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On Friday, November 6th, the Bob Ross marathon stream ended and it went out with a colossal bang.

https://plot.ly/~vbonanni/151

Over the course of the eight and a half day stream, Bob Ross managed to pull some pretty impressive numbers, including 3.44 million unique viewers, 420 thousand followers, and more than 3,000 subscribers. The most impressive thing to happen to the numbers occurred during the last few episodes. At 3:01 PM PST, the Bob Ross channel had a very respectable 62 thousand concurrent viewers. Just twenty minutes later, at 3:21 PM, the Ross stream had gained almost 10 thousand viewers, up to 71 thousand. At 3:41 PM, Ross eclipsed the 100 thousand mark, and the climb wasn’t over yet. At 4:01 PM, Ross’s stream had gathered another 56 thousand viewers, up to 156 thousand. Another twenty minutes, and another massive gain, this time from 156 thousand viewers to his all time peak of 182,450 concurrent viewers at 4:21 PM. That means in just an hour and twenty minutes, the Ross stream almost tripled its viewership for the finale. At that exact moment a major Hearthstone event and all of Starcraft II combined had only 168 thousand viewers.

https://plot.ly/~vbonanni/163

The Joy of Painting finale wasn’t just big, it almost took over Twitch. Over one third of all people watching Twitch at the time of finale were specifically watching the Bob Ross channel.

https://plot.ly/~vbonanni/157

The viewership was amazing. It was staggering. However, it wasn’t the most interesting thing that happened. As the stream wound down, chatters spammed #KEEPBOB and #THANKYOUBOB at a truly absurd rate. Everyone here at the Muxy offices stayed late to watch, and all of us got swept up in the outpouring of emotion toward Ross. To be frank, it was one of the best things to happen on the internet recently. It was really awesome to see Twitch chat users, usually associated with relentless and emotionless trolling, actually having a moment of sincerity and gratitude.

After the stream was over, a mysterious countdown started. Twitch users that were in the stream chat when the countdown started speculated wildly about what it was counting down to. Maybe it was the release of Fallout 4, or maybe it was the countdown to a new stream starring one of Bob’s sons? Well, we have the answers now. The countdown was counting toward the beginning of an interesting new weekly event. Every Monday Twitch will play one season of Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting, starting on Monday the 9th. In addition, Twitch will stream the full 31-season marathon every year starting on Bob Ross’s birthday.

Twitch is making a lot of very solid decisions throughout this process. They timed the Creative launch very well, and they decided to continue streaming The Joy of Painting as a special event every Monday and as a special marathon event once a year. It will be interesting to see if the weekly Bob Ross channel marathons keep pushing people toward the Creative category every week as Bob Ross whets audiences appetites, and if other Creative streamers can fulfill this newfound desire for this type of content.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]