The New Fly Fisher is a very popular destination and educational series, now entering its 23rd season of TV and online broadcast. During the past five years, producer/hosts Colin McKeown and Mark Melnyk have made some significant changes to the series, most notably their move to YouTube in late 2017 which allowed extended play episodes of their shows on their YouTube channel. In that short period the channel has garnered over 32 million views and continues to grow rapidly each month. “YouTube has eliminated the constraints traditional television puts on content creation. Instead of 23-26 minute TV shows for networks like WFN and PBS, YouTube allowed us to craft extended play episodes which are now 30 to 60 minutes in length. Now our viewers get to see the full story, day-by-day, as it actually happened, plus pack in more how-to educational content.” says Producer Colin McKeown. The new long length videos seem to be working as the series has now been picked up by other online streaming platforms around the world including ROKU, PlutoTV and Tubi.
Last week at the Denver Fly Fishing Show, the series producers made another significant announcement which is quietly causing quite ripple in the fly-fishing world. The New Fly Fisher has decided to adopt a “magazine style” approach to advertisers by moving to a non-exclusive status for fly fishing product used in shows beginning spring of 2023. “Going non-exclusive allows us to work with everyone and anyone in the fly-fishing space, from rods and reels to clothing and accessories. Product placement for all, without exclusivity bias, creates broader awareness and ultimately our hope is by making this move, we will be in a position to promote the sport of fly fishing to an even wider engaged audience. Since we’ve made this announcement, we’ve been approached by numerous fly-fishing company insiders, applauding our decision. To put it bluntly, we want to work with everyone.” stated producer Mark Melnyk. Certainly, it’s a bold move within an industry that is quite familiar with sponsorships and exclusivity agreements, but we can appreciate why Colin and Mark have made this dramatic change. Their popular video content offers the opportunity to take down traditional product biases and barriers some viewers may have and thus ultimately help broaden the reach of fly fishing as a whole to a new audience of potential customers for the fly-fishing industry.
