Trusted Media Brands, the parent company of Reader’s Digest, said it acquired Jukin Media, best known for building brands including FailArmy and People Are Awesome from viral social media clip.

Jukin more recently has been turning its brands into ad supported connected TV and over-the-top channels.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

In addition to Reader’s Digest, Trusted Media Brands owns Taste of Home and Family Handyman. Adding Jukin Media quadruples Trusted Media Brands’ monthly audience reach, the companies said.

Jukin Media’s brands and employees will operate as part of an expanded portfolio of community-driven, user-generated content and lifestyle brands under the Trusted Media Brands umbrella. 

Jukin Media, making the transition from social media to streaming TV is launching an original celebrity-driven series, Show Us Your Pets.

A 10-minute social media version of Show Us Your Pets will debut in August on The Pet Collective’s YouTube and Facebook pages. A full 30-minute version of the series will premiere on The Pet Collective streaming channel in August 2021. 

Each of the 12 episodes of Show Us Your Pets feature a celebrity who introduced viewers to their pets. 

Among those lined up for this season are comedian and actor Gabriel Iglesias, two-time Grammy award winning singer/songwriter Tori Kelly, singer and content creator Loren Gray and actress Nicole Travolta.

Each episode ends with a "Tricks for Charity" segment, in which the  guest highlights a pet-related charity.

"The Pet Collective is the world's premier destination for young, millennial and Gen-Z pet parents and pet lovers,” said Jonathan Skogmo, founder and CEO of Jukin Media, and executive producer of Show Us Your Pets. “We are thrilled to have such strong talent take part in Show Us Your Pets and to raise awareness and funds for some truly great causes.” 

Jukin Media, which built its business with viral videos on social media, is staffing up as it grows its connected TV channels.

In June, Jukin Media’s FailArmy and Pet Collective Channels were added to Dish Network’s Sling TV, the second largest virtual multichannel video programmatic distributor with about 2.4 million subscribers.

Jukin said its channels generate 11 million monthly viewers on its current CTV platforms, including Comcast's X1. 

Also Read: Jukin Streaming Weather Network for Young Viewers

“We were really lucky to be one of the first movers from the digital and social media space to invest in these FAST [free ad-supported streaming television] channels,” said Jon Skogmo, founder and CEO of Jukin Media.

Streaming blew up during the pandemic and Jukin was a beneficiary. Its streaming revenue grew 100%, contributing to a 15% increase overall, Skogmo said. Jukin is expecting similar 15% overall growth this year, he added.  

Also Read: Connected TV Trends to Accelerate in 2021

Jukin is staffing up to continue its growth, both in connected TV and in international markets, Skogmo said.

It recently hired Darren Wadyko, previously with Funny or Die, Scripps Networks and G4 Media, as director of current programming for its streaming TV channels. Wadyko is looking at ways to create new assets from video it already has licenced from creators. 

Don’t expect Jukin to start doing scripted programming any time soon, Skogmo said. “Who we are as Jukin is user generated. Everything is powered by the UGC and UGC is going to be the catalyst to tell a long-form narrative,” Skogmo said. “This content is real. It’s authentic. It can’t be manufactured. We believe it’s the future of storytelling.”

Dee Austin Robertson, formerly with ATTN: and Buzzfeed, was hired as VP of Jukin’s Digital Studio and Christopher Johnson, previously with Addison Interactive, joined as creative director.

The company is now up to 260 employees.

Jukin raised more than $4 million from investors including Bertelsmann, Peter Guber, Maker Studio and Samsung Ventures, but Skogmo said the company funds its operations from cash flow, without touching its investment capital. By avoiding the scripted content arms race, it probably can continue to operate that way and stay independent.

“Obviously, it's a very hot market in M&A activity in the media industry. We’d certainly want to capitalize if the right opportunity does come along,” he said.

Connected TV is a lean-back experience for viewers, so Jukin’s channels have to be different from its social media.

“We’re treating this like a television network. We’re creating original programming. We’re spending dollars and creating content, repackaging some of our social stuff. And we’re also licensing content from other libraries,” Skogmo said.

Skogmo said the company recently greenlit a new slate of shows, some with celebrities appearing or hosting. He declined to name names or disclose titles.

