NBC News’ twice-daily Snapchat show, Stay Tuned, has garnered more than 29 million unique viewers since launching July 18, the companies announced Friday. The show’s debut came after NBCUniversal invested $500 million in Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, as part of its initial public offering in March.
Stay Tuned, the first daily news program on Snapchat, is co-hosted by Savannah Sellers and Gadi Schwartz (pictured above). It features two episodes a day during the week and one each day on weekends, plus breaking news updates. According to Snapchat, more than 40% of viewers tune in at least three days a week.
As NBC News — along with other TV news outlets — struggles to find a younger audience, it’s significant that more than 60% of the Stay Tuned audience is under the age of 25, according to Snapchat.
NBC has several other shows on Snapchat, including offshoots for The Voice (which earned the social-app its first-ever Emmy nomination), World of Dance, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Saturday Night Live. NBC and BuzzFeed (in which the Peacock also has a large investment) are teaming up again to produce content for Snapchat Discover for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in South Korea, as they did last year for the Rio Summer Olympics.
Of course, NBC News almost surely isn’t getting TV-level advertising bucks from Stay Tuned. Each episode is 2-3 minutes in length, with four to five segments per show, covering national and international news, politics, pop culture and other topics. NBC News said Schwartz will provide a Stay Tuned report on Monday, Aug. 21, from Casper, Wyo. — a city that’s in the path of total solar eclipse.
