Respawn: VENN Gaming Network Drops Its MTV Ambitions and Goes for 'Raw Contact' with Creators
Feb 04 2021
VENN launched in August with the goal of becoming the "MTV of the Gaming Generation" but it turns out the gaming generation doesn't appear to want MTV. They want short-form content.
On Thursday, VENN announced a significant shakeup, shifting their content strategy from about 85% long-form shows to 85% short-form, which is cheaper to produce and offers near instant feedback, co-CEO Ariel Horn told dot.LA.
<p>The company made the shift after securing $43 million in investment and a broad network of distribution partners. Those deals include one with telecoms company Nexstar — with its $5.3 billion market cap and nearly 200 TV stations — as well as a syndication deal with Microsoft's MSN platform and placement in the Roku Channel and on Samsung TV. </p><p>It was ready to go full throttle on their MTV-for-Gen-Z pitch, but after doing a round of focus groups and looking at its cost structure, it pivoted to focus on short-form platforms like YouTube and Twitch. The move, Horn said, reflects how gamers consume media. </p><p>As part of the pivot, L.A.-based VENN will be launching three channels on YouTube and collaborating more closely with creators that already have gamer followings.</p><p>"It's a humbling process, actually," said Horn. "You look at the editors that are making the most successful products on YouTube, and they're mostly younger folks that have grown up and lived in this environment. So for us, that's been a process, to look at those creators that are succeeding on those platforms and allowing them to do what they do and see the results." </p><p>For example, VENN will be developing a new interview show with Hector Rodriguez, whom Horn described as the "grandfather of 'Call of Duty'." Rodriguez, who started esports company Optic Gaming in 2006, has nearly 1 million subscribers and over 150 million views on his YouTube channel.</p><p>"I thought we could take long-form and chop it down into short-form platforms," said Horn, a four-time Emmy winner who previously developed esports strategies for Riot Games, Blizzard Entertainment and Justin.tv, which became Twitch. "But what I realized is that each platform needs its own bespoke attention to detail." </p><p>For VENN, that will mean focusing more on things like video titles, thumbnail photos and metadata as it shifts away from studio-quality fare toward less-polished, user-generated content (UGC).</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="575f48fdc92bf686c33ed529e641b3df"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KaN9jVrVf_w?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
</p><p>Rather than shooting long-form content from its Playa Vista studio and cutting it down into short-form bits as initially planned, VENN will now prioritize creating short-form, some of which will be shot in the studio, and then cobbling it together for distribution across its various channels.<br/></p><p>"We learned that we must focus our energy on creating engagement and growth on those short-form platforms where gamers are primarily consuming now," Horn said. "The audience is not necessarily looking for higher production value but more direct, raw contact with the creator."</p><p>Also motivating the new strategic direction are the cheaper cost of creating short-form video and the promise of more immediate user feedback. </p><p>Shooting live, long-form content can be expensive because of the manpower and overhead costs like studio space. The new strategy will allow VENN to make more content for less.</p><p>"With our long-form focus, we were able to produce three days' worth of content (per week)," Horn said. By removing some of the production polish, leveraging UGC and reducing the amount of staff needed per product, VENN will be able to produce five days' worth of content at a cheaper cost. </p><p>Thanks to the data that YouTube and Twitch provide, VENN will also be able to get more real-time feedback on what viewers are responding to than they can get through cable and connected TVs like Roku, Samsung TV and Vizio. </p><p>Horn doesn't think the top line will take a hit. </p><p>"I don't think that very much changes from an advertiser's perspective," he said.</p><p>VENN still has aspirations to become a "lifestyle" brand at the nexus of the increasingly overlapping worlds of gaming, sports, music and fashion. But to get there, it will be narrowing its focus for now. </p><p>"It's a reality of a startup that you have to make some bets where you know there are narrow bands of fandom and where you know how to market to them very specifically," said Horn. "We're willing to take as long as needed to build (the lifestyle brand). We're here for the long run." </p>
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Streaming is sidelining TV pilots. That's one of the findings in a pair of new reports released Wednesday by the nonprofit that manages most of L.A. County's film-permitting process.
The reports document the pandemic and how the rise in streaming services is changing the film-production world and challenging California's place in it.
