The Key of Awesome
The Key of Awesome (formerly Barely Productions and Barely Political) was a YouTube channel that produced comedy videos starring writer/performer Mark Douglas. "The Key of Awesome" was created by Mark Douglas and Ben Relles and is the channel's most popular series, mainly producing viral music videos and parodies. Barely Political was created in June 2007 by Ben Relles and subsequently debuted its first music video, "Crush on Obama", starring Amber Lee "Obama Girl" Ettinger, created by Ben Relles and Jake Chudnow. Videos on the channel have been seen over 3.37 billion times online. "The Key of Awesome" became the central identity of the channel.
| The Key of Awesome | ||||||||||
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Todd Womack (left) and Mark Douglas (right), principal writers and stars of Barely Productions, at VidCon 2014 in the Anaheim Convention Center | ||||||||||
| Website | www | |||||||||
| YouTube information | ||||||||||
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| Years active | 2007–2018 (on indefinite hiatus) | |||||||||
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| Subscribers | 5.45 million | |||||||||
| Total views | 3.37 billion | |||||||||
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Last updated: January 16, 2019 | ||||||||||
The Key of Awesome created numerous videos covering political topics, the military, and news media. During the 2008 presidential primaries, the channel invited some of the candidates to be featured in a video, including former Senator Mike Gravel.
In October 2007, Barely Political was bought by Next New Networks for an unknown amount which in turn was acquired by YouTube in spring 2011. Herb Scannell, co-founder and CEO of Next New Networks, stated, "With Barely Political, we've added a team that can grow our reach to a very important audience — one that likes their politics with a healthy serving of humor — timed perfectly with the upcoming 2008 election season."
Its videos were mainly directed by Tom Small and feature writing and performances by Mark Douglas, Todd Womack, Doug Larsen, Anastasia Douglas, Bryan Olsen, and occasionally Lauren Francesca, Andrea Feczko, Amber Lee "Obama Girl" Ettinger, Ewan Gotfryd, and Michael Stevens.
In 2014, the channel was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #29.
On February 4, 2018, in form of a song, Mark Douglas announced that he would be taking an indefinite break from YouTube, thanking his fans for their support over the years.