By Paul Feinberg
As global head of original programming at YouTube, Susanne Daniels is a powerful advocate for creative women in entertainment.
“It drives me crazy that there are not more female directors,” Daniels said in an on-stage conversation at Velocity, the annual UCLA Anderson Women’s Leadership Summit. “And it’s easy to fix. You have to mandate it. You have to tell producers they have to hire 50 percent female directors and when they push back, you say, ‘Too bad, find a way, give someone a chance.’
“My team has done an exceptional job of demanding more opportunity for women directors,” Daniels said in the conversation with Allie Brodsky (’18), president of UCLA Anderson’s Women’s Business Connection. The team is also working hard to hire more female show runners for YouTube shows.
Daniels joined YouTube, the world’s largest online video platform, in 2015 after serving as president of the WB (now CW) Network and Lifetime Television and, most recently, MTV’s president of programming and production.
Her role at YouTube has been to guide its foray into original programming, to complement the user-created content that drove the company’s growth since its inception.
Daniels said a key challenge YouTube faces is creating shows that will stand out from the pack — via content from the traditional broadcast networks and cable channels like HBO and Showtime, as well as newer players like Amazon and Netflix. “Where will it live, how will people best find it?” she asked. “There’s so much choice, how do you break out, get word of mouth going? We think about that when we’re evaluating what we want to do. We think about target demographics — our target is ages 18 to 34. We do a lot of data analysis. Google [which owns YouTube] is nothing if not a data analysis company.”
“When we started, the idea was to fish where the fish are,” Daniels said. “That meant [with] YouTubers who were already stars, and give them more resources to develop shows they couldn’t develop themselves, and see if we could convert them to YouTube Red stars” on the company’s premium streaming service.
As an example, Daniels previewed a new show, Youth and Consequences, starring well-known YouTuber Anna Akana. She also showed a preview of Cobra Kai, a spinoff of The Karate Kid with the original kid, Ralph Macchio.
Daniels’ advice to Velocity’s 600 attendees? “Pursue what you want to pursue,” she said. “You want to be a writer? Write. Don’t be afraid, and ruffle feathers if you have to.”
And for women looking to break into the entertainment business, Daniels urged them to be open-minded when it comes to new opportunities. For example, she said, interdepartmental transfers are common at a company like Google.
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