BOVINGTON, England — The Tank Museum in Bovington, England, is not often ranked among the world’s great museums. Located next to a military base in the serene countryside, the collection of about 300 armored vehicles attracts only a few hundred thousand visitors a year, mainly families who have been rained out on their beach vacation.
However, there is one place where it not only ranks among the largest museums in the world, but surpasses them: YouTube.
The Tank Museum channel has more than 550 thousand subscribers — surpassing the Museum of Modern Art in New York (519 thousand), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (380 thousand) or the Louvre in Paris (106 thousand).
In April, it announced that it was the first museum to garner more than 100 million views on YouTube, with clips that included in-depth discussions of the history of tanks, chatty videos about curators’ favorite war machines, and more news articles about how armored vehicles are used in Ukraine.
The channel’s success has both pleased and baffled museum staff. David Willey, a YouTube curator and host, said he once made an 80-minute video about the Battle of Arras, a World War II engagement in northern France, and was surprised when it became popular. “It’s the most bland and now it has 800,000 views or something like that,” he said.
The museum’s collection includes important artifacts such as the world’s first tank, nicknamed “Little Willie,” and the only functional example of the fearsome Tiger 1, a German vehicle used in World War II.
Nik Wyness, the museum’s marketing director, said his YouTube journey began with a desire to raise the profile of the Tank Museum. Being located “in the middle of nowhere, on a once-secret military base” made it difficult to attract visitors, he said.
His first videos were fundraisers and short articles aimed at attracting media attention. Then, in 2015, he started a series called “Tank Chats,” in which David Fletcher, a military historian, stands in front of the museum’s vehicles and talks about their history and meaning — sometimes going into detail about the tracks. and tank engine systems. Those videos were simple, but they soon became popular, finding an audience among military veterans and young players of World of Tanks, a wildly popular online game.
Now, the museum has 10 staff members working on its YouTube content, and its polished videos resemble short documentaries. They feature archival footage of tanks in action.
Filming in a museum is not without its challenges. One morning, Chris Copson, a presenter, was speaking on camera about the Mark I vehicle that took part in the first tank battle, during World War I, when the museum opened its doors. Copson continued as several families appeared in the background of the shot of him and audio of battle scenes was played over the museum’s public address system.
The popularity of the videos has given hosts insight into the lives of influencers — both positive and negative. Willey said she has received requests for selfies and autographs. Less charmingly, she said, “Russian bots” appeared to be targeting the museum’s clips of tank use in Ukraine, filling the videos with negative comments.
By: ALEX MARSHALL
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6908881, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-09-26 21:50:09
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