Unlike the quick bites content items get on social media, Jukin says that once a viewer finds one of its CTV channels, they stick around for a while. Mike Skogmo, Jon’s brother and Jukin’s senior VP, head of marketing and communications, says the average length of tune is 62 minutes.

That’s important to advertisers. Most advertisers are wary of being connected to user generated content. But Jukin goes out and curates the viral clips it builds its shows around to ensure that they’re brand safe and family friendly.

A lot of brands and advertisers are afraid of user-generated content. “Six, seven years ago, there wasn't a brand or an agency that would talk to us,” Mike Skogmo said.

Now, Jukin is seeing higher prices for commercials on its CTV channels than it gets for ads on social media.

The company also licenses user-generated clips to advertisers for use in their ad campaigns. Last year, it did more than 800 campaigns, supplying everything from clips of people using a particular brand, to family moments an advertiser might want to capture.

Brands using Jukin clips include Starbuck and Google, which hires Jukin to find appropriate YouTube clips for its ads, Mike Skogmo said.

The company has also started to create shows about the people who create the viral videos that are so popular. One show is called The E/O, a People Are Awesome channel docu-series featuring videos of extra-ordinary [E/O] action sports athletes. Creators profiled include Austin Keen, Isaiah Hill and Kyndall Harris.

Another show, Tales of the Fail, looks at the iconic moment in FailArmy history, telling the stories behind the viral moments with commentary and storytelling from the creators.

To fill out its channels, Jukin has also licensed shows in the weather, adventure, comed and extreme sports genres. The shows include Alaska Bush Pilots, Backcountry Rescue, Angry Planet and 30/10 Challenge.

Jukin has been getting increased distribution internationally. Some of that distribution comes as its current U.S. distributors, including Pluto TV, Xumo and Samsung expand overseas. In Latin America, Jukin has seen a 400% increase in streaming hours in the first quarter, compared to a year ago.

“Our business has always been a global business,” said Jon Skogmo, noting the reach of online media. “We think there’s huge opportunities for international expansion.”

The company also recently made distribution deals with Rakuten TV in Europe and Jio in India and will soon announce launches with TV makers in Europe.

When Jukin pitches a distributor in a new territory, it is able to show how many fans FailArmy and its other brands already have on social media.

“Our content is so real. It’s authentic. It’s also universal. At the end of the day it’s language agnostic,” CEO Skogmo said.

Jukin Media has made a deal with Dish’s Sling TV streaming service to add two of Jukin’s channels to its lineup.

FailArmy and The Pet Collective will be available full time on Sling TV. Sling TV finished the first quarter with 2.37 million subscribers, down 100,000.

Also Read: Jukin Streaming Weather Network for Young Viewers

“Our Streaming TV channels are growing at an incredible rate, and partnering with a premier platform like Sling TV to expand our distribution even further and reach millions of additional homes is extremely exciting,” said Jill Goldfarb, senior VP of streaming TV at Jukin Media.

FailArmy features funny fail videos, pranks and original series. On OTT platforms, it was viewed for 5 million hours monthly. The Pet Collective is for those obsessed with their animal friends. 

Jukin said its channels generate 11 million monthly viewers on its current CTV platforms. The company said viewership is on track to double in 2021 from 2020’s levels. 

While many in the TV business are investing billions in subscription streaming services, big broadcasters are focusing on free over-the-air digital channels.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has been investing in its digital channels — Comet TV, Charge and TBD — and is seeing a healthy increase in advertising revenue since getting ratings from Nielsen and upgrading their programming. In June, for example, Charge is adding CSI: Miami to its schedule.

“What we’ve tried to do with these networks is level up the programming to make them general-market worthy,” Scott Ehrlich, Sinclair senior VP, growth networks and content, said.

Sinclair is calling its channels The Stack in their first-ever upfront presentations. The 70 one-on-one meetings are aimed at getting media buyers to understand that digital channels offer familiar programming and a growing number of consumers are looking for free entertainment.

“Cord-cutting isn’t necessarily our goal as a company, but over-the-air is a quickly growing segment of the audience,” Ehrlich said, noting that Sinclair generates significant revenue in retransmission consent for its stations and subscriber fees for its regional sports networks. 

“There’s a technology change coming that we’re highly invested in as a company that is certainly going to enhance the over-the-air experience,” he added, referring to NextGen TV.

