Two days after announcing its partnership to launch the content agency Truffle Pig with Snapchat and WPP, the Daily Mail unveiled its next venture -- TV. On Thursday during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Martin Clarke, publisher and editor-in-chief of the news site, and TV host/executive producer Dr. Phil McGraw announced they will be teaming up to launch "Daily Mail TV." The news organization, Dr. McGraw and Stage 29 Productions (run by President/CEO Jay McGraw, Dr. McGraw's son) will partner to develop the U.S. syndicated daily show, which aims to launch in fall of 2016. CBS Television Distribution will handle the distribution.
Mr. Clarke said "It's not going to be TMZ," but "everything you see on the website will be represented on the TV show."
The Daily Mail's New York office will serve as headquarters for the new TV show, with additional studios to open in London, Los Angeles and Sydney. Dr. McGraw said that London will play an especially important role, "because it gives us a five-hour jump on the U.S. market if something happens at night." Carla Pennington, longtime executive producer of "Dr. Phil" and the Emmy-awarded talk show "The Doctors," will serve as EP of the new program. All current Daily Mail correspondents will also work as correspondents for the TV show.
The site currently has a global audience of 226 million unique visitors, 75 million of which come from the U.S. The program seeks to broaden that audience to a new demographic of TV viewers.
"This is not a bolt-on; we're not just lending our name," said Mr. Clarke. "This is part of Daily Mail, a complete integration of the two teams journalistically. There are plenty of websites that pretend they know how to do video, but we thought we'd do business with someone who knew how to do TV and video, a team that are unrivaled experts."
Dr. Phil and Stage 29 Productions have a first-look arrangement with CBS Distribution for all their TV projects. It will be first offered to the TV market in August or September of this year. As a syndicated show, revenue for "Daily Mail TV" will come through license fees, barter for advertising and international sales.
The official name of the show will likely be "Daily Mail TV." "If you've got green beans in the can, it should say green beans on the can," said Dr. McGraw. That's high-class marketing."
