A new report says that Netflix is currently in talks to buy Hot Ones, the hottest, pun unfortunately intended, interview show on YouTube where celebrities eat increasingly spicy wings while answering relatively normal interview questions from host Sean Evans. Now, Netflix may want to snatch that up from YouTube and add it to its vast collection of series, and branch out its content in new directions.
The proposed deal does not seem to even be pulling the series off YouTube entirely, and would instead “host some live versions of the show exclusively for Netflix” as Bloomberg reported. Reportedly Buzzfeed, the owner of First We Feast where Hot Ones is its most popular show by far, has been looking to sell, so this deal may in fact come together.
So, the good news is that Netflix may not be stripping the show away from YouTube entirely, and these live shows may in fact be something else altogether. I’ve also seen some concern that if Netflix does acquire Hot Ones they’d meddle with it and then cancel it for underperforming or something shortly after acquiring it.
But…that seems unlikely, if things do trend in the direction of Netflix taking full ownership. This is about a cheap as show as you can imagine as it costs roughly as much as dinner for two at Buffalo Wild Wings to set it up, and the production costs of shooting in a single room are far from say, every other show they have. The money would be in whatever they’re paying Sean Evans and whatever they’re paying Buzzfeed for the deal overall.
The ”meddling” may be in the form of doing this live, and I’m not quite clear on why they do want to do it live with existing episodes being recorded before airing, and what benefit that offers. They do want more live TV to add to the minimal offerings they have now, but this seems like a strange place to do it.
Another concern would be that Netflix would be too self-promotional and incestual with this idea. Evans interviews actors, singers, sports stars, essentially everyone under the sun. And the fear would be the Netflix may just try to use it to promote whatever their next upcoming original was. Not to say that couldn’t make for some fun interviews with good actors, but turning the whole show into a spice-based ad for its own service would not be ideal. But we just don’t know those plans yet and you could bet if say, Taylor Swift or Kamala Harris came on, self-promotion be damned.
I would say this deal has a more likely chance than not at happening given Netflix throwing money everywhere to diversify content and the show looking to be sold in the first place. We’ll look for more updates soon.
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