Social media behemoth Facebook is looking to extend its tentacles even deeper into the media world., with reports indicating that it plans to start buying and producing its own TV shows which would air through the site’s video platform.
something like this, maybe?
Generally Facebook has relied on other people, organisations and outlets to produce its content – that’s kinda what a social network does – so this’ll be a huge foray into working like a traditional media network.
They’re apparently exploring the possibility of airing scripted shows, game shows, sports and more. It’d be the first time they consider paying for their own content since they incentivised a bunch of media organisations to help get the Facebook Live platform off the ground.
This appears to be spearheaded by Ricky Van Veen, the CollegeHumor founded who recently joined the company. He made a statement on his efforts:
Earlier this year, we started rolling out the Video tab, a dedicated place for video on Facebook. Our goal is to kickstart an ecosystem of partner content for the tab, so we’re exploring funding some seed video content, including original and licensed scripted, unscripted, and sports content, that takes advantage of mobile and the social interaction unique to Facebook. Our goal is to show people what is possible on the platform and learn as we continue to work with video partners around the world.
Let’s see how this plays out. It’ll be interesting to see Facebook, which has long claimed that it is not a media company but rather a tech company, try to explore content production avenues like this.
Source: Recode.
Photo: Getty Images.
