Snapchat wants to curate a library of premium, exclusive shows that will live within its Stories section, and thanks to a new deal, ABC will provide some of that content. As first reported by Variety, the Disney-ABC Television Group and Snapchat owner Snap Inc. have teamed up for programming based around some of the former company’s TV programs.
The first ABC show to inspire a Snapchat series will be The Bachelor, which will return for its 21st TV season on January 2nd. The next day, former Bachelorette contestant Nick Viall, who is serving as The Bachelor for season 21, will host Watch Party: The Bachelor, a Snap-sized companion. Each episode of the digital series will run between three to five minutes and, like a lot of the other content on Snapchat, will disappear 24 hours after its initial launch.
Though Watch Party will be delivered through Stories, Variety’s report describes entries within the Snapchat Shows initiative as distinctly different from the app’s stories, based in part on their narrative- and format-driven structures. “We’ve been trying to be thoughtful about how it should work,” Snapchat head of original content Sean Mills told Variety. “How long should an episode of mobile television be? What are the rules of storytelling in that environment? You have a user with a thumb hovering over the screen essentially, so you have to grab them right away.”
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Episodes of Watch Party will accompany The Bachelor throughout the TV show’s 21st season. Additional partnerships between ABC and Snapchat will be announced in the coming months, but in the meantime, Snapchat will roll out plenty more serial content, thanks to its pacts will media companies like NBCUniversal and Turner.
