Studio City is shopping a one-hour weekly talk show, starring Millennial sensation Chelsea Krost, for a fall 2014 premiere.
The North Holllywood-based production company is best known for its marketing prowess, but it's also expanding into syndication, having launched Dish Nation, in partnership with Twentieth and the Fox Television Stations, in September 2012.
While talk is nothing new in syndication, talk hosted by a social-media-steeped Millennial is.
Last spring, Lenfest’s independent WMCN Philadelphia was looking for a young host to test a new local program. Krost, although only 22, had already established herself as the young voice of her generation.
“When I went in, they were actually pitching me on why I needed to have a show on their station, and I thought ‘this is an amazing opportunity,’” Krost said.
Krost was given a producer to work with, but when that producer said, “we don’t need to worry about social media,” Krost thought, “oh no, this is not going to work.”
She had met Brianna Campbell, vice president of Studio City, through mutual friends and she started calling the 28-year-old for help.
The show, which aired Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. over eight weeks last spring, did well for the station, premiering at a 1.2 household average and averaging a 0.5 over its run. During the test, Self Magazine sponsored an episode, Pretty Little Liars' Shay Mitchell came by for an interview, and the editor-in-chief of Seventeen Magazine invited Krost into her office to talk about teen bullying.
Despite her young age, Krost is already a pro. She caught the media bug early, after turning a category 5 hurricane in her home state of Florida into an opportunity to create a documentary before she even got to high school.
When she got to high school, she enrolled in television production. She took to it quickly: by the time she was a sophomore, she had created her own radio talk show, Teen Talk Live, which ended up airing on Clear Channel’s local AM station, WBZT.
When Krost headed off to college two years later, she continued to host the show, but it’s now called The Chelsea Krost Show and it airs on Web platform BlogTalkRadio, where it earns 20,000 to 30,000 impressions each week.
Prior to going to college, Krost went on a mission trip to Africa to distribute donated feminine hygiene products to poor women in Kenya who often don’t have access to such simple luxuries. That trip spawned some important opportunities for Krost: She created a four-part docu-series that CBS affiliate WFOR/WBFS Miami again aired and she also became the Millennial spokesperson for Kotex, which was the first time Krost had heard that word.
Today, Krost is something of a Millennial spokesperson for her entire generation, appearing frequently on such programs as NBC’s The Today Show, Warner Bros.’Anderson Cooper and Debmar-Mercury’s Wendy Williams as well as on local news programs to talk about Millennial issues. She boasts more than 50,000 Twitter followers and her weekly Twitter parties grab 13 to 15 million impressions.
Says Krost: “For Millennials, everything has to be shareable so everything I do is shareable.”
