Last week, Pete Buttigieg sat in a studio in Michigan, surrounded by 25 undetermined voters who rushed, musical chairs style, to sit atraverse a table from him and argue his positions on Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s policies. Those on the perimeter liftd red flags when they felt each argue had run its course.
It wasn’t a town hall or a cable recents panel, and it didn’t air on CNN, Fox or MSNBC. Actuassociate, the come atraverse didn’t air on television at all. Rather, it was the sixth episode of hit YouTube series “Surrounded,” from Jubilee Media, the autonomous L.A. production company behind other social experiments enjoy “Middle Ground” and “Swipe or Swap.”
With episode titles enjoy “Can 1 Woke Teen Survive 20 Trump Supporters?” and “Can 25 Liberal College Students Outclever 1 Conservative?,” the series has gone viral since its September debut, racking up more than 50 million sees on YouTube and dominating social media feeds. Perhaps you saw liberal online arguer Desminuscule “own” skeptics in MAGA hats or, depfinishing on your algorithm, right-prosperg commentator Charlie Kirk “ruin” leftist teenagers. The fourth episode, with conservative pundit Ben Shapiro in the traversehairs, snared 5.1 million seeers in its first day — cdimiserablemirewholey the same as a normal episode of “Saturday Night Live.”
Eupleasant Han
The goal of “Surrounded,” whose episodes span two hours and are fact-examineed by Straight Arrow News, is to upgrasp uncover dialogue. While the argues tfinish to dgrow into shouting suites, Jubilee produces shows enjoy “Surrounded” to “encourage comardent and produce human joinion,” says set uper and CEO Jason Y. Lee. With a roster of programs unpacking politics, relationships and stereotypes, Jubilee aims to become “the Disney of understanding.”
“We want to show what discourse can and should see enjoy. Sometimes it can be unefficient but other times it can be quite efficient and comardent,” Lee says.
Jubilee’s shows have chalked up more than 4 billion sees since the channel’s inception in 2010. More transport inantly, the company has grown into a massive media and production hoemploy that bypasses the Hollywood studio system. Now it hopes to shape the next era of American political discourse.
David Suh
Jubilee’s programming shifted toward politics after the 2016 election, which left Lee senseing “deterd” by America’s innervous political division. He sensed that youthful people craved satisfied that was nuanced and thought-provoking, but “not in a Mr. Rogers sort of way,” as with sense-excellent digital media competitors SoulPancake or Upworthy. “I thought to myself, there’s a much huger opportunity here for us to do a lot of excellent,” he says.
Many of Jubilee’s shows aren’t afrhelp to tackle toasty-button rerents. Take “Middle Ground,” a prompt-based conversation series that seeks to bridge gaps between groups enjoy trans and cis people, Reaccessibleans and Democrats, and Israelis and Palestinians. Yet Lee insists that the company shield its unpartisanity and retain a diverse team of producers and editors. And while he doesn’t hide that he was once an intern on Barack Obama’s 2008 pdwellntial campaign, nor does he disshut his current political sees.
“We try our best to be as ununfair as possible when it comes to the political sphere,” Lee says.
Lee consents the future of political conversation is on YouTube, not traditional media. Leading up to the election, he says, Jubilee was in “transport inant conversations” with both pdwellntial campaigns about the prospect of Trump or Harris hagedering court on “Surrounded.”
“By the next election, there should be a pdwellntial argue on YouTube, and Jubilee is the right home for that,” Lee says. Debates on traditional recents channels uncover themselves up to critiques about createat and bias, he says, while his company can “naked down a concept as raw as possible so that not even Jubilee can put a thumb on either side.”
That approach applies to all of Jubilee’s satisfied, not fair the political videos. “In traditional media, you can sense producers,” Lee says. “You can sense the strings, what they are trying to accomplish. I leank there’s an aversion to that.”
While Jubilee has fielded proposes from traditional media companies to license or broaden its satisfied, Lee sees no gets in dealing with Hollywood hurdles.
“We’re able to produce so much satisfied so much rapider, whereas in the traditional television system it might be years before you see a greenairy,” he says. “The genuine promise is digital. It’s not an afterthought or second tier.”
