Rebecca Glashow & Shelley Zimmerman, Awesomeness

Digital-focused content brand Awesomeness was valued at more than half a billion dollars in 2016 yet sold to Bob Bakish’s Viacom for a reported $50m (£38m) two years later. Clearly, he saw value in the firm where others may have seen question marks after an unstable period and with a changing ownership structure.

Given the firm was set up as a YouTube channel in 2012, it has travelled far, whatever money has been paid for it.

It is now a key part of Viacom’s overall operations, not least because its co-founder Brian Robbins and former chief business officer Kelly Day hold pivotal Viacom positions as president of kids’ network Nickelodeon and president of Viacom Digital Studios respectively.

Internationally, Awesomeness content has been distributed in several ways over the years, including through traditional broadcasters.

Though it currently has no linear presence, it launched a Sunday programming block on ITV2 in the UK in 2017, with more content made available through the ITV Hub.

Meanwhile, Channel 4 recently secured rights to four youth-skewing series for on-demand service All 4, including Hulu scripted show Light As A Feather.

However, the US-based Awesomeness ultimately represents a content producer and digital brand for the future: a solely digital-focused outfit, targeting Gen Z audiences who have “grown up on streaming platforms” and therefore have associated “expectations on talent, voices and stories”, according to co-chief Rebecca Glashow.

She and joint-head Shelley Zimmerman took control of the company in September last year, after the departure of former chief executive Jordan Levin.

The duo combine extensive expertise in content distribution, from Glashow’s time at Discovery and Comcast, and production, through Zimmerman’s experience running Awesomeness’s TV production studio AwesomenesTV and scripted programming development and production work at Warner Horizon.

From Zimmerman’s perspective, delivering content for digitally native audiences means AwesomenessTV must focus on the global SVoD platforms.

“We have no linear presence, so we’re focused on building our television studio by selling shows to Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and other streamers,” she says.

Youth stablemates

Both execs appreciate the more mature youth-skewing siblings in the Viacom family, acknowledging MTV as the “pre-eminent brand” for younger audiences and a company Awesomeness can learn from as it beds into its new home.

However, despite the parallels, Zimmerman believes Awesomeness is fundamentally “a slightly different business” to its legacy media counterparts within Viacom, like Paramount Network and MTV.

While some industry heavyweights have recently proclaimed the death of linear TV, Glashow isn’t as pessimistic. She does, however, emphasise the creative freedom granted to producers in the digital space: “Frankly, it allows us to prioritise the best storytelling, versus the question of how we fill the schedule.”

Glashow acknowledges “a shift” in the content ecosystem is taking place. “Certainly, when you talk about streaming services versus linear, streaming is now the platform you go to first,” she says, adding that detachment from schedules means stories have more flexibility.

“We don’t feel the pressure of what a show is going to look like in episode 40, 50 or 60,” she continues. “Very few shows are able to really maintain a level of excellence, and many of them get creatively compromised over time.”

Consequently, AwesomenessTV has been experimenting with shorter, 30- minute episodes rather than the traditional hour of drama. “There’s no filler, no TV time, no stress,” says Glashow. “That benefits our audience – who binge shows – because there’s no dead time.”

The company’s output has found its way onto several premium platforms. In the US, streamer Hulu has been the home for several of AwesomenessTV’s scripted titles, including two series of horror original Freakish and supernatural thriller Light As A Feather, which has just been renewed for a second series.

Hulu is also the distributor for the third season of social media horror series T@gged – sold internationally by Viacom International Studios (VIS) as You’ve Been T@gged. Other series have included romantic comedy Foursome for YouTube Premium and romcom film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before for Netflix.

Teen comedy PEN15, co-produced with comedy outfit The Lonely Island, recently launched on Hulu and is a show that exemplifies Awesomeness’s content tone of straddling young adult and teenage audiences.

Created by Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle and Sam Zvibleman, it stars 30-somethings Erskine and Konkle as 13-year-old semi-fictional versions of themselves in middle school in the year 2000, alongside actual teenagers.

While Zimmerman says Gen Z audiences are “voracious” in their desire for unscripted content, the company is seeing most success in the scripted sub-genres of thriller, romcom and horror where “climaxes and cliffhangers” are popular. “Our filter is not genre-specific but it is about being authentic and relevant to our audience,” she adds.

Glashow says: “No one was programming or speaking to Gen Z audiences in a consistent way in the media environment and we’ve gone after this audience across social video platforms, YouTube and the TV and film business to create a studio dedicated to them.

“We have built a track record and buyers can now see what we’ve accomplished. They can see the nerves we’ve hit and how we got into the zeitgeist with our stories and shows. That’s only going to continue to accelerate because of the investment we’ve put in.

“In addition to being a studio, we invest in the audience on social platforms and YouTube daily. Every couple of months, we have been lucky enough to have the big premieres on Netflix or Hulu, but in the daily conversation, we’re producing 15 short-form shows a week that we’re putting up on YouTube, plus daily posts across social.”

Awesomeness wants to further transfer its US track record to the wider international market and stable mate VIS will sell its content following a recent agreement.

Glashow says co-pro opportunities with local producers in different territories are on the radar, with the UK “absolutely a possible path for us”.

“Content and platforms are becoming more global and I would not rule against doing localised productions around the world with our Viacom partners and others,” she adds. “We’ve seen our content resonate in the UK and we would love to work more in that market, certainly on a social side.

“We see so much engagement with AwesomenessTV content from UK audiences, we know there is a big appetite for it and a crossover in themes, subject matters and stories that are going to connect. It’s definitely an opportunity for us.”

With Glashow and Zimmerman hosting a keynote conversation with Light As A Feather star Peyton List at Mip TV, the opportunities to turn that intent into concrete conversations may be closer than we think.