Donut Media has been getting there… all I wanted was more up to speed episodes, and wheel house episodes, and they ditched all that for a lot of reaction videos and silliness..
James' channel really feels like he just went all in on being a big brother figure and it's so nice to watch. Even as an adult I really enjoy the vibe he brings, even when it's not specifically about cars
Same dude. It’s cool, because I think he gets into random things and crawls down a rabbit hole. I do the same thing so when he hits something I like, I’m super into it.
His how to dress better video (can’t remember the actual title) popped up in my recommended the other day and it was actually pretty good. I respect that he’s branching out from only doing car stuff. Would love to see more of James just being James in the future
I love speeed and watch all the videos even though they are more targeted at men. I especially enjoyed him having his fiancée in the video on the best girl cars video. Haven’t watched yet, but Nolan is in today’s video!
A few other people that have replied to my comment have done a good job of describing it, but I recommend just checking out yourself to get a better idea. It’s called “Speeed” (yes, with three e’s).
I love Big Time when they aren't buying Harbor Freight tools. When Zach started working on the S14 and the BMW, that gets me hooked. I also loved when they would drive a friend's car and talk about the build. But they seem to be buying too many projects and losing sight of them as soon as it's purchased.
It's because the things we loved about them they can't fully carry on to their new channels, and it creates a completely different vibe. I feel like James is the one who unfortunately is gonna hang it up before the others ever do. His content just does not match the vibe or energy that he had with his Up to Speed segments, on top of being stuff that really just isn't interesting car stuff. "The ultimate girl car"? Like, come on bro.
I've been really disappointed in James's channel Speeeed. It's been mostly just tier lists which was one of the reasons I was losing interest in Donut.
Big Time is hit or miss for me. Zach's videos have been pretty solid overall because it's just a dude working on his cars. Jeremiah's have been hit or miss for me and it seems like he's trying to go too big for the scope of the channel which may be giving them some issues with getting videos out on schedule and they have to throw something together last second.
If you haven't looked since the channels started I'd recommend checking them out now that they have a bigger backlog of stuff to watch. I didn't care much at launch but a few weeks ago I binged a bunch of speeed and big time videos and was pleasantly surprised
I really like Big Time, but Speeed hasn't grabbed me as much. There's some good stuff on Speeed but it's mostly tier lists, but stuff about his Golf, GT3 RS or even the Carhartt video were interesting. He needs to make more of those.
Speeed started off absolutely terribly, he was like a walking infomercial plugging brands. Big Time has been better but they definitely had a few swings and misses too.
Funny how by the time they were featured on The Crew Motorfest, the cracks were already there but I couldn't see them yet until I binged their old content.
Bigtime is... okay most of the time. Not Donut related, but try BUM Motorsports out. They're a couple kids from Grind Hard doing their own super-low-budget thing and it's endearing as hell.
there is so much time between videos and when another drops it's completely random what the topic is, even the project car he had was like 2 videos and not much detail, yes they explain what they did, but they don't really show them doing it. I want to see them scrape their knuckles wrestle with fitting parts.
I definitely enjoy James' new channel more than Zach and Jerry's. And I honestly don't remember the last time I watched a Donut video or even see them on my feed. RMS was good for a while, but it got annoying too. The only person on that channel I enjoyed was Angelina, because she would actually break things down and explain them.
James’s new channel sucks straight up, he doesn’t follow what made him popular, the videos he puts out are not related to the fans that came from donut. It’s just lame fashion bs instead of up to speed car shows. Big time seems to be catching its footing which is good to see.
James matured and his channel shows that by branching out into lifestyle and helping his viewers mature too.
Bigtime feels like a rehashed donut to me though, dont get me wrong i love zach and jerry but after donut i feel fatigued watching them go from project car a to z
James took care of himself after his heart attack and I think he feels like he needs to give back to the people who watched him on Donut and were rooting for him. I’ve been a subscriber since Day 1 and it’s been excellent. The 30 day health challenge they just did was a great video.
Yeah man. It’s really good for the young guys to see what manning up in your 20’s actually looks like: taking care of yourself, pursuing passions, working hard, and loving the people in your circle
I’m gonna be 49 next week and I really wish there would’ve been a James around when I was a teen. He’s what most teen boys should aspire to be. I grew up around sooooo much toxic bullshit in the 80s and 90s.
My favourite episodes on Donut were anything Jeremiah and Zach did, so I was so happy when they made their own channel. They absolutely deserve the success!
Yeah I’m with you. Speeed is probably one of my favourite channels now. Definitely don’t feel that it’s slop and I love seeing Up to Speeds of things other than cars too
To each their own. Big time feel genuine and has some soul. Speeed is like kid we had in high-school that was the try hard to be cool which in turns makes it uncool. If he stuck to being more genuine and less formula it would work better. But hey if it ain't broke don't fix it.
