For those hoping that the high-pitched, hyperactive “Fred” was just a passing sensation — guess again. The Fred YouTube channel today surpassed 1 million subscribers, the first channel to do so — and he got all of those subscribers in less than a year. (Suck on that, Jonas Brothers! Get your paltry 471,910 subs out of here.)
When asked for comment, Lucas Cruikshank, the Nebraska teen who plays Fred (and was a hit at our NewTeeVee Live Conference last year) sent us the following email:
“I wanna thank everyone who has supported the Fred series. It means a lot when something you created becomes popular. Oh, and Fred? He can’t count that high so he has no comment.”
While that’s a nice enough quote, to get the full effect, you need to watch his 1 million subscriber-mark celebratory video.
From what we can gather, Fred became the No. 1 most-subscribed channel back in October of 2008, passing other YouTube stars like Smosh.
And it’s not just having those subscribers — they keep coming back to watch more. In the last six months, only one video has gotten less than a million plays — the “Fred Thanks You” video released an hour ago. Most are in the 4-6 million plays range. (Note to self: Ask Fred to host a NewTeeVee Video Podcast.)
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