Snapchat's business may be a mess - but its audience for shows is ballooning, and it could provide a future growth spark

• Snapchat's push into original content seems to be gaining ground while its growth declines.
• The app has a dozen new "Originals" programs from big production companies like Bunim/Murray Productions and DBP Donut.
• Viacom is making 10 new shows and will syndicate 500 episodes of existing shows for the platform.

Snapchat's user growth continues to sputter. Its stock price is languishing.

Yet the company's original programming is surging.

Now Snap has its eyes on going bigger in Hollywood - and it's taking a much different route than Facebook or YouTube.

The company unveiled a dozen new "Original" shows today for its Discover section that span news, entertainment and its first crop of scripted and docuseries.

In addition to appearing within Discover, the new shows will also live on dedicated pages and are being promoted with custom augmented reality lenses. Production companies involved include Bunim/Murray Productions - which are behind reality show hits like "The Real World" and "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" - and the Duplass Brothers' DBP Donut.

MTV's parent company is wrapping its arms around Snap

Viacom - owner of MTV and Comedy Central - is making 10 new shows and plans to syndicate 500 episodes of existing programs like "Decoded" and "Spencer Pratt Will Heal You" to Snap. Its new slate of shows includes a program called "Clean Slate" that follows a young person making a major life change and a program dubbed "Filthy Living," which is described as "Hoarders meets Room Raiders."

"Viacom Digital Studios is developing hundreds of hours of premium, digital-first programming designed to engage young audiences across the social and mobile platforms they love most," said Kelly Day, president of Viacom Digital Studios, in a statement.

Snap shows get a huge audience

The company says that it has added more than 60 shows over the past two years from names like A+E, Viacom and NBC. And some of those shows are exploding in terms of users that come back to watch shows every day that likely make TV execs a little bit jealous.

According to Snap:

• NBC News' program "Stay Tuned" has 5 million unique viewers per day and more than half of those users watch the show at least three days a week.
• ESPN's "SportsCenter" has 17 million monthly US viewers and 2.5 million daily viewers. Like NBC, more than half of that audience watches the show a few times a week.

Snap isn't going after prestige TV

Sean Mills, Snap's VP of original content, told Techcrunch that the shows are being funded in a few ways. Snap is funding some while others are funded by production companies or set up as joint investments.

"We're not bidding on shows that are being shopped around town," he said.

While Snap is on a major cost-cutting mission to make the company profitable and cannot compete for hefty productions, its original content ambitions are much different from how Facebook and YouTube have approached original video.

Facebook has tested a number of different programs with Facebook Watch, including long-form programs like "Sorry for Your Loss," which was briefly with Showtime before being picked up by Facebook. YouTube also has a number of high-profile original projects like "Cobra Kai."

According to Snap, shows are not necessarily solely exclusive to Snap but they will be exclusive to the platform for a window of time. Mills said that they must be shot vertically and designed for mobile using quick cuts, overlaid graphics and are around five minutes long.

"We want to set these things up for longer-term success" Mills told Techcrunch. "We're not trying to just seed the market with huge investments and then hope it turns into something later. We're very interested in the viability of this at the onset."

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