<p>The percentage of scripted TV projects that have foregone a traditional pilot episode and instead gone "straight-to-series" (STS) has skyrocketed, from 6% in 2012 to 66% in 2020. That's a trend largely driven by streamers, who distributed nearly 90% of their 2020 projects using that model, compared to 76.3% for cable and 15.3% for broadcast. </p><p>"We've been told (streamers' projects) get vetted a lot more heavily upfront," said the nonprofit FilmLA's president, Paul Audley. That, alongside streaming's rise, has ushered in the shift away from shooting a pilot and then shopping it to buyers.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU0MzM2Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTg0NTgyNn0.Om2wOcdBlbz3m-gnlSrDk19wxoxMotKgjLf2J0Yx22Y/img.png?width=980" id="99039" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d4adb9bd13cd96c2eb24aea8b23b177f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1104" data-height="628" />
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Data and graphic from FilmLA</small></p><p>And for the second straight year, streaming made up the largest portion of scripted-TV projects. Of the 215 total such projects in FilmLA's 2020 cycle, streaming led the way with 97 projects, up 27.6% from 2019. Scripted cable projects rose 11.3% to 59, while broadcast fell 11.9% from 67 to 59. 2019 was the first year streaming projects eclipsed broadcast, and that margin has now widened.</p><p>California retains its spot as the top location for new scripted-TV projects. But there is increasing competition from other suitors trying to lure Hollywood productions. In 2018, the Golden State hosted 52.4% of scripted-TV projects. That fell to 43.1% in 2019 and further to 41.1% in 2020.<br/></p><p>The state is still king when it comes to streaming, but its overall share is steadily falling. California hosted 29 new scripted projects last year, compared to Canada's 24 and New York's 17. Georgia, which has made a play for Hollywood's films, only hosted six scripted productions. </p><p>Last year was the bleakest year on record for production in the nonprofit FilmLA's 25-year history. After a nearly three-month pandemic-induced shutdown, film and TV production in L.A. returned slowly in 2020 under new restrictions. Those rules extended shooting timelines but limited what could be produced, cutting on-location shooting days in L.A. County 48% year-over-year, according to a new year-in-review report from the nonprofit.</p><p>Still, there were some bright spots, including the re-emergence of reality television. In the last quarter of 2020, overall television production days rose 6% year-over-year, with reality TV leading the way with a 93% increase from 2019. That's a reflection of reality's simpler production requirements compared to scripted shows, which make it easier to adhere to public health and industry guidelines.</p><p>Scripted television, on the other hand, plummeted. Drama shoot-days in 2020 fell 45.8% year-over-year, and comedy dropped 75.9%. Those figures likely underestimate the damage, because of FilmLA's methodology. The organization measures production volume by shoot-days; but due to the new health and safety protocols, Audley said productions are now requiring more time, meaning it takes more shoot-days to create the same amount of output. </p><p>"It's a double-edged sword," Audley said. "One edge is real gratitude that the industry and public health have found a way for the film industry to work at least at some level, because there are thousands of small businesses dependent on this industry and whatever work we can get out is really helpful. The other side is this pandemic has really decimated this industry that has a huge impact on Los Angeles." </p>
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One brisk Friday evening in January at around 9:30 p.m., 15-year-old Ella rushed down the stairs of her home in Stevenson Ranch, California with an announcement for her parents, who were watching "Lupin," a new Netflix series, in the living room.
"Can you get off of Netflix in 15 minutes?" she asked. "I'm having a watch party at 10. Thanks."
Every few weeks, Ella and her four best friends assembled at their laptops, snacks and drinks in hand, to watch something on the popular streaming service with Teleparty, a browser extension that lets users view the same Netflix movie or show at the same time. On tap for tonight? Two episodes of "Gilmore Girls," a show Ella and her "best friend crew" had never seen. Although Ella, whose parents asked us to withhold her full name because she is a minor, couldn't be in the same room with her girlfriends, this solution proved the next best thing — and for the girls that night, it was.
