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Facebook makes reality TV its new weapon for web supremacy
CANNES, France, Oct 17, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Facebook said Wednesday it was
reviving the pioneering MTV reality show “The Real World” as its secret
weapon to lure viewers away from YouTube.
The social media giant said it was also trying to harness the formidable
online power of the “cute kitten” factor with a new show called “World’s Most
Amazing Dog” on its new Facebook Watch platform.
Users who think their pooch is cute enough to be a contender can enter
audition videos from their phones, it told TV executives at MIPCOM in Cannes,
the world’s top entertainment showcase.
The company’s head of video Paresh Rajwat said Facebook Watch — which
began to be rolled out in the US last year — was now available across the
world, with “the time people spend on it increasing by 14 times since”.
“The Real World” was one of the first “social experiment” TV reality shows
when it aired in 1992, spawning others like “Big Brother”.
It turns on the moment when “seven strangers put together stop being
polite and start being real,” said Facebook’s content and strategy chief
Matthew Henick.
– ‘New genre of TV’ –
Three versions of the new Facebook variant of the show will be launched
simultaneously in the US, Mexico and Thailand.
Users will be able to “co-watch with their friends and interact with the
contestants”, stealing a march on its internet rivals, Henick told the
gathering in the French Riviera resort.
Rajwat said Facebook Watch was “completely open” and was already being
used by broadcasters, with new contestants on Germany’s “X Factor” recently
being introduced to fans on the platform before they made their TV debuts.
He said its interactivity means “watching videos doesn’t have to be a
passive experience… with friends able to co-watch together in real time”.
A new service called “Watch Party” allowing “people to watch and comment
all at the same time” has already been used on celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s
“Veggie Challenge”, he added.
A Facebook Watch show called “Sorry For Your Loss” about a “young widow
struggling to put her life back together has led to long meaningful
conversations about dealing with grief”, Rajwat said, with many users
“offering help to people who lost their beloveds. This is where Facebook is
different,” he said.
MTV boss Chris McCarthy predicted that Facebook Watch was going to “create
a whole a new genre of shared reality TV”, and help shows lift off when it
was “harder and harder to break through with more and more content” out
there.
BSS/AFP/RY/1535 hrs