I know a lot of people are angry about the launch of the "new" YouTube channel, NowThis Nerd, and I want to explain to those who don't understand why that is the case. In 2013, Philip DeFranco launched a channel called SourcefedNERD, where hosts Steve, Meg and Trisha spoke about everything nerd related. The topics ranged from TV shows to movies to comic books to board games, and over the years the lists of hosts and personalities grew. This past year SourcefedNERD celebrated their 1 millionth subscriber. Then on March 20th, it was announced that Group Nine Media decided that SourcefedNERD would be cancelled. The final video on the channel was released on March 24th and that was the end of it.

....or so we thought. Out of nowhere, on May 4th a new video popped up on the channel titled "Welcome to NowThis Nerd." The video explains that even though they know people are sad that SourcefedNERD ended, they want to keep the community alive and bring back nerdy news to the channel.

Now, let me first say that I understand that YouTube is a business. I obviously don't know everything that was going on behind the scenes at SourcefedNERD or how it was doing financially, and I assume it was a good business decision to cancel the channel or else they wouldn't have done it. I also understand that building a new channel from the ground up is incredibly difficult. But what I don't understand is why anyone thought it was a good idea to start a NowThis Nerd channel on the corpse of a channel they killed. There is no conceivable way that NowThis Nerd will be more successful than SourcefedNERD. SourcefedNERD had incredibly talented hosts, producers and editors, but most importantly it had a devoted and established fanbase. I get that the natural inclination is to try to take advantage of the sizable niche audience, but I don't think they could've done it in a worse way. It's already a bad idea to try to target an audience that hates you for cancelling something they love, it's another thing entirely to shove it in their face. It seems like NowThis Nerd will be produced in a similar format to SourcefedNERD. They announced they planned on doing one nerdy story a day and their first video was about Star Wars day.

What's interesting is that in the "Welcome to NowThis Nerd" video the host says "our goal is still the same as SourcefedNERD." If the goal is the same and the product is essentially the same then why did you cancel SourcefedNERD? What NowThis Nerd is saying is that the hosts and crew weren't good enough to keep the channel alive. On a platform like YouTube where the audience builds a real connection with the talent, that's going to anger fans. People liked SourcefedNERD because of the talented people that worked on it. There are plenty of places people can go to get nerdy news, and I can guarantee you most of them will find somewhere better than NowThis Nerd.

After the initial anger subsides it will be interesting to see if this channel succeeds. The internet has a short memory, the Fine Bros were able to bounce back from the React World disaster. I think the difference here is that in the case of the Fine Bros, they went back to doing the things that made their channel thrive. NowThis Nerd is basically starting from scratch with a large and hyper critical audience. I'm also not ready to start bashing the new host, Michael, because I understand he has a job to do and he very well might end up being a good host. I will probably check out a few videos just to see what their style is like, if they stick to the SourcefedNERD style or if they develop their own identity. If this channel has any hope to succeed it will need to differentiate itself from SourcefedNERD. Don't try to be SourcefedNERD, because you will never be as good as the original product that you destroyed.

At the time I am writing this the "Welcome to NowThis Nerd" has over 30k dislikes and only 926 likes and the subscriber count is under 982,000 subscribers and still dropping.