As a scale example, Dope As Yola’s mainstream wins, including a Spotify distribution play, show how creator reach can translate into commerce.

‘ESPN For Weed,’ Built From The Circle

Enter Proper Smoke Network (PSN), a newly announced joint venture from First Smoke of the Day and Proper Doinks that aims to be a connoisseur-focused media platform. Picture ESPN for cannabis, with operators playing like pros. That is PSN’s model. FSOTD’s Lance Harman brings the archive and audience. Proper Doinks’ Pain and Christmon bring the method and the scoreboard. Built for smokers, by smokers. Across every show, the premise holds: operators are the athletes and smoke performance is the score.

“I built First Smoke of the Day to give cannabis its voice,” Harman said in an interview. “Raw, real, authentic conversations with the people on the front lines who shaped cannabis culture history.”

Christmon frames PSN’s mission simply: “This is the home of the connoisseur… We see the growers and the brands as the professional athletes of our industry, and we focus on nothing but their performance and the very best of them… Every show in a creative way is centered around a competitive look at the connoisseur community.”

He also described the why: “We’re building a home for the connoisseur who’s been outcasted as a snob or too picky. We want to know the best product on the market, period, and show it in a competitive sense.”

Mass Reach Vs. Fine Taste

Mass creators prove cannabis can travel anywhere on the internet. Connoisseur creators prove it can mature. One plays for scale. The other plays for standards.

On the scale side, personalities like Dope As Yola and platforms like En Volá and Educannabis reach broad audiences with narrative, humor and accessibility, then extend into product lines and partnerships.

On the standards side, connoisseur channels convert taste into an operating system. The stack looks different. Memberships fund independence. Hard goods validate the method in people’s hands. Events turn curation into sport. Consulting and QC work close the loop with growers.

Proper Doinks is a clean example. According to Pain, its Patreon sits around 850 paid members (October 2025). Site sales for glass tips, papers and grinders typically range from roughly $50,000 to $110,000 a month depending on production. Sponsorships add another layer near the five-figure mark monthly, limited to products the hosts actually prefer. Private QC and pheno-hunt work translate palate into outcomes for cultivators.

The Numbers Behind FSOTD

Harman shared current traction and who is watching. FSOTD is “just under 110,000” YouTube subscribers with more than 6.5 million views in 2025 year-to-date (as of October), a 210% year-over-year jump. Videos have pulled over 60 million impressions this year with a 4.6% click-through rate, and an average view duration of 9 minutes 49 seconds.

On audio, FSOTD holds around 90,000 to 100,000 monthly downloads across Spotify, Apple and other platforms. About 85% of the audience is U.S.-based with fast growth in Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Age skews 25–44 across founders, cultivators, brand owners and creatives who live the culture.

Conversion from content to cash is steady. “On average, we see about a 1.5–2% conversion rate from each episode to paid Patreon memberships,” Harman said. A clear proof point was a recent rolling paper factory-tour episode that passed 1.3 million views in just over a month, logged more than 103,000 watch hours and added 7,700 new subscribers, with a visible spike in Patreon signups after launch. As Harman notes, in this category “age restrictions and algorithm throttling make discoverability tougher,” which makes a 1.5–2% paid conversion an indicator of trust, not just reach.

Revenue mix reflects that audience trust. “Sponsorships drive most of our revenue, roughly 65%,” Harman said. “Our Patreon community makes up about 20%… The other 15% to 20% is a mix of events, merch drops and collaborations.”

Voices And Lineage

The connoisseur lane did not appear out of nowhere. It was built, episode by episode, by people who treated technique like curriculum.

Future Cannabis Project gave breeders and growers a long-form classroom on video. The James Loud Podcast keeps craft voices in circulation with conversations that travel. Kyle Kushman and Jorge Cervantes turned cultivation and flavor into watchable instruction, while Mr. Canucks Grow shows method and results for a video-native audience.

The Dank Duchess translated global hash tradition into modern practice. Nikka T helped canonize solventless craft and gave viewers a working language for quality.

This is not a roll call. It is the spine. Today’s connoisseur creators stand on that archive, package it for broader audiences, and turn taste into something you can learn on camera and recognize at the counter.

How Standards Travel, From Content To Counters

Education changes buying. That is true in wine, coffee and chocolate. It is finally becoming true in cannabis.

When a show standardizes the roll and grades smoothness, accuracy, purity, intensity, stain and coat, it changes what viewers expect from a joint and what buyers ask at the counter. When a podcast documents breeders’ choices and growers’ technique, it changes how consumers think about lineage and how retailers justify a menu. When events pay prize money for smoke that performs, it changes how brands allocate R&D and how investors evaluate craft over bag appeal.

PSN pushes that shift with a slate built for practice, not posturing. “Budtender Battle” puts retail skills on stage. “The Rollers” turns technique and flavor pairing into teachable moments. “Hot Slices” confronts brand claims head to head. Athlete episodes bring performance and recovery into the open.

For consumers, the utility is immediate. You can learn to grind right, roll right, hit right and read the burn. You can taste the difference between clean resin and harsh residue without a lab report. You can separate camera tricks from combustion truth.

For retailers, the incentives are practical. If your staff can recommend based on smokeability in a world that is learning how to judge smoke, you win trust and repeat business. If you cannot, you lose the conversation to a creator who can.

For growers, the upside is durable. You can build a reputation on consistent performance, not a color palette or a test score. Hit the standard and content becomes proof of work.

Why This Matters Now

Legal markets are maturing while attention keeps fragmenting. The easy content is loud, fast and forgettable. The valuable content is repeatable, teachable and hard to fake. Connoisseur creators will not always post the biggest raw view counts, and they do not need to. They compete on depth, not breadth. They sell fewer things people use longer. They elevate operators who treat smoke like a finish line, not a thumbnail.

“First Smoke of the Day and Proper Doinks have always represented two sides of the same culture, we tell the stories, they define the standard,” Harman said. “It’s about ownership and longevity… We’re not trying to be the biggest, we’re trying to be the most trusted voice in cannabis media, period.”

PSN ties the pieces together. A roll that performs. A show that listens. A network that keeps score in public. When that becomes the norm, bag appeal becomes an accessory and experience becomes the product.