Save 50% on a 3-month Digiday+ membership. Ends Dec 5.
If you were to think of the top news and politics channel on YouTube, you’d probably think it’s one of the big boys: CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox. You’d be wrong. According to OpenSlate, a company that provides metrics and rankings for YouTube channels, the highest ranking news and politics channel is The Young Turks.
“The Young Turks” is a political talk show from Cenk Uygur first airing on Sirius Satellite Radio in 2002. A little over a year ago, it moved to Current TV. Uygur has built a formidable YouTube presence with 385,000 subscribers and more than 800 million video views. Through its YouTube Channel, “The Young Turks” has been able to have a dialogue with its fans, creating a devoted fan base, something agencies pay close attention to.
Compare this with the No. 5 outlet on this list, ABC News, which has 116,000 subscribers and 21 million monthly views. OpenSlate values areas like engagement, influence and consistency measuring the categories on a scale of 1 to 10. The Young Turks, young as they are compared to ABC, has higher ratings in those three key areas. Most notably, in the engagement arena, The Young Turks scores an 8.4, while ABC scores a 7.9.
But The Young Turk brand is still not well known among brands and agencies.
According to OpenSlate, engagement refers to how a video producer can create a “captivating experience;” influence means how a channel can push activity across an audience; consistency is a producer’s ability to replicate its success. The company also mixes in other metrics, like subscribers and monthly views. This explains why there is a mix of household names and some random content producers.
With buyers trying to reach as many people across the vast Web, OpenSlate’s metrics can help agencies and brands determine where they should be to reach more viewers. Since it’s notoriously hard to define squishy terms like engagement and influence on the Web, an algorithm can be helpful to agencies, if not to the publishers looking to find more ways to engage and influence.
Below are the top 10 channels in the News and Politics sector, based on the SlateScore. Notice how there are only three mainstream publishers in this category, ABC News, CBS and the Associated Press.
Ad position: web_incontent_pos1
More in Media
Digiday+ Research Subscription Index 2025: Subscription strategies from Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others
Digiday’s third annual Subscription Index examines and measures publishers’ subscription strategies to identify common approaches and key tactics among Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others.
From lawsuits to lobbying: How publishers are fighting AI
We may be closing out 2025, but publishers aren’t retreating from the battle of AI search — some are escalating it, and they expect the fight to stretch deep into 2026.
Media Briefing: Publishers turn to vertical video to compete with creators and grow ad revenue in 2026
Publishers add vertical video feeds to their sites to boost engagement, attract video ad spend and compete with news creators.
Ad position: web_bfu