| URL | www.barelypolitical.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Online video |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Owner | Google (YouTube Next Lab and Audience Development Group) |
| Created by | Mark Douglas,Todd Womack, Tom Small, Anastasia Douglas & Jake Chudnow (Mark, Anastasia and Jake do the KOA music)(Tom is the director & editor) |
| Launched | June 13, 2007 |
| Alexa rank | 790,519 (January 2012[update])[1] |
| Current status | Active |
Barely Political is an online video and entertainment website that creates politically themed satirical music viral videos and parodies. It was created in June 2007 by founders Ben Relles and Leah Kauffman and debuted its presence on the internet in the music video "I Got a Crush... on Obama", starring Amber Lee "Obama Girl" Ettinger. Barely Political has created numerous videos featuring many political aspects, including the military, news media, and also inviting some of the 2008 presidential candidates to be featured in a video, including former Senator Mike Gravel. It is distributed by YouTube Next Lab and Audience Development Group, a subsidiary of Google.
Barely Political's most popular videos have also been named one of 2007's 10 best videos by Newsweek, People Magazine, Associated Press and YouTube.[2] "I Got a Crush... on Obama" was also nominated for a YouTube Award, and has been viewed over 20 million times on YouTube.[3] In addition to the Obama Girl Video, BarelyPolitical has produced several other political themed videos.[4]
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 BarelyPolitical, 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."[5]
Contents |
In addition to its popular Barely Political sketches, the comedy group has multiple web series they post on their YouTube channel.
The most watched web series is The Key of Awesome, mostly for the parodies of most pop culture songs such as "Someone Like You" and "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele and "Moves like Jagger" by Maroon 5 and "Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO.
When asked about the video by the Des Moines Register on June 18, 2007, Obama said, "It's just one more example of the fertile imagination of the Internet. More stuff like this will be popping up all the time."[6] Obama told the Associated Press that the Obama Girl video had upset his daughters and said, "You do wish people would think about what impact their actions have on kids and families."[7]
| Achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by communitychannel |
Most Subscribed Director on YouTube Ranked 7th as of 2010 |
Succeeded by HappySlip |