“It’s evolved into something much bigger, it has become our primary Gen Z facing brand,” Oppenheim says.īut it has also been a learning experience for NBC, because just taking a segment from the Today show or Dateline and posting it on Snapchat or TikTok won’t cut it. Stay Tuned now averages one million views per episode on Snapchat and has passed one million followers on TikTok (it had more than 7.5 million views on TikTok in June, and is already on track to pass that in July).
“Working for a TV news organization, your brains are wired for your competition being another network, not your competition being whatever else happens to be on Snapchat’s Discover page,” Sellers says, adding that the challenge for the Stay Tuned launch team was “figuring out how we do the news, and have the core of NBC News’ reporting and fact-finding behind it, but also putting in a place to be competitive.”Īnd it seems to have worked. But that led to challenges of its own, namely: Could Snapchat’s user base support a video news show? She was, however, a native to the platform, and comfortable with its quirks and formats.
“I had been working on digital projects, but my job on paper was an executive assistant,” Sellers recalls. NBC tapped Savannah Sellers and Gadi Schwartz to host the show. The end result of those conversations was Stay Tuned, a daily news show that would live on Snapchat’s Discover page and serve as a sort of Nightly News for Gen Z. Snap Misses on Second-Quarter Revenue, Does Not Issue Future Guidance