If you're looking for one story that sums up the media landscape in 2016, it might be this one. Bustle, the digital media site aimed at millennial women, is getting a weekly, 30-minute-long show on Cheddar, the financial news-focused video platform founded by former BuzzFeed president Jon Steinberg.
The show, "Extra Sharp," will air on Cheddar's Facebook Live feed on Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m., starting today. Bustle Editor-In-Chief Kate Ward and contributor Erika Turner will host the show's first episodes from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
The show is intended to be an "IRL" version of Bustle's news app, as the most popular news stories of the day will get top billing. There will also be an interview segment and a focus on "hacks."
Bustle and Cheddar are linked by Mr. Steinberg, who serves on Bustle's board. (Bustle founder Bryan Goldberg helped come up with the Cheddar name, said Mr. Steinberg, who was thinking of "Ticker.")
The two media companies have already been collaborating, content-wise, for the last few weeks of Cheddar's four-week-long existence. Every night, Bustle sends Cheddar a list of 10 stories, from which Cheddar picks three or four to focus on.
While the show is weekly, to start, the frequency could increase. "As quickly as Bustle wants to expand their programming, we have room, and we'll make room for them," Mr. Steinberg told Ad Age.
"It's a great synergy between the two audiences," Ms. Ward said.
He likened the model to "The Simpsons," which began as a series of shorts on "The Tracey Ullman Show" and was spun-off as a full show, and suggested that he'd be open to partnerships with other media brands. "I love partnerships," he said. "I love deals."
For Bustle, "Extra Sharp" will extend the company's brand, and will do so on a platform -- Facebook Live -- that is getting a lot of attention in the media industry. BuzzFeed has been at the forefront, with its exploding watermelon video on Facebook Live the subject of much commentary and a Facebook Live interview with President Obama shunted to YouTube on Monday amid techincal difficulties.
Mr. Steinberg said Cheddar's Facebook Live infrastructure, including five cameras, is top-notch.
Cheddar is a subscription business, with paywalled content that lives on Vimeo, but both Mr. Steinberg and Bustle suggested that there could be opportunities for advertising and brand involvement down the road.
Cheddar airs live on Facebook from 9:30 to 10:30 in the morning. By summer, Mr. Steinberg said he hopes to offer two to three hours of live programming every day.
