Live.me Seeks To Elevate Live Content Space With Interactive Variety Show

Live.me has launched a new weekly series called Spotlight Live! that’s aiming to elevate the quality of programming that currently proliferates across the livestreaming space.

Three-week-old Spotlight Live! functions as a variety show that Live.me likens to Whose Line Is It Anyway or Saturday Night Live — but with real-time engagement. The show broadcasts on Wednesdays at 8 pm ET from Live.me’s official account, and is hosted by a trio of actors and improv performers, including Eric Artell (who recently signed with Collab), Evan Sloan, and Gracie Lacey. Broadcast from the company’s newly-christened Spotlight Studio in Los Angeles, the series features prank calls, challenges, rap battles, and special guests — including the musician Ella Poletti and actor Lincoln Hoppe.

This Wednesday, Live.me will host a special holiday charity edition of Spotlight Live! to raise money for Los Angeles fire victims, with all diamonds (the platform’s virtual currency) tendered during the broadcast being allocated for relief efforts. Additionally, viewers will be invited to attend the event person, with a new toy donation for the Toys For Tots

“I’ve really felt this type of interactive variety show has been missing from live video apps, which now consume a lot of attention from a new generation of people using live broadcasting as their form of entertainment,” Artell tells Tubefilter. “Our goal is to make viewers laugh and, in turn — because we’re paying attention to what they’re saying — let them make us laugh, too.”

Other original programming efforts that are being broadcast from Live.me’s Spotlight Studio include a weekly advice series called Broadcaster Academy, as well as clips for Live.me’s nascent 17-second social video app, Cheez. Last month, Live.me received a $50 million investment from Chinese internet giant Bytedance.

Check out a promo for Spotlight Live! below: