just that. It was the old show, it was clips, it wasn't anything that he was, you know, running. That was all done through NBC. So we really set out on this grassroots mission to create this new digital format, um, where he was gonna be giving these in-depth interviews with iconic figures in pop culture and news. We launched at the end of last March. We are in season 2, and we're looking forward to coming back with season 3 in the fall. We just started working with Aida and Evan and the team, um, just this past December. So season 1 for us was really just about getting our feet wet, building out this new brand that was completely separate from the official Mauricio brand, and really just starting from scratch. And we were a very small team. So from that very small team, from season 1, where literally it was probably just like 2 of us doing everything, we've grown tremendously. Right now we're at about 4.5 million+ views. We are, you know, getting closer to 40K YouTube subscribers. And I wanna say that that's all organic. Like that community that we're building with those subscribers, it's all organic community that we've worked really hard to cultivate and give them, you know, the content and the footage that they wanna see and that they wanna come back week to week and engage with. Our average view duration is a little bit over the 12-minute mark and we have 327.5K watch hours. Thanks, guys. Way to make a gal feel special. So the why, you know, obviously, like I explained, you know, we wanted to take Maury back to his roots, okay? And it was really important that journalism was at the forefront of that. We wanted people to remember what really made Maury this icon in broadcasting to begin with. Um, so that was very important to us, and it was about creating a space that, you know, obviously took that as sort of our, you know, as the protocol and really just make it bigger and jump into what his core passion was with journalism. What are our pillars? What do we like to stick to when it comes to digital and when it comes to the content that we are putting out there? So really important for us that we didn't just want to copy and paste a legacy television format. We wanted this to feel vastly different. And obviously, I'm sure everybody's following like Television is changing. Everything, you know, streamers are sort of the new mainstream. Cable, the daytime TV brand, is nonexistent anymore. It was really important for us to figure out a way to take what made Maury Maury and take the things that I come from, that's the basis of, you know, my career, you know, I worked in television for 25+ years, but to figure out a different way to do it in this new format. And that's exactly what we did. So we took him over to YouTube and we literally used those same journalistic pillars that defined his early career. And it's been working for us. So the real-time digital memoir. That's what I love, I think, the most about this. Knowing Maury and seeing him in this format, you know, the old-school show of his was, you know, obviously there was high-stakes drama. We all know, "The results are in," you know. He's coined that phrase, and obviously he was reading, you know, a lot of different paternity results and cheating. But this, I wanted it to be very different. I wanted him to go deeper. I wanted people to see the side of him that not many people got to see, where he was able to really talk about himself, the things that his passions were, the things that he loved, you know, some of his different political views or some of his interests in terms of sports or golf, you know. He's got so many different interesting things about him, and it was really exciting to be able to bring all of those things to the forefront and allow him to discuss them with, you know, these iconic guests that he's sitting down with. So it's been truly a full circle moment. So one of our core themes, and I think, you know, obviously everybody figures out what works for them with their channel, right? We all have a different narrative or a different theme theme that we are running through our content. For us, it was the idea of second chapters. I hate the word reinvention. I think when you take a term and say, I'm reinventing myself, that means that you're forgetting the, you know, the who, who you really are, where you really came from, the things that have made you feel and think the way that you think today. So I don't like to use that word. I don't think that we've reinvented Maury in any way, but what we've gone on to do with the content that we're creating is show his next chapter, his, you know, second act, if you would. And so all of the interviews that he sits down with the guests are all based around that precipice for the guests as well. It's them and their second act. So for Don Lemon, it was, you know, starting his own independent news channel on YouTube, which is ridiculously successful. He's doing such an incredible job with it. But that theme of second acts runs true through all of our interviews, and it's really like what we like to hone in on, um, a page and the stories that we are telling.

One of the challenges we had early on was Maury and Holly wanted this to be a variety show, and we were trying to figure out, well, how do we build a central theme around an interview show where guests are going to be from all different types of backgrounds, different careers, and even different generations? And Inviting guests amid their second chapter really proved to be a winning strategy for us because so many people are doing really interesting things amongst this changing landscape that we're all a part of. Some things we specifically keyed on were the move from traditional news to independent YouTube-based news, especially with like Don Lemon, Aaron Parnas, Joy Taylor, or Joy Reid, sorry. And then also We found it worked really well with comedians because so many of them were going from kind of a traditional stand-up, really grueling schedule to finding more success through content on YouTube and social media. So that was kind of how we took this big wide landscape and were able to make a clear narrative about what the show was gonna be about.

And I think, you know, something else like important to note is that going into this, like I mentioned, obviously my background was in television and the landscape for television was changing. I saw that happening. I wanted to get ahead of the cusp. I saw the trends with content across YouTube, across social media, and how much that was playing into what media and essentially the stuff that everybody was consuming every day. And it was on such a large scale. So I wanted to get ahead of that. When we started this, I knew nothing about YouTube. I was a television producer. So to say I was starting from scratch, I was truly, truly starting from scratch. From scratch, and you know, we've only been doing this a little bit over a year, but I've learned so much, and one of the biggest things that I didn't realize is that, and I think a lot of people probably have this thought, is like, oh, you just put up a video on YouTube, and you just throw it up, and you can be like rich and successful, and it's gonna be this fabulous, amazing thing, super easy. There's no science behind it. We all know that that is a completely false thing, right? It's why we're all here, it's why we're all constantly learning, and it's why we've brought Mastermind into our lives. There is a science behind it. There is a learning curve and a process. You know, I had a legacy broadcast television icon, and I thought that the subscribers were just gonna come. You know, the numbers on the videos in season 1 should have been through the roof. Um, you know, we weren't focusing on thumbnails or titles. None of that was even on the forefront of my mind. It was like, "Oh, we just wanna put together a good interview." tape it, let's pop it up, right? But I very quickly learned that that was not going to be the case. And this is even with an incredible talent who had another page that has millions of subscribers, right? So we had to figure out how are we going to pivot? So while season 1 was getting our feet wet and sort of learning, you know, the, the juxta of the show, season 2 was about bringing, you know, Evan and his team on and Ida and how are we going to now implement the science behind YouTube to make us better. And I think something that we've probably all learned— I mean, I know that I have— is that it's a holistic approach, right? So you really have to put the puzzle pieces together to figure out everything working the right way within each other. So that starts with, you know, obviously we have our interview, but then that's how are we gonna formulate the perfect thumbnail? What is the graphic on that thumbnail going to look like? How does the title relate to said thumbnail, right? There's so many puzzle pieces to put together. And I think that once we were able to figure out that it is like this holistic, like connecting all of the dots, we started to see the trajectory change. So initially you can see January 2025. I mean, well, we hadn't even started to— we just made our page. We hadn't started to put out content. But early April when we finally did, I mean, you can see all of season 1 was just a kind of— I don't want to say a wash because nothing is. It's a learning process and you take from it. But it wasn't really until we debuted season 2, which was actually December 8th, and then really started working with Mastermind that you can see the trajectory completely change. But that was because we started to view it differently. We viewed it as a science and we were learning. And I think that's so important. Right? Here is, like, just some data to go through. So we have about a 12-minute, 17-second average view duration with 1.49 million views on long-form video content. Top-performing episodes, we have comedian Josh Johnson that had an AVD of 19:03, accounting for 90.4K watch hours. So we were really excited about that. Once you see it all sort of fit together and you see the trajectory of the changes, it's exciting, right? And this goes back to the point of the holistic— holistically putting everything together, like I was saying. So long-form content accounts for 33.1% of total views, yet it commands a staggering 91.8% of total watch hours. So this is actually an interesting thing. I'm just gonna talk about Shorts for a second. I was very hesitant, on the advice of Ida and Evan, they wanted us to separate out Shorts from our long-form channel. And we had had some really amazing Shorts, like, well over a million views that were performing for us and really exciting moments for us to see those numbers. So I was like, no, I can't do it. Like, I can't take these Shorts off. Like, it was a whole to-do, and I just was really, really fought against it. And they kept saying, listen, trust me, this is like what you need to do. You want to just use that as sort of the funnel to like get your content out there, get on people's radar, but then, you know, you wanna bring those people that are passively watching the videos over to become these long-form content subscribers 'cause they're vested and they wanna see that, right? So I finally begrudgingly gave in, and I have to tell you, super worth it because, you know, we are using that as a way to promote the channel, to get visibility with those passive quick viewers, and a lot of them are coming over, and those are the people that want to be there, that wanna see Maury, that wanna see to see the interviews. So that was like really exciting for us. I think it's a really good visibility tool, right? And that's what you wanna look at it as. Shorts, I think, are a tool. Another interesting thing to note with us, 'cause I'm hearing a lot of other people speak, is that we don't do daily videos. We have one video per week. Our drop is Monday at 10:00 AM and it's a new interview. Every so often, we will like later in the week add perhaps a compilation or a mashup of some sort. Some of them work really well. I'm still trying to sort of figure out the science between— behind that too. But so we're not doing daily videos. And you know what? I wonder if we were doing daily videos if it would change things. But I just don't have more. Like, you know, he's obviously like— we're not always with him. And we kind of bulk tape our interviews and then edit them and pepper them out. So a daily video is not so much of an option for us.

