The channel as it stands
- ~1,800videos
- 2.4Msubscribers
- ~496Mlifetime views
- ~276,000views per video, lifetime
Public counts for Simon Squibb's channel, as of Sep 2026. They describe the channel, not my output: the videos I cut for it are on the portfolio.
How a long-form video is built to hold attention
A long-form video is not one story. It is a chain of promises, and the edit's job is to open a new one before the last one closes.
- 00:00Open inside the thing, not in front of it - the earliest moment that makes sense without explanation.
- 00:07State the promise once, plainly, and then do not state it again.
- 00:14Show the payoff without explaining it, so the thing they came for is visible and still unresolved.
- 00:21Change the cut rate. Attention settles into a rhythm within about 15 seconds.
- 00:30Decision point. Everything after this is earned.
A schematic of a cold open, not a reading off any particular video.
After that the same logic runs at a longer wavelength. Every few minutes something has to open that was not open before: a new question, a complication, somebody changing their mind. The commonest reason a long-form video leaks viewers in the middle is not that the middle is boring - it is that everything the opening promised has already been delivered.
On a talking-head cut all of that is built out of order. There are no events, so the structure comes from where you choose to interrupt: the answer moved forward, the reversal held for 8 minutes, the anecdote cut entirely because it pays off a promise the video already paid.
I write this up properly elsewhere, in the YouTube edit checklist.
What changes when you cut for the same channel every week
Cutting for one channel over and over is a different discipline from cutting for many, and the difference is mostly about memory.
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What you gain
A specific sense of what this audience will sit through - not what audiences in general will sit through. You learn where they get impatient and where they will give you a slow minute. No framework hands you that.
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What it costs
The same instinct hardens into habit. You reach for the opening that worked last time because it worked last time.
On the channels I ran before this I was cutting across formats with nothing in common, and that switching kept the reflexes honest by force. One channel does not do that for you. You have to do it deliberately - noticing when you are about to make a decision because it is familiar rather than because it is right.
House style is an asset until it becomes the reason a decision gets made. Then it is a rut with good production values.
One counterweight is watching other people's videos and being specific about why they work. The other is having done this at broadcaster volume first - the ITV YouTube channel is where most of what I do now came from. The about page covers how one led to the other.
One thing this page will not do: describe how that channel operates - how anything is planned, who does what, what gets discussed or what is coming. That is not mine to publish. The craft is, and the craft is the same wherever you do it.