Condé Nast Expands Wired Brand With an OTT Channel
To Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Roku
There are now dozens of hours of content available on Condé Nast’s first over-the-top channel for Wired.
In total, the channel will have 125 hours of content, including 40 hours of new original programming, which includes content from the brand’s upcoming festival, Wired25, and two seasons of Click, a show from BBC Studios. Other material will include repackaged videos that have appeared across the brand’s YouTube channel and social media feeds.
“This is an experimental time; it’s an experiment in every sense. We all know it’s tough to get an audience in an OTT environment, but we’re confident [in] our strategy,” said Croi McNamara, senior vice president of video programming, Condé Nast Entertainment. “We see this very much as a blank canvas for us to experiment with.”
That could include taking off or adding programming to the channel, depending on what viewers are watching, said Nick Thompson, editor-in-chief of Wired.
The channel first launched over the summer and is available on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Roku. The company is now also releasing additional content to the platform.
“We hope to create a destination for people to watch our videos, a place where people don’t just stumble on them but sit down and deliberately choose them, get lost in them,” Thompson said.
Programming from its upcoming festival in San Francisco, Wired25, which celebrates the brand’s 25th anniversary, will also be available.
Two new shows will also premiere: [De]constructed, in which popular cars and gadgets are taken apart then put back together, and Wired Masterminds, where experts give a peek at their respective fields, such as a former CIA chief of disguise explaining what it’s like to camouflage spies.
The Wired OTT channel was first announced at Condé Nast’s NewFront presentation over the summer, during which executives also said Bon Appétit and GQ OTT channels would be created.
The videos on the OTT channel will include pre-roll advertisements, launching with partners that include Audi, HP, Quicken Loans and Verizon. Kim Kelleher, chief brand officer at Condé Nast said others have signed on for the rest of the year, such as Dior.
Kelleher said that she was excited the industry was “moving away from snackable being the main course.”
“What we don’t have to explain to our readers is that they can trust us,” she said. “We don’t have to explain it because we earned it, and they’ve been able to trust Wired for 25 years.”
