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Maker moves
Posted By Nico Franks On 27-03-2015 @ 9:01 am In News | Comments Disabled
The president of international at Disney-owned multi-channel network Maker Studios tells Nico Franks why kids are shunning linear TV in their droves in favour of online.
Disney’s acquisition of Maker Studios didn’t just give the Mouse House a foot in the door of digital media, it gave it a top-floor apartment, complete with sea view.
“The future is OTT. We’ve now got two generations that have grown up not watching linear TV,” says Rene Rechtman, president of international at Maker Studios, who adds that kids sitting down to watch a show on TV at 18.00 is “just not happening and will never happen again.”
Disney paid US$500m for Maker Studios in May last year – a figure that could rise to $950m if the production company, distributor and talent agency hits future performance targets. It obviously has great expectations for the firm, with one exec recently claiming the five-year-old company has the potential to become the next Marvel, Pixar or Lucasfilm.
With a slate that spans 23 different genres, 550 million subscribers worldwide and a talent roster of huge names in youth media – including 24-year-old Swedish video game commentator Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, the most subscribed-to YouTuber in the world – Maker Studios is certainly the cream of the new media crop.
The popularity of PewDiePie and gaming expert Stampy among kids is a reaction to growing up “in a world of unreachable stars,” believes Rechtman, who says their appeal lies in the fact that in many cases the YouTube stars of today began making their own content in their living rooms as a way to express themselves.
Take one of Maker Studios’ co-founders, Shay Carl, a vlogger who shot to fame online and soon took his family, dubbed the Shaytards, with him on his way to internet stardom. Viewers took the everyday antics of the clan to their hearts, giving them the title of ‘YouTube’s first family.’ After all, why watch a cheesy sitcom with canned laughter when you can see the real thing?
“Authenticity is key. We don’t do anything that is out of the natural habitat of this generation. That’s so different from what anyone else who has tried to dip into this world is doing,” Rechtman asserts.
“The new stars of this generation are reachable and viewers look at them as peers. It’s a mass movement, which is very professional and mainstream. If you ask a 12 or 14-year-old what they would like to ask Stampy or PewDiePie, it’ll be ‘what camera does he use to record?’; ‘How much is scripted beforehand?’; ‘What laptop does he play his games on?’”
YouTube has previously spoken of ‘Generation C,’ the people it calls the “connectors, curators and creators of our time,” and it plans to increase levels of its original content by investing in new programming and formats from some of the most popular stars on the web.
The online video giant will support show development in a bid to ensure creators remain on the Google-owned platform, potentially convincing them to go it alone and ensnaring them away from the likes of Maker Studios.
Rechtman’s company, meanwhile, began the year by partnering with Vimeo, one of YouTube’s biggest rivals.
The premium video-sharing platform will host and help finance the ad-free content on its transactional VoD service (TVoD) Vimeo On Demand, giving Maker Studios stars that have built up a fan base on YouTube an extra revenue stream.
“I’d compare it to the 1980s when all these production companies set up in Soho, London, and produced content for Channel 4 and ITV. That’s what they’re doing,” Rechtman says of this generation of content creators.
“Some of them have five million subscribers and are bigger than TV channels themselves,” he adds.
Delegates at Natpe in Miami in January could be seen on the market floor requesting snaps with the likes of Connor Franta and Tyler Oakley, YouTube personalities who were in town to discuss their paths to stardom, to get pictures they could show off to their children back home.
However, it’s become startlingly clear that execs from the world of traditional TV must get close enough to these online stars to get more than a mere ‘selfie’ if they want to remain relevant to the plurals.
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