Now more than ever, YouTube is the new television. Watching YouTube on a bigger screen is defining the TV experience for a new generation. Six popular creators – Sean Evans, Brittany Broski, Cleo Abram, Julian Shapiro-Barnum, Kareem Rahma and Michelle Khare – are bringing the best of YouTube to TVs around the world.
Amid the current cord-cutting era and shift in the future of media, these creatives share why working outside the traditional television model is right for each of them. They also discuss how YouTube gives them room to produce original IP and why they make content they want to see in the world.
Hot Ones
Traditional late-night programs were once the place to see celebrities in more relaxed fashion. Since its debut online in 2015, “Hot Ones,” a spicy chicken wings interview series hosted by Sean Evans, has disrupted the talk series genre and become an in-demand PR stop for A-list talent. In 2024, amid massive viewership, virality and pop culture clout, the digital show successfully petitioned to be included as an awards contender in the outstanding talk series category.
“As absurd as it is on paper, we kind of forget that we’re on a TV show after we eat a couple wings. It becomes, in most cases, this, usually, very positive experience where two people are connecting while the Scovilles are increasing and the wings are on fire,” Evans says of the format he co-created with Chris Schonberger. “I wouldn’t say that the audience was fully on board in the beginning, but from the first couple of episodes we’d have guests stand up on the tables and do laps around the studio. There was such gonzo chaos in the studio that I knew that the way it would translate to video would be unlike anything anyone’s ever seen before. So I knew right from the beginning that if we could get people to watch, that they’d stick around.”
