Disney-ABC to produce several original series for Snapchat, in bid to target younger viewers, starting with an after-party show for The Bachelor, debuting Jan 3
Snapchat has pulled Disney-ABC Television Group into its expanding original programming orbit, with the parties setting …
Context & Ripple Effects
Disney-ABC is the second major TV group to commit original programming to Snapchat, following NBCUniversal's multi-year deal built on SNL, The Voice, and Fallon. The pattern is consistent: legacy broadcasters lending established franchises to a mobile app whose audience they struggle to reach through linear schedules.
First-order effects
- The Bachelor gets a second-screen companion show debuting Jan 3, extending the franchise's reach to Snapchat's younger users without touching its broadcast slot.
- Snapchat's Discover section gains Disney-ABC's production muscle, deepening a content pipeline that until now leaned mainly on NBCUniversal.
Second-order effects
- With two of the biggest broadcast groups now supplying Snapchat originals, rival networks face pressure to place their own franchises on the platform or concede the young-viewer funnel to competitors.
- NBCUniversal's bet shifts from first-mover experiment toward a contested category, setting up the deeper commitment of the 50-50 Snap-NBCUniversal studio venture with the Duplass brothers.
Third-order effects
- If broadcaster-supplied shows keep proving out, the model scales into platform-owned short-form slates — the path Snapchat took with Snap Originals' twelve daily four-to-five-minute scripted shows — turning Discover from a repackaging venue into a commissioning studio.
The trend: Broadcasters are progressively outsourcing youth reach to Snapchat, moving from licensed clips to co-produced originals and eventually platform-commissioned short-form series.