In its quest to create a robust video ecosystem on its social media platform, Facebook may be ready to launch a roster of scripted original series this summer.
In its quest to create a robust video ecosystem on its social media platform, Facebook plans to launch a roster of scripted original series. It is near a deal to revive Loosely Exactly Nicole for a second season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The first season of the scripted comedy was previously on MTV but was cancelled after the first season due to poor ratings.
Facebook has been planning to launch online video programming with plans to have more than ten shows for this initial push and has approved multiple shows for production, according to sources. The social media giant announced its video strategy to dive into long-form scripted shows six months ago when it hired CollegeHumor Founder Ricky Van Veen as Global Head of Creative Strategy.
With these launches, the social media platform will be competing with Amazon, YouTube, and Snapchat, which have already established viewership numbers in the online video market.
The Facebook shows are expected to launch in two distinct tiers: a marquee tier for a few longer, big-budget shows that would feel at home on TV, and a lower tier for shorter, less expensive shows of about five to 10 minutes that would refresh every 24 hours. For its top-tier shows, Facebook is said to be looking to spend six figures per episode for full ownership, which would give it the ability to release them to its global audience of 1.9 billion monthly active users.
Facebook users have embraced the short video clips that autoplay in the news feed but only time will tell whether long-form videos will be a welcome move or not.
