AOL is touting 16 new video series to advertisers at its 2014 NewFronts event in Brooklyn.
Leading the slate, Making A Scene With James Franco will see the actor-director and friends re-make much-loved scenes from old movies. “They’re going to re-do them with a twist – it’s going to be highly social,” AOL’s video president Ran Harnevo tells Beet.TV.
Four of the 16 shows are returning as second-season re-commissions of some of the 15 shows AOL produced in its 2013 slate – iJustine’s Hardwired 2.0, Tiffany Shlain’s The Future Starts Here, Sarah Jessica Parker’s city.ballet and Nicole Richie’s #CandidlyNicole.
“We got more than more than 160 million views to date and 67 million uniques (from last year’s slate),” Harnevo adds. “Some of them got nine, eight and seven million unique viewers per show – which is cable numbers by any means”.
This year, AOL says it will also produce its first long-form original series, Connected, which will follow the self-documented lives of five New Yorkers. “We want to really tell beautiful stories,” Harnevo says. “The definition of ‘celebrity’ is changing dramatically over the web (to) someone with very good digital footprint that can migrate audiences from platforms.”