Sinclair and other stations have started converting stations from the current broadcast format, ATSC, to the NextGen ATSC 3.0 standard. Sinclair expects half the country to be covered by ATSC 3.0 in 2022.

“This is a new part of the company and the part that’s obviously pretty exciting,” said Adam Ware, VP and general manager, national networks and platforms at Sinclair.

Multicasting Is Now a Business

Digital multicast channels have been around since the broadcast industry went digital in 2009. Most of the early channels subsisted on direct response advertising. More recently, larger broadcasters have been accumulating larger portfolios of channels.

The E.W. Scripps Co. bought Katz Broadcasting in 2017 for $292 million. Katz’s networks include Court TV, Bounce, Laff and Escape. It plans to launch two more channels, Defy and TrueReal, in June. Tegna launched Twist in April following its $77 million acquisition of Justice Network and Quest in 2019.

Comet TV launched in 2015. The science-fiction channel was owned by Sinclair and managed by MGM Television. In 2017, Sinclair and MGM launched Charge, which focused on action films with a sense of humor. Sinclair took over management of both channels in 2020. TBD, a youth-oriented channel, launched in 2016, owned by Sinclair and operated by Jukin Media.

Comet TV began getting Nielsen ratings in 2018, with Charge following in 2019 and TBD in 2020, letting the channels sell a mix of direct response and general-market advertising.

“General-market advertisers really started to look at these channels’ audiences, as opposed to the responsiveness of those audiences,” Ehrlich said. 

According to Nielsen, after Comet TV started airing episodes of The X-Files in the 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. time period, viewing among 18-to-49-year-olds rose 357% second quarter to date, compared to the first quarter. After TBD added Wipeout and Fear Factor from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m., viewing in the demo rose 46% from Q1 and 103% from a year ago.

TBD in particular is more attractive to general-market advertisers because of its relatively young audience. Those young viewers were less likely to call an 800 number or log onto a website because of a direct response ad, Ehrlich said. The audiences of the channels are pretty distinct, he added.

Sinclair doesn’t break out revenue figures for its digital networks, but Ware said they’ve gotten a good response in the scatter market and revenues have exceeded the budget so far. 

Comet TV, Charge and TBD are also multiplatform with a presence on Stirr, Sinclair’s streaming service, where some of their programming is available on-demand nationally.

Ware said the opportunity for free-over-the air channels will expand as NextGen TV takes root. ATSC 3.0 promises bandwidth for stations to carry more networks and makes it easier for viewers to tune them in.

“All of a sudden you’ve got real capacity,” Ware said. Now is the time to be proactive and launch channels, build their brands and get more digital channels to market. “Some might be paid and some might be free,” he added.

More Nets in the Offing

Sinclair is looking to launch more networks. The company is using Stirr to test channel concepts with an eye towards them becoming distributed as digital OTA networks, Ware said.

At some point, the networks will produce original programming, Ehrlich said. TBD dipped its toe in the water with a clip show called The Link and interstitial content featuring David Hasselhoff, star of Knight Rider, which aired on Charge.

To some degree, the digital broadcast channels are mirroring the way cable channels were built in the 1980s, targeting genres such as science fiction and comedy and relying on off-broadcast programming until the market demands original series.

Digital channels will be easier to watch because they’re being integrated  with streaming channels in increasingly sophisticated smart TVs. But Ware warns, “If you don’t own a station group and you’re trying to do these, good luck.”

And channels are thriving because “there’s real content out there that people want to watch.” Ehrlich said. “I was sort of skeptical, a little bit, until I started to see the numbers.”

Jukin Media, which has grown by turning user-generated content into streaming networks, is launching WeatherSpy, which aims to attract younger viewers by pushing adventurous stories of nature and the elements in addition to forecasts.

WeatherSpy starts out with distribution on Samsung TV Plus, Vizio and Xumo. It also will have a short-form series on Snapchat’s Discover page.

“The traditional TV weather viewer is generally older and not digitally native. Our goal with WeatherSpy is to reimagine what a weather network could be and make it more fun and appeal to a younger demographic,” said Cameron Saless, chief business officer at JukinMedia. “Through WeatherSpy, we aspire to appeal to a new generation of cord-cutters and cord-nevers, and fill a void on the top ad-supported linear streaming platforms and on social media.”

