What's happening with WW1TV - a quick update

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:15]Hello folks. Welcome back to World War I TV. This is a brief update about the future of this companion channel to our main World War II TV one. Basically, it will be coming out of hibernation fairly soon.

[00:00:30]So, the back story is I received an email from YouTube about World War I TV last week saying I hadn't done any content in 6 months and that I was in uh jeopardy of losing the monetization status. I mean, not the channel, just how it not that it makes much money, but the point is uh it would be a real um faff to go back and get that again. So, it was a good opportunity to come on and address the fact there hasn't been any content for 6 months. So, for those of you in a sign off Scott, Bruce, uh Andreas, Ian, both Ian's, Bruce, blah blah blah, you know what's been going on. Uh I've had a pretty kind of rough uh last year and a bit. Uh lost my mom, lost my best friend Colin, and lost my dad recently. And World War II TV was keeping me busy and other things were keeping me busy. And so, World War I TV just had to take a bit of a backseat and it has been taking a backseat. Um Lucy uh started it off and that was fantastic. Then we tried a couple of things and for whatever reasons it just didn't kind of um feel natural to kind of uh go on in the way it had been. So, I've had various conversations with people.

[00:01:45]And um what we will be doing, and I'm not going to do any naming of names today, is we will have some kind of roving roun- not rot- rotating uh main host, but basically what I wanted to do was find someone who can essentially take this on and run with it as their own thing with me very much being in the background coming on for occasional things. The person would do their own scheduling or pe- people would do their own scheduling, work out their own subjects, etc., etc. Um that said, I still would like to run this channel in um synchronicity, I suppose, is a kind of word with World War TV. So, when I get back to doing theme weeks again, which will on World War TV will be when I get myself sorted out. So, for example, I do an infantry week on World War TV, I would like to eventually have some infantry content on World War TV.

[00:02:45]If we're looking at the Eastern Front or we're looking at Italy or whatever it would be, try and tie the things up a little bit.

[00:02:52]Um so, uh there had been a plan to do be doing some stuff on World War TV even in the last few days or in the next few days, but because of my dad uh and the fact that he passed, I'm off tomorrow morning to back to England to uh attend his funeral, well, kind of be part of his funeral. I'm doing eulogy and what have you on Monday, then it's back here for the D-Day festivities and commemoration, seeing a few folks there.

[00:03:21]So, um I wanted to just reassure people that that the this will be back. It's um it's been hibernating, uh but it will be back. Um because we built up a decent enough audience for a small channel, and uh it would be a a a silly thing to not come back in and carry it on. It was just a question of finding the time and in some ways the head space to do it because First World War isn't my thing. The Second World War is my thing. Um and I I hosted the last show on this channel 6 months ago with Phil Bradley because he's a mate and we just came on and did that. But, um, ultimately it will be other people taking it forward and doing things with it. And it essentially um as we said right at the very beginning of this, it the intention was for it to always not just be a Western Front channel.

[00:04:17]It would be the whole of the Great War and particularly uh, how the First World War, the Great War kind of connects with the Second World War. You've noticed we have Della Kappa shows on World War II TV about the interwar period. We've got one coming up uh, week after next about the British volunteers in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.

[00:04:41]Uh, we had the rise of the uh, Kwantung Army uh, with Quinn a couple of weeks ago. So, that was about the Japanese uh, military in the late in the 30s going up to 1931. So, World War I TV can also serve as sort of a bridging um, channel between the Great War and the Second World War because as many historians say, you can't understand the second one if you don't understand the first one.

[00:05:07]And if you only stick with the first one, you're not understanding what influence it had on the second one, etc. etc. So, that's basically where we are. This channel will come out of hibernation. I probably personally will be around for at least a what we're going to probably call um, a soft relaunch. And thank you Insult Violet Violet for the gifting I mean World War I TV membership. So, we'll have some kind of panel with me and two or three other people who will be in uh, incorporated into the future of this channel.

[00:05:44]Um, it's I'm not going to give names now.

[00:05:48]Uh You you'll you'll probably when when you when all is revealed, you'll go, I kind of thought it might be uh something on those lines.

[00:05:56]Um, and it'll carry on again.

[00:05:59]Um, so that's that's nice to know. Um And it's a good reminder that with this channel and World War Two TV uh the the me coming on and hosting is just a small small small tiny part of the work. Now, of course, my guests do a huge amount of work creating the history that they then share with our two audiences, uh which they do free. I don't pay anyone. They come on. They Yeah, they can promote their books. They can share their findings, etc. etc. But it's the behind-the-scenes stuff that takes the time. Just, you know, putting together the graphics, uh uh putting the listings, writing the listings, making sure the links to the uh to the uh the correct playlist, the links to the uh the the books that they're selling, etc. So, all that takes time.

