YouTube’s do-it-yourself brigade is taking on Netflix and Disney

When Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, wanted some publicity for Blue Origin, his rocket firm, he did not turn to a television channel or a newspaper, as he might have done a decade ago. Instead he offered Tim Dodd, who runs a YouTube channel called “The Everyday Astronaut”, an exclusive factory tour. The resulting video, in which the two men spend an hour admiring hydrogen tanks and discussing the finer points of rocket-engine turbopumps, may not strike everyone as compelling TV. It has 1.6m views nonetheless.