Casey Neistat is YouTube’s most successful vlogger. He travels all around New York City and the rest of the world, showing viewers epic aerial shots of exotic places with his drone. His videos get millions of views, just hours after being put up, giving him one of the largest fanbases on the whole platform. With 7.4 million subscribers, Neistat has motivated his network to do some incredible things. They’ve raised millions of dollars for charity, turned a no-name UPS man into a bonafide celebrity and even launched an app. Now, he’s hoping to transfer those views to his newest project, a news show for Youtube.
On July 5, Neistat finally pulled back the curtain on what Beme, his startup technology company, has been working on. After launching the Beme app last year, a video-sharing site that never gained enough traction to compete with Instagram or Snapchat and shut down, many outsiders thought his company was done for. Then, the company was snatched up by CNN, who are repurposing it into something else entirely.
Beme is now a YouTube channel focusing on the news “YouTube viewers care about,” Neistat says. “Beme News” will be on four days a week, created by journalists and reporters and hosted by a YouTuber. In Neistat’s video, he shows us a test segment about buying Instagram followers that’s more style than substance. It attempts to talk about the seriousness of click farms and their effects on the online landscape, but then pivots to buying followers for somebody in the office, showing how easy it is for them to do.
For the longest time, YouTube has been missing a dedicated news channel. There are the dedicated news networks, like NBC and FOX, putting content out on the platform, but never a professionally done channel that targets the news YouTube viewers want. Keemstar’s Dramaalert focuses on gossip and Alex Jones’ InfoWars targets crazy conspiracy theorists, but nobody has managed to corner the market on a nightly news broadcast for the YouTube generation.
Neistat’s Beme wants to be the first to claim the milestone, but it isn’t the only one vying for that prize. Philip Defranco, another one of YouTube’s oldest and most successful channels, is attempting to create his own news network. Using Patreon to crowd fund his efforts, Defranco Elite is the culmination of years of hard work and dedication. For over 10 years, Defranco has sat in front of a webcam, greeting his audience with a “what’s up you beautiful bastards” and diving into his take on the day’s news. With this Patreon, he wants to step his game up, creating a whole channel with daily updates focused on a YouTube audience.
If it’s a race between Defranco and Neistat, it’s impossible to see who will come out ahead. Neistat has been making documentaries for years, way before he was a vlogger, and Defranco has been the figurehead of commentary on YouTube for over a decade. Between these two titans, somebody is going to strike gold, but who it will be remains a mystery. I’m a fan of both of these personalities, watching Neistat’s vlogs and Defranco’s channels nearly every day.
The people who will decide who claims the title as best YouTube news channel aren’t your average news consumers. They are the YouTube generation, the kids who grew up watching Vines and epic prank compilations, who believe the “mainstream media” is either for their parents or just lying to them.
Do you think Beme or Defranco Elite will be YouTube’s premier news channel? Tell us in the comments.
