Young Hollywood is growing up.
The 7-year-old company is taking its stock in trade — celebrity interviews for young fan s- -and expanding into long-form programming for an over-the-top network to launch in January. Eight series are in the works, as is plans to license more in untapped genres like scripted.
Heretofore entirely comprising short-form content spread over a vast distribution footprint of third-party portals including AOL and Yahoo and YoungHollywood.com, YH CEO and founder R.J. Williams thought the time was right to spread the brand’s wings given data showing his audience is receptive to longer runs.
“People want to watch snackable content but sometimes they’re up for more than that,” Williams said. “We’ve got the right kind of content that works for long-form, too.”
YH has plans for 500 original hours of programming that will be distributed via apps across devices belonging to market leaders including Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Samsung and Sony as well as those that run on iOs or Android.
Series in the works will see YH branch out beyond just interview formats including “Young Hollywood Food Feed” and “AMP’d Up.”
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YH’s OTT play, which is signing up sponsors, will stay Stateside for now but Williams has his eye on overseas expansion.
“We’ve had conversations about that but we want to get it up and running in the U.S. as a proof-of-concept and build the excitement from there before branching out,” he said.
YH is repped by CAA.
