Last fall, Google announced that it would be launching celebrity YouTube channels. A rumored $100million was invested to entice 20 celebrities to create original weekly video content. They also redesigned YouTube to be driven by channels, not individual videos. Despite some minor reservations about how celebrity YouTube channels would impact the bottom line of long-standing YouTube users, I was more than willing to embrace this model shift. It seems this faith might have been well-placed as two of the brand spanking new celebrity channels are hosted by geeks that I trust. Comedian Chris Hardwick and actress Felicia Day have made their names by focusing on the same kind of content YouTube is known for. They know gaming, comics, parody, and pop culture. We have our first tastes of their original content and both of their projects are shaping up to be interesting hubs of new media.
First, Chris Hardwick's channel is Nerdist (aka the official YouTube expansion of all-consuming geek culture blog/podcast extravaganza Nerdist). If you're familiar with Nerdist, you know what kind of content is coming. For examples, there's a show all about digitally blowing up YouTube memes.
The channel's focus right now seems to be original comedy programming. There are two animated series--Dr. Tran and Nana & Lil Puss Puss--as well as a live action/puppet hybrid detective series (featuring actual puppets designed by the Jim Henson Workshop) called S.U.D.S.. Chris Hardwick's musical comedy duo Hard & Phirm (with Mike Phirman) also have music videos on the channel.
I'm more interested in the live action content still to come. The first All Star Celebrity Bowling went up a few hours ago and it's entertaining. Chris Hardwick's Nerdist team goes up against some of the guys who run Machinima in a one game charity bowling tournament. Cue puns, jokes, distractions, and pin flying action. The channel will also feature a Weird Al talk show and an undisclosed Rob Zombie project.
Felicia Day's Geek and Sundry channel is taking a more regimented approach. There's a programming schedule and everything. Mondays bring us The Flog, Felicia Day's weekly video blog about her media consumption. Tuesdays bring us season 5 of The Guild and Wednesdays give up motion comics from Dark Horse comics, probably one of my favorite indie print publishers.
More importantly, Wil Wheaton has a show that should tickle any geek just right. It's called Tabletop and it's all about board games. The first episode saw Grant Imahara (Mythbusters), Jenna Busch (superstar blogger), and Sean Plott (Day[9]TV) play a game of Small World. Let me just say, after the terrible Family Guy extra of a Star Wars Trivial Pursuit match between the writers of one of their Star Wars parodies, I didn't think you could make tabletop gaming interesting on video. Geek and Sundry proved me wrong. Plus, it's Wil Wheaton trying to make everyone laugh while playing an overly complex German-styled board game. If you can't laugh at yourself playing something like that, you need to learn to relax about gaming.
The only way this paid-celebrity YouTube channel experiment will work is if the celebrities fit into the fabric of YouTube. Chris Hardwick and Felicia Day are perfect choices for the geek demographic. Chris is like the 4chan/Newgrounds demo while Felicia Day feels more like the Whovians/Bronies--sillier and friendlier, perhaps. So long as what they put up on their channels feels authentic, they should have no problem keeping their subscription rates up.
If nothing else, celebrity channels on YouTube could convince more people to check out original programming on YouTube rather than jump in for the cute cat videos. Not that there's anything wrong with cute cat videos.
Thoughts? Personally, I could talk about that "I'm the One That's Cool" video all day long. Share your thoughts below. The moderation isn't scary. I just delete hate speech and blatant spamming. Everything else goes through. Promise.