<p>Ella and her friends are just a handful of the millions of people who have adapted to these unprecedented times. With people now spending more time than ever at home because of the pandemic, streaming services are meeting demand by doling out fresh content and serving up new features that expand the viewing experience.</p><p>Over the last 12 months, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video and Sling all rolled out virtual watch parties, enabling groups of people to watch shows and films at the same time. These features were in the works well before COVID-19 struck, but the pandemic spurred them to step up development.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<a href="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUzNzI4NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTM2MzQ0NH0.FGywAz6tLjJPMGjSAPOKa4hLuNK1vdwx_xOnNftsjMc/img.jpg?width=980" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUzNzI4NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTM2MzQ0NH0.FGywAz6tLjJPMGjSAPOKa4hLuNK1vdwx_xOnNftsjMc/img.jpg?width=980" id="2e915" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="074203eaf0c50aa8394ae630fa6c0802" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Hulu's Watch Party feature" /></a>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Hulu's Watch Party feature launched in May 2020.</small>
</p><p>Rolling out features like virtual parties is crucial in the battle for attracting and retaining users. According to a <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/digital-media-trends-consumption-habits-survey.html/" target="_blank">Deloitte survey</a> published this month, 62% of people who signed up for a streaming service, did so to watch a specific show or film and canceled their subscription once they were done watching it. Features like virtual watch parties bring a social element into the equation that keep users engaged longer.<br/></p><p>For Hulu, the Watch Party feature it launched its beta version in May 2020 started as an employee and intern hackathon project nine months before. But when the pandemic forced local governments to issue stay-at-home orders, Hulu accelerated plans for Watch Party and developed the feature in less than eight weeks. They rolled it out after initial tests indicated that over 75% of subscribers who hosted a Watch Party said they would do it again. </p><p>"We know that watching your favorite shows and movies has always been a social experience, and with TV becoming more synonymous with streaming, streaming has inherently become even more social," said Jason Wong, director of product management at Hulu, who added that the speedy development of Watch Party also stemmed from the fact that 60% of Hulu subscribers already streamed shows and films with others in their home, yielding a social experience unto itself. </p><p>"It was an ambitious timeline, but once we identified this need from our viewers, our team was very motivated to quickly deliver something." </p><p>In the 24 hours after launching Watch Party last December, Hulu saw over 10,000 unique Watch Party sessions with 60% of viewers in a Watch Party coming from its ad-supported plan. Moreover, Hulu tells dot.LA exclusively that users have held about 1.5 million Watch Party sessions to date, in which nearly 30 million messages were sent through the feature — and it continues to grow in popularity. According to Wong, the number of Watch Parties grew 5x from November to December last year.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-proxy-image shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image image-crop-16x9">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUzODYxOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTU0NzUwOH0.bK85sSVpMJdnzisE7Lm5WB_78tK8zW-H1y8_g82jz-w/image.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=375%2C156%2C366%2C261&height=700" id="a8485" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="33b9d41dfb350bde6dc24eaaf060e640" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Hulu's Watch Party feature" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Hulu experienced a 97% increase in Watch Parties when Christmas comedy "Happiest Season" debuted in November.</small>
</p><p>New show premieres like the LGBTQ+ coming out series "Love, Victor" and Season 2 premiere of the teen comedy "Pen15," as well as films such as "Deadpool<em>,"</em> "Parasite<em>," </em>and the Hulu original film "Palm Springs," proved particularly popular for Hulu Watch Parties. Also big? Episodic premieres, like "The Bachelor" and "A Teacher," a Hulu original limited series starring Kate Mara. When "Happiest Season," a Christmas comedy starring Kristen Stewart, Daniel Levy and Alison Brie debuted on Thanksgiving, Hulu experienced a whopping 97% increase in Watch Parties.