TLDR News are a British news outlet founded in 2017 by Jack Kelly and primarily hosted on YouTube. Most of their video reports focus on political issues in the United Kingdom and abroad. The abbreviation in their name stands for too long; didn't read.[2]
TLDR News are owned by Three26 Ltd, of which Jack Kelly is the CEO and sole owner.[3][† 1]
History
TLDR News were founded in April 2017 by computer science graduate Jack Kelly (born August 1996), with the aim of making the news engaging to young audiences. Kelly credits some of the channel's early success to having been started during the Brexit negotiations, which drew attention to it, as well as a lack of competition from traditional outlets on YouTube.[4] Kelly was motivated to create the channel while studying at university for marketing. He observed multiple US news outlets publishing infographic news aimed at young people on social media and noticed that there was no similar ones in UK.[5] Kelly views himself as a content creator rather than a journalist.[6]
The network are based in Clerkenwell, London. As of August 2025, have a staff of twelve full-time employees: Kelly revealed in a 2023 digital summit held by Financial Times that all employees are between the ages of 20 and 28, and having young staff is important for him.[7] Their income largely derives from a mix of YouTube advertisement revenue and from sponsorships set up by their network Nebula,[8] as well as their physical magazine Too Long.[† 2] They have multiple channels and publish videos across them each week.[2][9]TLDR News have an annual turnover of around £1 million and targets audience aged under 35.[10]
Jack Kelly interviewed US politician Mitch McConnell at February 2023 Munich Security Conference, he questioned McConnell about Nord Stream pipelines sabotage.[6] A 2024 study published by Reuters found that their channels are popular with young consumers, along with other YouTube-based news organisations in other countries, such as Under the Desk News. That same year, Kelly appeared on a podcast by Press Gazette where he explained how he makes revenue and funds the TLDR News editorial staff.[11][12]
Content
TLDR News research press releases, official documents, transcripts, as well as other records and reports when finding topics to discuss and produce as a video.[4] Their videos are usually approximately ten minutes long, being distributed across their TLDR UK, Global, and EU channels on different political topics around the United Kingdom, the world at-large, and the European Union, respectively.[9] Examples include How a US-Saudi Defence Pact Could End the War in Gaza, which has received 190,000 views and almost a thousand comments,[9] and The UK Election Results Explained, which received 1.1 million views within 48 hours following the 2024 United Kingdom general election.[13]
In addition to their short-form videos, they also produce multiple longer form podcasts that are published on their TLDR Podcasts channel, and a physical magazine named Too Long.[† 3][original research?] According to Jack Kelly, his team release approximately twenty videos per week, each of them filmed in two days. Kelly has also stated that the network are not monitored by any regulatory bodies such as OfCom and that, owing to this, they make errors in their content, possibly at a higher rate than mainstream news outlets.[5] Multiple of the channel's videos have been analysed by foreign news outlets.[14][15]
↑ Doyle, Hannah; Graber-Lipperman, Nathan (20 March 2024). "Why Nebula is Breaking Into News". The Publish Press. Archived from the original on 29 July 2025. Retrieved 19 July 2025.
1 2 3 Hengst, Cornie (17 May 2024). "Jack Kelly". Adweek. Monetizing news. Archived from the original on 13 July 2025. Retrieved 17 July 2025.
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