Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to Forgotten Weapons, I'm Ian McCollum.
It's 2024. Yet another year has passed which means it's time for a state of the channel update.
The general overview is I am going to continue doing all the things that I have been doing previously,
plus we are going to be adding in a couple of cool new things this year.
So the standard that I had for 2023 was to publish four videos per week.
And that was specifically three videos during the week on forgotten weapons,
historical interesting firearms, and then a video on Saturday that was some sort of shooting footage.
Either trying something out at the range, or going to one of a couple of different types of competitions.
The difficulty that that gave for me is I have a fair amount of content accessible
with in particular new products that are coming out that are interesting.
Some of them practically interesting, some of them technically interesting.
And I ... don't feel like I had a very good place to put those.
So for 2024 I'm going to be adding a fifth video each week.
And I think it's going to be scheduled for Sundays, and that will be a new product.
It will also occasionally be a different type of video that isn't
specifically a forgotten firearm, so possibly museum tours, that sort of thing.
I really want to try and keep that core content of three videos a week
specifically on the history and mechanics of specific firearms.
So good news: we are bumping from four videos a week up to five.
I also have gone ahead and finally relented and got myself a new camera, and I will be filming in 4K now.
However, that 4K video will only be published on History of Weapons & War.
And that's because the biggest challenge for me at this point
is not finding firearms, not researching them, not having access to cool stuff,
the biggest challenge for me at this point is dealing with
the inevitable clampdowns from YouTube.
I cannot see YouTube as a fundamentally sustainable
long-term partner for firearms-related content.
And so ... we decided actually several months ago,
(almost a year ago actually is when we started the process)
to set up our own streaming platform to host historical, educational, firearms content.
And that is History of Weapons & War.
Which hopefully you've seen before, but some of you guys probably haven't.
So the brief overview is it's located at WeaponsAndWar.TV,
and we host eight of the best ... historical educational firearms channels.
Everything is there that I post on YouTube, that the other channels post on YouTube,
plus we have a bunch of exclusive content.
And I will be adding more exclusive content this year, because to my mind
that is the fundamental way forward for Forgotten Weapons, and I think also
for the other channels that we've partnered with to make this streaming platform.
So as an incentive, I'll be posting 4K video over there.
So if you want to see stuff in glorious hi-res 4K,
especially if you're streaming Forgotten Weapons onto a big screen smart TV,
that'll be a cool new thing that I will be able to offer to you.
So that's the gist of it.
There are always perpetual concerns that I'm running out of guns,
they are not accurate to say the least.
I have some really cool travel planned for this coming year,
we've got some really cool collections that we're going to be taking a look at.
Things are going pretty smoothly and pretty awesomely.
I continue to work with Headstamp Publishing as well,
we've got a number of books in the line-up to come out this coming year.
Including most notably, first we are going to be releasing the second volume
of our small arms of World War Two series. That will eventually be six.
We have the book on the United States that has just got into our warehouse
at the beginning of December, so we've been fulfilling orders, shipping books.
It's a very popular book and it got a really good public reception,
and I'm looking forward to having the second one out for you.
The second one will actually be World War Two small arms of the Soviet Union,
so a subject that there's a good deal less in English about than American small arms. So.
If you're interested in supporting the channel you can do so through merchandise,
through Varusteleka, links in the description below.
The best way to do it would be to subscribe to History of Weapons & War.
And that supports not just Forgotten Weapons, but all of the eight channels
that are part of that project.
If you are only looking to support Forgotten Weapons, you can also subscribe
over on Playeur (it used to be Utreon), or on Floatplane, or on Patreon.
All of those places have their own
individual perks as well and I will link to them in the description text.
If you want to see books of mine, check out Headstamp Publishing.com, also in the description text below.
So hopefully we have a very cool year coming.
Thank you guys all for watching, for being a loyal and interested audience,
and I'm excited to have new content for you in 2024.