<br/></p><p>Five months later, Disney Plus released its own GroupWatch feature. The rapidly growing streaming service, which reported 86.8 million subscribers in December, took a different tack with GroupWatch, however: users can click any one of six "reactions," or emoji, that pop up onscreen during a viewing, but they can't send text-based messages. </p><p>That was a purposeful decision, contends Michael Cerdà, vice president of product at Disney Plus. </p><p>During GroupWatch's development, the Disney Plus product team conducted extensive research to identify what worked and what didn't. For instance, GroupWatch currently allows up to seven people in a GroupWatch session — a number the group settled on after agreeing that any more people in a session made it "too noisy." </p><p>"In our research, one of the big takeaways was that people wanted to feel like they were a part of something, but we didn't want to get in the way of the content," said Cerdà. </p><p>While Disney did not disclose engagement numbers around GroupWatch, Cerda acknowledged that Disney Plus users are more likely to hold GroupWatch sessions when highly-awaited new films and shows premiere, when Disney Plus launches in a new region, and around the holidays. Last Halloween, Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was the focus of many GroupWatch sessions. Other programming like the recently-released series "WandaVision," "The Mandalorian," "Frozen 2," "Lion King," "Clouds" and "Avengers: Endgame" also proved popular for GroupWatch sessions. </p><p>Sling's Watch Party, which launched last September, takes things one step further than its rivals, allowing up to four people to participate through video chat. For the Sling product development team, video chat was a "must have" part of Watch Party.</p><p>"When you're watching something in real-time, so much of our responses can't be verbalized," explains Jon Lin, vice president of product at Sling TV. "If something is really impactful, you'll see it on the faces of your friends and family. That's the kind of connection we wanted to capture with Watch Party, which is why we focused so much on creating a video chat feature — so it felt like the people you are watching with are actually right there next to you."</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-proxy-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGNWVhOWY1MzA3ZDgzMWY4MTdhYjgxZWRiJTJGNjAwMWY3Yzk3OTk1ZWEzZjlkMWVjZDJlJTJGYWIxNGI4M2FmYmQ1NmE1OGQ5OTA3NDUyMDZiMzRlNzclMkZHV185LnBuZyZobz1odHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRnRyZWxsby1hdHRhY2htZW50cy5zMy5hbWF6b25hd3MuY29tJnM9NTI5Jmg9NjNhMWY3ZjIxYWIyOTQ0M2JjY2M1M2Y2NDJhMzNkZGVkOTcxY2E4NzY3Zjc5NTI1ZDU5ODA5ZjQxZWMxZGViZSZzaXplPTk4MHgmYz0zMTEyNjg2MzI1IiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NTY5NjQ1NH0.2R95AS4bGyJc3UxUBV9YpM-PFzgApCf3O3_y-F0glWc/img.jpg" id="a0351" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="bbe9860c7dabd2c7a75aea862e6445bf" alt="Disney Plus' GroupWatch feature" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Disney Plus is currently exploring expanding the ways users can communicate and share during GroupWatch sessions</small>
</p><p>Sling also would not disclose specific engagement numbers around their new feature, but said live events like sports have proven very popular for Watch Party users. The streaming service also saw an uptick on the evening of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in November, as well as around Christmas movies during the holidays, says Lin.<br/></p><p>Netflix doesn't offer a comparable group watching feature yet — the third-party extension from Teleparty fills the gap for now — but it's likely coming. For services like Hulu, Disney Plus, Sling, Prime Video and others, the feature is yet another way to incrementally boost engagement on their platforms, particularly during a time when it's difficult — or in many cases, strongly discouraged — for people to mingle in groups. </p><p>"Streaming services have quickly adapted, and I think it makes absolute sense — it brings a social element, sort of like going to a movie theater," says Eunice Shin, a digital strategy partner who leads media entertainment and direct-to-consumer efforts at Prophet, a growth strategy consulting company. "It's smart for them to pull the feature onto their platform, as opposed to using a separate app like Airtime." </p><p>Virtual watch parties aren't just here to stay, it seems. Services are also finding ways to shore up the experience to make them more compelling. </p><p>Based on user feedback, Disney Plus is currently exploring expanding the ways users can communicate and share during GroupWatch sessions, including possibly text-based chat or offering more emoji reactions. Hulu said users are clamoring for the ability to throw a Watch Party with their friends on different devices. (The feature only works on desktop browsers at the moment.) Meanwhile, Sling recently updated the design of Watch Party's chat messaging and upped the number of non-Sling TV subscribers who can join Watch Parties, from one to three. </p>"It's only going to get better — it's going to get more refined." says Cerdà of virtual watch party experiences. "I think we're at the front end of something even bigger."<p><br/></p><p><em>***This story has been updated to correct the timeline provided by Hulu regarding its Watch Party data. </em></p>
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