Twenty-four-hour television news channel CNN yesterday showed off a CNN-funded video start-up aimed at the younger audience segment the news channel does not currently appeal to.
The start-up, called "Great Big Story", is "a socially distributed video network" aimed at "millennials", or people born after 1980, many of whom ignore traditional television news channels in favour of online media from news sites such as Buzzfeed and Vice.
According to co-founder Andrew Morse, Great Big Story is not a Web site, app, video series or cable television channel but "something else: an independent network, custom-built for the mobile and social platforms that are changing the way we watch video".
Yet this "something else" resembles a series of short, online videos distributed via the service's Web site, Android and iOS apps, and social network pages.
Great Big Story "seeks out awesome, untold and inspirational stories about new frontiers, the human condition, planet Earth, tastes and flavours," it says. "What if there were more to your social feed than empty clickbait and cat videos?" it poses in a video titled "This is Great Big Story".
Videos on the network's Web site include "This is the most insane '80s car of all time" and "The untold story of the Kool-Aid man".
While claiming to fill a "gap" in "millennials'" media demands, Great Big Story's videos are similar in angle, content or format to those distributed by popular infotainment site Buzzfeed.
Although it is branded as an independent platform, Great Big Story has received a "multiyear investment from CNN", and will also monetise its content through "branded content" from sponsors and paid advertising videos, it says.
Share
