New Year's Seasonal Update! (Patreon)

Okay, THIS YEAR WE BRING BACK ART DECO! Last year was a mulligan, this time we'll actually do it!

Anyway, no point being oblique about the matter — it's been a bad time for just about everybody, for reasons big and small. But now we're looking at the horizon of a new year, and while we're certainly a bit relieved to have the confirmation that time has in fact been passing, we'll be entering 2021 with many of the same challenges we've faced in 2020.

Despite the overwhelming crappiness of 2020, the past year has actually been a good one for the channel, for a few reasons — 1) people have been spending more time at home and on YouTube, which means more watch time, 2) we launched a line of enamel pins that sold far beyond our wildest dreams, vastly outweighing our sponsorship-income to the point where we now have the luxury of only picking the sponsors whom we love the absolute most, which we think is a win for you all as well as for us, 3) we've hit the trending page more than any other year in the past, and our channel audience continues to grow more and more, with 1,450,000 subscribers, 60,000 Twitter followers, 13,000 Discord members, 9,000 Reddit users, and 2,000 active patrons — I'm not usually one to pat myself on the back, but I think it's fair to say that we have one hell of a community, and you wonderful Patrons are the most integral aspect of our continued operation. When ad revenue decides to go on a rollercoaster, Patreon is what keeps everything steady. So although we've said it before and we'll say it again, we don't say it enough — Thank You.

Your help is what keeps Overly Sarcastic Productions producing, but you also help us to help others. Over the course of 25 livestreams, we raised over $60,000 between our contributions and the community, going to a range of organizations from Feeding America to the Red Cross wildfire relief to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to VolanteDesign making masks for students. And that last one is very dear to us, because the whole thrust of this channel is to educate, and there's never been a year where educational content was more vitally necessary. — When so many students shifted to remote learning in the spring, teachers scrambled to adjust their lesson plans and entire methods of teaching. Unfortunately, despite what should have been months of prep time, many institutions were caught off-guard again, so many educators were not given the assistance or resources to properly teach their students. So our work on the channel has arguably never been more important than now, when millions of students are in need of a helping hand to just get them through their coursework. If we ever needed a reminder that our work actually helps people in addition to making them chuckle, this year was definitely it. We're honored and humbled to be able to provide this service, and we hope you recognize that your support makes that possible.

Before we look ahead to 2021, some quick stats for us: We had 61 videos, 50 mainline and 11 bonus, including 13 Myth & Legends videos, 12 Trope Talks, 12 Histories Summarized, 6 History Hijinks, 5 History-Makers, 1 History Re-Summarized, and a smattering of fun bonus videos, including the triumphant return of OSP-Animated (which we're excited to make into a seasonal series). Of course, the biggest development in the OSP-Content-Calendar has to be the OSPodcast! This podcast has been a true joy to make, and if the analytics are anything to go on, many of you quite enjoy it as well! We're really excited to continue this into 2021. (And we've got a special New Year's bonus episode on the channel itself where we share some year-end thoughts and retrospectives on our favorite videos of the year.)

SO, WHAT'S ON THE DOCKET FOR 2021?? Well, first, a bit of a break. We've basically been going going going for twelve months straight since last year started, and we actually sped up a little bit due to the aforementioned "Do It For The Students". So, we're taking the first couple weeks light, just the podcast bonus episode and a hastily-cobbled-together Hijinks episode from me on the 8th, and then we'll get back into the swing of things, but at the start we might be opting for fewer ultra-long videos like the ones we did last year, since those take up a disproportionate amount of time to make.

But actually though — our goal for the coming year is to keep a steady ship. Keep making our weekly videos, grow our audience, try to make each new episode better than the last, and take on new projects where they make sense. We've updated our stream setup, so we're hoping to keep up our great momentum from last year's streams and charity drives, but this time with a significantly better frame-rate.

Of course, we've also just updated our Patreon tier-structure, so we're looking forward to the new stream of patreon-content and patron-benefits this year. Chief among them is new topic voting! Every season, we'll give you the choice of topic for one Red and Blue video. This time, Red has three Tropes requested by longtime patrons (as part of our previous system of topic rewards) and we'll get to all of them in the next several months, but the question for you is which one you want to see first! (January and February's Trope Talks are already set and scheduled, so the winner will be March). And for me, I'd like your input on which part of Africa I cover to celebrate Black History Month in February. Vote for one or more of your favorites,  (be sure to vote for a Trope topic and a History topic,) and we will make it so!

And without getting into a sea of itty-bitty details, that's all we've got for you today as we get started on this merry 2021 journey together. Thank you for choosing to let us both do what we consider to be the absolute best job in the world. We hope the new year is as kind to you as you have been to us.

Cheers,
-Blue