The network will air four live weather updates per hour. Jukin didn’t say from where it will be getting its forecasts, or who will be delivering them. 

It did say it will be launching with an original series from Jukin Media called ViralWild and 12 other series from other non-fiction programming producers. Those partners include AirVuz, which features drone videos; Big Media, with shows including Alaska Bush Pilots and Survival Science; Cineflix Rights, with Angry Planet, Dangerous Flights and Rocky Mountain Railroad; dostudioPRO, with Wonder Science; Insight TV with 4K shows including 30/10 Challenge and Chasing Monsters.

WeatherSpy is the fourth linear streaming channel from Jukin Media and the first it has started without first having a brand established in social media. The other brands are FailArmy, The Pet Collective and People Are Awesome.

They now represent the fastest growing part of the company, said Jill Goldfarb, VP of linear programming at Jukin.

“The channels really grew and grew very quickly, and Jukin decided to build out a team and really invest in the linear business,” said Goldfarb, who previously worked at programmers including Fox, Discovery and ABC Family.

Viewing for the channels increased 50% year over year to about 6.5 million hours combined.

The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted viewing of over-the-top video. “We certainly saw eyeballs grow during COVID as people were looking for things to do as there were reruns on traditional TV. It’s no secret that streaming channels have increase viewership and we’ve benefited as well,” she said.

Goldfarb said Jukin expects WeatherSpy to attract the same viewers in their 20s and early 30s who watch its other channels, as opposed to the older viewers who watch other weather programming.

"We took a different approach to weather," she said. "We think of weather as an adventure and that’s how we’ve approached it."

Jukin will sell advertising with a combination of programmatic and direct ad sales across its channels.

The company will be using its social assets and linear channels to promote the launch.

Digital video company Jukin Media said its three major programming brands have been integrated into Comcast’s X1 video platform as native linear channels.

Jukin’s major brands include FailArmy, The Pet Collective and People Are Awesome. The Los Angeles-based start-up licenses user-generated content and programs it around these tentpoles, distributing through the Roku Channel, Samsung TV Plus, Xumo, Pluto TV and Twitch. Jukin’s app is also available on iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as Amazon Fire TV OTT devices.

The company recently started licensing content from pro producers, including Shout Factory and Nitro Circus.

Jukin said its content receives 200 million minutes of viewing each month.

As for Comcast, Jukin is only the latest integration of a digital brand into the X1 portfolio—a process started several years ago with Netflix, and now working its way on down. The integration also includes Comcast’s recently launched Flex streaming service.

“Over the past year we have worked to extend our brand presence beyond social platforms to pay-TV providers and today we are incredibly excited to offer millions access to more great content from our brands direct to television on the X1 platform,” said Cameron Saless, holder of the conspicuous “chief growth officer” title at Jukin, in a statement. “Comcast has always pioneered new ways to help its digital-first content partners like Jukin make their content available to customers right alongside the live, on demand, DVR and other web programming already included in their Xfinity TV subscription.”

Notably, the Comcast PR staff sat out this announcement. 

Xumo, an aggregator of ad-supported OTT video for smart TV and mobile platforms, has expanded an agreement with Jukin Media that will set the debut of two more channels on Xumo: The Pet Collective and People Are Awesome.

They said the two brands, which will launch of Xumo this week, represent more than 8 million followers and 325 million monthly views.

The addition of People Are Awesome and The Pet Collective (The Pet Collective is a joint venture of Jukin Media and Freemantle Media) follows Xumo’s recent launch of Fail Army, another Jukin property, on its smart TV platform. They timed the announcement with VidCon (June 23-25) in Anaheim.

Xumo noted that it will also show off its smart TV platform and unveil its new iOS mobile app at VidCon.

Xumo said it reaches nearly 20 million devices in the U.S. via native smart TV app integrations/partnerships with LG, Vizio, Panasonic and Funai Electric, which makes Sanyo-, Magnavox- and Philips-branded TVs in North America.

Other announced content partners for Xumo’s platform include Time Inc., Condé Nast Entertainment, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, PopSugar, Mitú Network, Machinima, TYT Network, Reuters, Field & Stream, PBS Digital Studios, Mashable, Network A, Fandor, Outside Television Shorts, Bonnier, Saveur, Cycle  World, and The Onion.