Every outlet is its own island. Success on YouTube doesn't mean success elsewhere. Likewise the reverse scenario. On YouTube you can easily see that DSTV does about 250,000 views a week on average (though, you'd have to check our count tally in a 7 day period). Views go much, much higher when we get special featured positioning. The balance of that 1+ million I stated that week is made up in views from iTunes, Blip.tv, Mevio, Blinx and all the little guys added up. Yes, 1M in a week is pretty do-able. It's not magic. Keep in mind that I still consider my show small for the web video genre. There are many that I expect are larger.
It bears repeating that you can't count YouTube alone to determine the success or failure of an online show. Heck, even Smosh which is one of the largest YouTube shows doesn't rely solely on YouTube for views or income.
Fast Lane Daily, VOD Cars and Garage 419 came out of a startup called Next New Networks. It's backed by investors and features (former?) MTV executives running the biz. When they launched they had a very large push on iTunes and they used their network to feed traffic across their lineup of shows (which also included Threadbanger, Channel Frederator, Indy Mogul, etc.) For August alone NNN claims 151 million views across their lineup. It's my understanding that many of these views are through their iTunes channels (though I don't know that for fact.)
The Smoking Tire seemed to take some benefit from this former relationship when G419 went away and Matt struck out on "his own." This would lead me to believe he still has a large iTunes following. FLD also "left" (kind of) NNN earlier (though maintaining some sort of relationship with NNN) this year and is now with Autostream, along with G419, er, The Smoking Tire. Thanks to that previous relationship they have very large followings (which they absolutely deserve -- both are great shows in their own rights!) Don't discount what cross-network promotion can do, especially with giants like Frederator and Indy Mogul to push viewers your way. It also helps that they managed to get lots of promotion from Apple and iTunes to grow their audience. All these things can build a massive following outside of the YouTube world.
I don't know what kind of traffic TST and FLD pull outside of YouTube these days. So I can't say if they are pulling down numbers greater than their YouTube channels. I would be surprised if they didn't have a lot more traffic outside of YouTube, though, based on their past relationships. But you simply cannot use YouTube as a metric to gauge audience outside of YouTube -- it has no bearing on that.
I'm one of the few guys that doesn't mind talking about audience building and making a living on producing a web series (yes, DSTV is my one and only day job and I support a family of four off of it.) So, if you are still saying that DSTV doesn't have the audience I claim, there's nothing more I can really do to help you out here. Part of the reason I do this (writing an epic post) is that I feel I'm defending against your assertion that we couldn't have the audience we claim. I do this not necessarily for the sake of my own show, but for the industry I represent. There's a popular misconception that you cannot make a living or build an audience doing this and that you have to be on TV to matter. Me and others prove a non-TV model viable every day. (though, to be honest, I wouldn't mind hosting TGUSA) For you to say that's impossible because you don't see the numbers on YouTube is just wrong.