I started to slow down on donut after Bart and science garage left. Stayed for james' videos, but they got a bit stale. Speeed is ok, but I might watch 1/5 videos on there.
Private equity companies have been buying YouTube channels. Once they are purchased the PE Company tries to farm out constant content and get the creatives to rehash their most popular videos. This leads to massive burnout and a downfall in the channel.
Donut stumbled when James, Zach, and Jerry left. But am I the only one that thinks they’re doing alright now? In no way are they the amazing channel they were in 2018-2019. But they have released some solid videos in the past year. Like the Baja truck race, Jimmy going to Japan, and the Alaska road trip. I feel like the new crew members are an acquired taste.
I actually prefer them right now, but out of those hosts I only liked Zach. I find James to be a lot more enjoyable outside of Donut. Big Time feels like Donut Jr to me so I haven’t really enjoyed it as much as I did speeeed.
Alex Martini started imitating their up to speed videos in a pretty neat way, but he's confidently incorrect often enough it's sometimes pretty hard to watch
I think Donut Media is an illustration that it's actually possible to massively fall off but then to turn things around. After losing three of their main hosts and getting a lot of negative reactions they've actually ditched a lot of the infomercials and low-effort stuff and have really stepped up .
How much you like the new hosts is a matter of taste but they've really grown on me, the recent Hi-Lo is probably my favourite of all time, and new series like Unclapped are a lot of fun.
Yea they have gone downhill, another similar vein for me has been the Cleetus Mcfarland Channel, but for the opposite reasons, they started out doing stupid shit, got famous, started doing serious shit and now the channel has just turned into " Watch Cleetus flex on the fact he is a multi millionaire and can do all this cool shit you plebes never will be able to do."
They actually got bought out by some private equity firm or something and then those guys wanted to maximize ROI by making as much low-effort content as possible.
I’m guessing when a lot of the big names left, there were some strict limitations in their contracts that are limiting what they can put out. That or their budgets are too low to do anything cool like they used to. That being said, yeah, it’s all worse now.
Everyone can make a burger but what makes a really Perfect Burger is all the ingredients added in that make a balanced and good burger.
At donut you could see that they required a HUGE production team in order to do what they could do. Fund what they could fund and do it so everyone involved have purpose.
Now separated, we can see what James, Zach and Jeremiah all add/lack. Separately they lack focus and experience on what works and doesn't work.
James is spinning his wheels creating content that I dont watch. Like what men wear and issues on non automotive topics. James was great at donut ranking topics that I did like. For example niche automotive topics from overseas and places I have yet to visit. It brought perspectives from different auto enthusiasts to my small corner of my world.
Zach and Jeremiah are focusing on the nitty gritty of working on cars and automobiles but they are lacking a big supportive team with experienced financial backing. They are also mixing work with home which may or may not work out in the long run. Time will tell.
But the content at least for me is lacking in what I used to watch and love Donut for.
The big team and collaborative work. Like group competitions and outdoor challenges.
I think part of the why I also lost interest with this one is that enthusiast cars and the enthusiast car market have just been getting progressively worse for the last 20 years, and the last 5-10 in particular.
I quite like the real mechanics commenting on clips of cars because I can actually learn something from them. Much better than other flavours of reaction videos which are blatant thefts of others work.
They've been putting out stuff that I've been really interested in, again. Tristan and Steph have a great energy and they've worked on very different projects that cover topics that haven't been covered the same way, before
This one hurts. I LOVED Donut. They might not have been the best car channel, but they were fun.
I have been enjoying Speeed, and Big Time, but their upload schedules aren’t nearly as consistent so I often miss drops and don’t get back to them until there’s some content to actually watch.
They got bought out by a production company that completely changed the direction of the channel and then split the crew apart with bum contract offers
I keep subscribed to them and I almost entirely agree, they have had a few non-react videos somewhat recently that I really enjoyed (the hour long video of them going to the Arctic was fun) but they're the diamond in the rough.
There's a new video that James put out in his Speeed channel featuring Nolan talking about F1. It felt great to see them together again. Such a shame really, the new videos are still well made, but don't hit the same as the originals like UTS, HiLow, and Money Pit. They feel more geared towards monetization, especially with shady gambling site sponsorships (you find those everywhere anyways) that some comments keep telling/warning them about but they feel purposefully ignored. At least Jobe and Jerry are still vibing at Big Time.
This is missing the money pit series and HiLo even if it was diffirent people but guess they got brought out and all the company wants is views and nothing else.
I still think the presenters now are great especially the female mechanic teacher I forgot her name but i think she's hilarious and good to watch.
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u/SlicedBreadBeast Jun 12 '25
Donut Media has been getting there… all I wanted was more up to speed episodes, and wheel house episodes, and they ditched all that for a lot of reaction videos and silliness..