[00:06:47]And um I I I don't want to turn this into kind of a self-help psychiatrist bench thing, but at 57 years old, I've I've never really addressed um my own, you know, not not mental health, cuz I bumble through life pretty happy most of the time. I don't have I don't have big huge things that that dramas that that that keep me awake at night.

[00:07:11]But I have been um under the put under the sword of it the last year or so, and losing your parents and losing your best mate and things like that. It it's it's it's taken taken a a chunk out of me, and that's why World War One TV It's not that I didn't care about it. It just that it it fell down the list of priorities over the last year or so. Um, World War Two TV indeed is not quite where I want it to get back to. I mean, views are just down for everybody, myself, JD, World War Two Wayfinder, everybody is is suffering from a drop in views this year.

[00:07:48]It seems the short form content on across all platforms is is beating what we do, which is long form content. So, that's not ideal. Not that I'm complaining because it's the patrons and the regular viewers that keep everything not only viable in terms of of bothering to do it, but viable financially for me to carry on doing this and not have to go and do something else like real work, you know, real work. I mean, this is a lot of time, but it's it's work I enjoy. But, I've got to I've got to give myself some some time as well. So, there we are.

[00:08:21]I'm probably going to leave it at that, really. I just wanted to This by doing this video, I should overcome the fact that YouTube sent me that not warning, but like a hang on, you haven't done anything for 6 months. So, it kind of was a good thing. It got me off my ass to set this up and do things. So, that was it. So, what would be a help is if to to give me and the other people I'm thinking of working with an idea of what kind of things you would like to see moving forward.

[00:08:54]Drop them in the comments on this one after I finished. Um if you've liked what we've done so far on the channel. I mean, we had some pretty good guests, you know, John McManus and Michael Neiberg and Gary Sheffield and people like that. And we had some kind of more specific guests about the particular theaters they were interested in. Um I don't want to it to deviate too much from the basic principle of World War Two TV, which is a host or multiple hosts and someone comes on and they talk about their subject in a format that is somewhere between I always tell this to guests, somewhere between a formal presentation and a couple of people having a chat in a pub, but a conversation that people walking past, if we're going to carry on with the pub analogy, can kind of chip in a comment and add a add a question and things like that. So, that's I don't feel that anything will change in that. I'm not going to start on either channel competing with the likes of, I don't know, World War Two Wayfinder or JD and going out and doing all that kind of slick on-site stuff.

[00:10:01]My my um concept, my my passion is for kind of just not old-fashioned, because that sounds like it's not progressive, but a a old-fashioned style of interaction in that, you know, guests come on to a PowerPoint. We're not going to, you know, uh stand around 3D animated uh maps and use, you know, our hands across to bring up graphics and stuff. It's not going to be that. It's just going to be people talking about the subject and allow the content and the depth of interest into a content to to stand on it stand for what we do, you know, to to stand that that's it.

[00:10:43]It's the it's the content. I mean, last night's uh show on World War Two TV with Mike Tickner, did what it was supposed to do. It explained the logistics of the uh Burma campaign and we would like to do similar kind of things in uh this channel, in World War One TV.

[00:10:59]So, uh so Ian Carter says, "Austria-Hungary." So, that would be something we could look into and as I say, definitely in my from my point of view, trying to bridge that gap between the two wars, filling some of the interwar. And what did they what was learnt?

[00:11:13]You know, what was learnt and then forgotten, what was learnt and carried forward, that kind of doctrinal um study, uh look at um organizations of armies, navies, things like that. We've looked at, you know, the the tech and stuff like that. So, there we are. I think that's what we're going to do. Well, not I think that's what we're going to do. We are going to do that. It's just a question of um getting round to it. So, what will happen over the next couple of weeks is I will be in touch with the other people who are going to be doing stuff and we will probably arrange some kind of soft re-launch chat kind of thing, a bit like this, but with the people involved and we will get it going again.

[00:11:50]And then from then on, we can start scheduling some content. I have no idea what volume of content World War I TV will eventually have. It all depends on the uh the commitments of the various people I um I am recruiting, if that's not the right word. It is the right word. So, that's it. I'm going to leave it there. So, just I said this on World War II TV, I'm now so off to England tomorrow for my dad's funeral, then it's back to uh Normandy D-Day commemorations, blah blah blah. The first show on World War II TV, I think, is the 10th.

[00:12:23]But, I probably will do a Woody's round-up of what I did over the course of the week here on June the 9th and then sometime in the next few days after that, ish, will be this soft re-launch launch on World War I TV. In the meantime, make sure you're updated with notifications.

[00:12:40]Make sure you're subscribed. Make sure you you you let people know if you're if you've got World War I buddies that that that we're coming out of hibernation um and we can we can move forward. So, there we are. I will see you all again after the 82nd anniversary of D-Day on the both channels. This is Paul Woodadge for World War I TV saying enjoy your rest of your Friday and your weekend.

[00:13:03]Thanks.

[00:13:05]Bye.