Refinery29
From left: Sonia Denis, La La Anthony, Bowen Yang, Rebecca O'Neal, and Matt Rogers.
- Refinery29 thinks it has found a new formula for cracking Facebook Watch: a 15-minute late-night show.
- The show is split into short segments that cover politics and pop culture.
- Refinery29 is experimenting with cross-promoting and linking shows to drive viewers to Watch.
- Publishers can't make branded content for Watch yet, but Refinery29 is already interested in product placements and sponsorships.
Early last week, a few hours before the Emmy Awards aired on TV, a roughly 20-person crew huddled in a small room in New York's Chinatown neighborhood.
Over the next hour, the host and comedian Sonia Denis talked to a panel of comedians and pop-culture experts about the Emmy nominees and interviewed the actress La La Anthony as cameras were rolling.
In some ways, the video shoot was much like a classic comedic talk show or an awards recap that might air on the E! network. The panel talked about front-runners for awards and played a trivia game about past winners.
But in many ways, this was nothing like an episode of "The Tonight Show," "Entertainment Tonight," or other celebrity fare designed for a traditional linear-TV audience.
Instead, the Chinatown video shoot was a bold attempt by the digital publisher Refinery29 to reinvent the late-night talk show.
And at the same time, the series "After After Party" is part of a bold bet by the publisher and Facebook to establish a tentpole show for Facebook Watch and help figure out what works on the fledgling video platform.
How long should shows be? Should they be topical? When do you distribute them? How do you promote them in a way that leverages Facebook's social power?
These are all questions Refinery29, Facebook, and the rest of the
A late-night talk show that's about party conversation, not Trump
After the Chinatown shoot wrapped up, the Emmy-night footage was then quickly edited and packaged into a 15-minute clip that was posted to Facebook at 9 p.m. ET.
The six-week-old show is deliberately trying not to look like popular, male-dominated talk shows like CBS' "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." "After After Party" wants to put a twist and perspective on the news - similar to Refinery 29's overall editorial approach.
There isn't a monologue, for example. There isn't an audience to laugh at jokes, aside from the cast and crew members. And the set is designed to look like an apartment with a couch, cocktails, and house plants and a bar area in the back - all of which you may find at a party in a millennial's apartment.
"I had always wanted to do kind of like a clubhouse talk show," said Julie Miller, the executive producer and creator of "After After Party."
"Everything in the news can be really dark lately, and the show is a comedy show, so we know that a lot of the other late-night shows like Colbert and Seth Meyers - not that we're in competition with them - are going to do deep dives on news stories. I always say that we need to talk about things that wouldn't be a 'party foul.'"
"If you bring it up at a party, it should be something that keeps you at the party and doesn't take down the mood entirely but should be interesting and get different perspectives and point of views."
While the show is daily and meant to be topical, episodes are designed to be a bit like evergreen content around topics in politics, pop culture, and feminism. A week's worth of five shows is shot twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays.
"That's why it's important to have a conversation about a bigger issue that has topical elements," Denis said. "Our show tries to be an alternative where we're talking about bigger issues as they relate to pop culture and politics - at the end of the day, it's a comedy show that you hopefully take something from."
Facebook helps determine the length of the show
Refinery29 is part of a growing group of publishers that Facebook is leaning on to turn its Watch hub into a destination for video that users visit habitually (instead of just ending up there after clicking on a video in their News Feed).
And as Watch begins to roll out globally after being available in the US for only about a year, publishers are still tweaking what types of content work best for the platform and are getting more access to pre-roll and mid-roll ads from their clips to make money.
Refinery29 routinely gives Facebook materials to give notes on, including a rundown of topics ahead of taping, scripts, and final edits.
Facebook also helped decide that the length of the show should be 15 minutes. "It just made sense for their platform - a lot of their news shows and content is that length," Miller said. The show consists of five-minute segments that both are quick to watch and allow for mid-roll ads to naturally slide between segments.
"Because we shoot for an hour, an hour and a half, you get the best 12 to 15 minutes and it's punchy," Denis said. "For Facebook, I don't think you can have an hour-long show - or at least we couldn't."
That doesn't mean the show is locked in to 15 minutes though.
"It's a nice experiment," said Shannon Gibson, an executive producer of the show. "If a show is great at 15 or 16 minutes, we can put it up, and if a show is better at 12 minutes, we have that option, which is something you wouldn't get anywhere else - we don't have to fill any time."
In the first couple of months of the show, "After After Party" has 29,000 followers, and videos can generate anywhere from 50,000 views to more than 500,000 views. The views are metrics that help program the show's topics.
An episode about code-switching amassed more than 525,000 views earlier this month and shows that viewers are interested in topics about "more nuanced behaviors," Miller said.
More specifically, Refinery29's chief content officer, Amy Emmerich, is looking at building up repeat viewers - or what she calls "loyalists" - around the show.
"There's so much going on to build a community as fast as possible and have that daily, consistent behavior," she said. "It's hard to say that 'we'll be here every week.' We wanted to be there every day."
Branded content is a no-no with Watch, but publishers are interested
Similar to other publishers, Refinery29 can't make or sell custom sponsored content like product placements within its shows. Instead, it makes money from a revenue-share program from pre-roll and mid-roll ads served during content.
Still, Emmerich is itching to make branded content for Watch. An alcohol brand, for example, could make sense for "After After Party" since the cast drinks cocktails during the show.
"I'm interested in sponsorship for these series," she said. "There's so many ways that I would love - a cocktail recipe book, I would love a sponsorship with Smirnoff. I look forward to having that opportunity."
Refinery29 has been involved with Watch since the first original programming rolled out last year and has since created numerous programs - including a show based off of its podcast "Strong Opinions Loosely Held." The publisher has also turned existing video franchises like "Try Living With Lucy" and "How Stuff Is Made" into Watch shows.
"It's got to really be community-oriented," Emmerich said.
Specifically, she said, Refinery29 has stand-alone Pages for each of its Watch programs to cross-promote and link to shows to "make sure that the Watch Pages are intertwined with the main Facebook Page - we're still messing around, playing with that."