Condé Nast announced its largest-ever video programming slate — with a whopping 250 new and returning originals across 17 brands, including Vogue, the New Yorker, GQ, Glamour, AD, Vanity Fair and Wired, for the 2022-23 season.
The company, which unveiled the lineup at its 2022 NewFronts presentation Tuesday for marketers at The Shed at Hudson Yards in New York City, also announced major investments in live programming, including Vogue’s exclusive livestream of the Met Gala red carpet and Vanity Fair’s Oscars red carpet live show. The company announced the launch of GQ Sports, a new vertical dedicated to the intersection of sports and culture, which will step up the publication’s live content at next year’s Super Bowl.
Condé Nast doubled advertising revenue in 2022 for the Met Gala, comprising traditional ad spots and sponsored integrations, said Pam Drucker Mann, global chief revenue officer for Condé Nast. She declined to provide dollar figures.
“You’re getting Super Bowl-like scale, which you can buy like traditional TV,” she said. For Monday’s Met Gala livestream, Vogue charged $1 million for two six-second spots, according to a report by Business of Fashion.
In 2021, Vogue generated more than 200 million views across platforms for its Met Gala content; note that the fashion event was postponed last year because of COVID to September, rather than its traditional first Monday in May. The total reach of this year’s event is still being tabulated. For Condé Nast’s biggest live tentpole franchises, the digital audience has grown bigger than for awards shows like the Oscars, Emmys, the MTV VMAs or the Oscars, according to Drucker Mann.
Building on its slate of live content, Condé Nast announced it will expand programming franchises including Allure Best of Beauty, Glamour Women of the Year, and GQ Sports at the 2023 Super Bowl. In the past, “the reality is, on streaming, we didn’t own our IP,” Drucker Mann said, noting that Met Gala broadcast rights formerly were licensed to NBCUniversal’s E! “Now we’ve taken our control back.”
Overall, the upcoming Condé Nast programming slate “is not just about individual originals,” said Agnes Chu, president of Condé Nast Entertainment (formerly with Disney+). “It’s a tapestry building up the continued relevance of our brands. We’re creating content on every platform that matters.”
On Tuesday, the company also announced that Condé Nast Shoppable, which builds buyable content directly into its series, will now be available across multiple platforms, allowing advertising clients to monetize videos on Condé Nast owned-and-operated platforms and social channels.
In addition, Condé Nast announced a new slate of audio pilots, adding to its lineup of 40 podcasts. Those include “The Pitchfork Show,” “New Money” from Wired, “TNY Politics” and “The New Roundtable” from the New Yorker, and weekly series “In Vogue” from Vogue. The company also announced a new partnership with interactive music video platform Xite, which will bring CN’s programming into 100 million U.S. households. Condé Nast is Xite’s first lifestyle content partner in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the company’s film and TV arm has more than 70 projects in various stages of development and production. Those include docuseries “Breath of Fire” from Vanity Fair Studios and HBO Max; “The Great Chinese Art Heist,” a feature from GQ Studios directed by Jon M. Chu; and Wired Studios’ “A People’s History of Black Twitter.” The New Yorker studios will premier two films in the year ahead: “Spiderhead” on Netflix in June and “Cat Person,” directed by Susanna Fogel and starring Emilia Jones (“CODA”) and Nicholas Braun (“Succession”).
Condé Nast highlighted select programming from the slate:
- AD (Architectural Digest)
- “Custom Crafted”: A featured project is given to two designers, each with a different expertise. Each will create their own version of the assigned project within their budget, time limits, and specific skill level.
- “Walking Tour”: Hitting the streets to take viewers through the unique architectural details that define neighborhoods.
- Bon Appetit
- “Ingredient Extract”: A look into how the most common ingredients get made, with host and flavor scientist Arielle Johnson.
- “On the Line”: In this series, BA looks at an entire day at a restaurant.
- Epicurious: In “Epi 101,” culinary Instructor Frank Proto breaks down kitchen fundamentals for novice cooks and seasoned amateurs alike, methodically tackling a single, focused topic in each episode.
- GQ
- “GQ Hype Debate Show”: Featuring two personalities head-to-head in a debate on the biggest stories of the day.
- “GQ Recommends”: GQ editors share their expert style recommendations and tips.
- Vanity Fair
- “Reframed”: Celebrities tell the real narrative and untold stories behind a selection of photographs taken throughout their lives in the public eye.
- “Scene Selection”: Celebrities watch and review a curated selection of scenes from their careers, focusing on some of their most pivotal roles.
- Vogue
- “Hairdos”: The industry’s most talented hair stylists transform the locks of their loyal celebrity clients.
- “Street Style”: documenting and profiling fashionable individuals, style collectives and trendsetters
- “Devoted”: Profiling fashion-obsessed individuals who have devoted their lives to collecting, hoarding, archiving and collecting.
- Wired
- “Field Trip”: Learning the ins and outs of visually compelling laboratories where studies are actively conducted.
- “One Minute Process”: Detailed explanation of complex operations, procedures, and activities that can be done in under 60 seconds.
In 2021, Condé Nast recorded 14.3 billion total global video views and the company’s global video network currently drives an average of 1.3 billion monthly views, up 18% over the prior year. On YouTube, Condé Nast has over 56 million subscribers across its global channels and saw a 16% year over year growth across all channels. The company cited data from Oracle Moat Reach showing that Condé Nast’s digital video content is three times more likely to reach adults 18-34 than linear TV.
(Pictured above: Met Gala co-chairs Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds at the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2.)
