The boss of Sidemen Entertainment has taken a swipe at the BBC just a few weeks after the corporation struck a landmark YouTube deal.
Speaking at MIP London, Victor Bengtsson, who oversees the company founded by the popular YouTube collective, implied the BBC has lost connection with young audiences as YouTubers like The Sidemen dominate the space.
“For 10 years we have been consistently delivering content that has an audience that might have been 17 years old back [when we started] and over 10 years time we have continued doing the same thing,” he said. “[These young audiences] do not look at the BBC and say, ‘Oh my god I love the BBC they make such good shows’. They look at The Sidemen and say, ‘Oh my god these are the boys I grew up with and I love what they make’.”
Led by KSI, The Sidemen have hundreds of millions of followers on socials around the world and are now up to a third season of their Big Brother-esque reality series Inside for Netflix, along with making an American version.
The BBC is seeking to build a connection with today’s young audiences and recently struck a watershed deal with YouTube that will see the corporation make shows specifically for the Google-owned platform. This morning, BBC Studios bosss Tom Fussell said “everyone needs a strategy to be on ad-funded platforms and YouTube is the biggest,” as he talked up activity in the space.
“Mr Beast will produce Toy Story for this generation”
Bengtsson predicted traditional TV gatekeepers will start “taking stabs at things they haven’t taken stabs at yet” due to the rapid increase in ad spend on YouTube over the past couple of years.
“Mr Beast will produce the Toy Story for this generation,” he added. “Big Brother for this generation will be created by the minds that who entertained that generation for 10 years and then was gatekept from actually speaking to the real estate groups. You will see more shows like Inside and more groups like The Sidemen.”
On the latter point, Bengtsson gave the example of George Clarke, a former Inside contestant who just came second on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing and now has a YouTube collective.
Bengtsson was recently promoted to CEO of Sidemen Entertainment and the expanding group has launched an indie, Sidemen Productions.
Speaking to the MIP London crowd about the new outfit, Bengtsson said it has three eight-episode series coming this year for the streamers. Sidemen Productions, he added, is focused on “authenticity, pace, access and budget.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source deadline.com ’