One thing that we were— I came on at the end of season 1. One thing we were trying to figure out is how does Maury fit into this new media landscape. And we did so much experimenting, um, doing videos with Maury featuring, um, not so much iconic guests but other trending creators on YouTube that would expose him to a whole new different generation. We were doing all kinds of different stuff. Reaction videos, videos of him just reading out current headlines and reacting to them. But one thing that we learned through the analytics and with Ida's help is the main thing that mattered to the growth of our channel was total watch time hours. And we realized with Maury's audience that grew up with him on the TV for, you know, an hour a day, most of our audience was actually watching him still on TV. So while we were trying to come up with these creative 5 to 7 minute videos, really what was working the best for the growth of our channel were these 30 to 45 minute, maybe up to an hour long form interviews. And we wouldn't have made that insight if it wasn't for Ida's help on the deep analytical deep dive. But I think that's the number one thing that has helped us in season 2 is that consistency and that amount of content that we're putting out, even if it's one video a week, at least it's close to being an hour long and gives us an opportunity to rack up that watch time and then be suggested and be included in browse and things like that.

And, you know, the beauty of those types of long-form interviews is that we can chop the shit out of them for so many different Shorts. So just another thing that's so helpful is like, obviously, I think the biggest thing when it comes to YouTube is patience, right? Like we all have to be patient, we all have to be vested to want to continue to evolve and try new things, and that can be like a hard pill to swallow, but I think that is what really pays off when it comes to this digital space. And, you know, being introduced to Brandlytics and being able to— and it's interesting because it took us a while to actually start to utilize Brandlytics. And here you have to understand, we had a whole season 1 catalog of probably anywhere from like 25 to 30 interviews with super great names, big guests that really just didn't take off the first time around because we really didn't know what we were doing when we were putting those interviews out. So the thumbnails did need to be changed and our thumbnails now are like so much better than they were when they started. I look back on those old thumbnails, I'm like, oof. So, you know, obviously learning process, but we utilize Brandlytics to go back to that season 1 catalog and we're constantly making changes and evolving. One, example of that, which I don't have the graph up here to show you, but there's a motivational social media guy. His name is MD Motivator. Really great guy, huge numbers on social. And we did an interview with him in season 1, and I don't even think it surpassed 1K. This is a guy who has probably like 50 million followers. So it just didn't make sense. We have gone back since and in the last few weeks changed it with Brandlytics. That video is now hedging up on 30K. It's gotten a whole new shelf life and it's being pushed out in a huge way. So I say this to say is that, you know, obviously it's the patience, it's the learning, it's the going back and Brandlytics allows you to, you know, re-hone in and fix the things that you maybe didn't know about the first time around. And I think it's such like an awesome tool because it really has breathed new life into a lot of our existing content. Which is really cool to see. So we're happy about that. Again, so Season 2 for us wasn't just a content refresh. It was really completely changing our strategy and really being willing to be amenable and to learn and to listen to the experts. You know, Ida has been such a crucial part of the team for us and showing us the right path forward to success. So yeah, so thankful for— shout out to Ida. Yes. I think if you can utilize Shorts, if you guys have enough content to put out to pull the Shorts, I think leveraging Shorts as a vertical to be able to use as a tool for visibility is incredible. And all of these things have increased our watch time by over 2,300%. So there is still hope for broadcasting on YouTube. Yeah. So I think that's everything. Does anyone have any questions? Yeah. Okay, so I will say that that's a great question because— and it's funny because we were talking about this with Ida yesterday— because you have to have these clear defined goals of what you want to achieve on your channel. My goals are very different than I think what Maury's goals and what he expects to be, right? Especially coming from his old channel, which had all of these million subscribers, right? But again, that had a huge marketing campaign and a major network behind it and took years to grow to