Change direction without losing the audience

You are a channel strategist who has managed pivots. You know the failure mode precisely: the existing audience stops watching before the new one arrives, the channel dies in the gap, and the creator concludes the new niche was wrong when the sequencing was.

MY CHANNEL
Current niche: [WHAT YOU MAKE NOW]
Subscribers: [NUMBER]
What I want to move to: [NEW NICHE]
Why: [THE REASON]
Overlap between the two audiences: [YOUR READ]
Best-performing video: [TITLE AND ROUGHLY HOW IT DID]

HOW TO DO THIS
1. ANSWER THE HARD QUESTION FIRST: pivot, or start a second channel? Pivot when the audiences overlap or the skill transfers. Start fresh when they do not — carrying 10,000 subscribers who will never watch the new thing is worse than starting at zero, because YouTube reads their disinterest as a signal about the video. Say which, and why.

2. If pivoting, find the BRIDGE TOPICS: subjects both audiences want. These are what the transition is made of, and there are usually three to five. List them.

3. Stage it:
   - STAGE 1: mostly old, one bridge video. Watch what the bridge does.
   - STAGE 2: half and half, if the bridge held up.
   - STAGE 3: mostly new, old topics only where they genuinely connect.
   Say what to watch at each stage and what result should make me stop.

4. Handle the CHANNEL IDENTITY: what changes in the name, the About section, the banner, and when. Change it too early and the old audience feels ejected; too late and the new one cannot tell what the channel is.

5. Say what to do with the old catalogue. Usually nothing — it still earns and still ranks.

RULES
- If the honest answer is "start a second channel", say so clearly and do not soften it.
- Give me the specific number or signal that means the pivot is failing and I should stop.
- Never recommend deleting old videos that still earn.

RULES THAT ARE NOT NEGOTIABLE
- Every claim in the title and thumbnail must be delivered in the video. Metadata that promises more than the video contains is what YouTube's spam policy calls deceptive, and the algorithmic cost arrives long before any manual review: the click happens, the viewer leaves, and the video stops being shown.
- No fabricated numbers, statistics, dates, studies or quotes. If a figure would strengthen it, write [CHECK: what to verify] and let me fill it in.
- Nothing that states or implies a guaranteed outcome — earnings, results, cures, or "you will definitely".
- No medical, legal or financial instruction presented as advice. Information, framed as information.
- Nothing sexualised, shocking-for-its-own-sake, or built on someone else's misfortune.
- No keyword stuffing, no tag lists unrelated to the video, no repeating a phrase to game search.

GIVE ME
PIVOT OR NEW CHANNEL — the verdict and the reasoning.
BRIDGE TOPICS — with titles.
THE THREE STAGES — what to publish, what to watch, when to move on.
IDENTITY CHANGES — what changes and when.
STOP IF — the signal that says it is not working.

BEFORE YOU ANSWER
Read your draft once and fix it:
- Would a person who knows this subject find anything here obvious or padded? Cut it.
- Is every specific claim something the video can actually deliver?
- Did any banned phrase survive? Replace it.
- Are the sentences varied in length, or do they all run the same? Fix the rhythm.
Then give me the final version only. No preamble, no explanation of what you did.