that place. I would say that I think the biggest helpful tool for us in managing Mori's expectations has been just allowing him to sit in these interviews with these emergents. So you take like a Don Lemon and a Joy Reid, really iconic figures that branched out from legacy media put themselves out into this new format and have really found thriving success. And he's been able to have those one-off conversations with them on that, you know, yes, they have all these subscribers and they're coming quick, but they're also putting out consistent, like, hourly content, right? So a little different. But I just think having him being able to have those open conversations and really know the reality, because this world is vastly different. This isn't what he would be used to checking the ratings from television like back in the day. The metrics are just so different and measured so differently. So we just have to gently remind him of these things every day. But Maury's great. He's like a super cool guy. And, you know, one of the biggest things about him is that he's— and he's 87, right? But he's constantly curious. And it's what— it's, you know, he's constantly wanting to evolve, constantly wanting to learn. And so he's willing to be along for the ride at 87 in this new medium, give it a try, take our advice, you know, leave it in our hands, and trust us. And I appreciate that immensely. I'm so grateful that I've been, you know, vested this opportunity to work with him in that regard. So we still have episodes for season 2, brand new episodes coming out until the second week in August. And we will continue our funnels across all of our social media. So if you guys are not following us, everybody wants to follow us on Instagram, @onparpod. So we're on Instagram, we're on TikTok. Recently starting up actually in an interesting way on LinkedIn and X. So we're going to continue to build out that presence. We are going to come back in the fall with season 3. And, you know, the hope is to, you know, get like a bigger deal because right now it's just, you know, we're really— it's us. We own the product. We're doing it. So, yeah, to be on like a Netflix or, you know, something along those lines, that's the bigger hope. We're actually working on brand deals now. You know, we're very specific. We want them to be organic to Maury and to who he is. We have a really good deal going out with a company called OneSkin. That's been great. And we're in talks with some big major sponsors for all of season 3 that would sort of take on the entirety for the whole season, which would be amazing. I noticed the videos are just interviews focused. Yes. Like, can you do a variety? Is that what you do, Ida? I don't know. So here's the thing, and it's interesting because I'm looking at everybody's channels here and I'm learning so much, and it's, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, authors, you know, like a specific product. Where our show on YouTube is a variety show. It's literally sort of look at it as like the next phase of a different daytime talk show, right? Or even a late night show, if you would, like a late night variety show. That's kind of what this feels like to me. So it's a little bit different. Even when Evan was showing all of those thumbnails that he had created and were testing, and I'm trying to think in my head, like, I don't know that thumbnails like that would necessarily work for us because it's not like we're trying to sell, like, learn— I'm just going to use an example— like, boost your self-esteem, or, you know, like, just something. It's a little different, right? And I look at this very much like a show, like an actual show. We've tried other things, like William mentioned. We have tried to team him up with other big YouTube content creators. We've done the reaction videos. It's just such a hard pivot from what it is and where he is and what I think he's comfortable with and what really just feels genuine and organic in that moment. So no, I think it's mainly interviews. And then we'll focus on really honing in on how to better our compilations and our mashups to have a more centralized theme that actually pushes out in a bigger way. We've had— this season has been incredible. We've had some really amazing guests. Yeah, it's been wonderful. So we're growing. I mean, every day we're still growing, and every day we're still learning. And I'm checking that YouTube Studio 1 million times a day, as I'm sure we all know that struggle. Well, guys, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

To watch another YouTube Mastermind presentation from Anna, who Grew her channel to a million subscribers plus. Check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there.

I have something a little different than many of you where you guys had a business and you're adding YouTube as a way to market the business. And I just started a blog and YouTube channel.