Nebula, the creator-owned streaming service that bills itself as a “thoughtful expansion pack for YouTube,” has made Wendover Productions, Half as Interesting, and Jet Lag creator Sam Denby its chief content officer.
Denby has been YouTubing since 2010, and has amassed more than 7 million subscribers across all his channels. His largest channel is his flagship Wendover Productions, with 4.3 million subscribers and 630 million lifetime views. Wendover features hundreds of in-depth video essays about “how the world works,” covering subjects like economics and geography.
A Wendover Productions vid about Nebula’s origins and economics.
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Nebula says tapping Denby for this position is “a move aimed at highlighting the company’s priority of keeping direction and power in the hands of its creators,” especially as “entertainment’s business model continues to buckle under fair-compensation pushback from artists and creatives alike.”
Founder and CEO Dave Wiskus adds that “the process for developing Nebula Originals should be creator-led, so we turned to a creator with a solid track record for format development across production styles and genres to lead the charge on content as we continue to expand our originals slate for Nebula.”
Nebula, launched in 2019, works with more than 180 creators–mostly YouTubers–to produce exclusive content. The service costs $5/month, and incoming revenue pays Nebula’s basic operating costs, then is split: 50% goes to Standard, and 50% goes to creators based on watch time. (You can read more about how the system works here.)
Nebula says that over the next year, its originals and content development will get “a serious boost of funding and resources.”
“We have an extremely ambitious roadmap for Nebula Originals, and I’m thrilled by the confidence Nebula has placed in me to lead that growth,” Denby says. “Our goal is to develop concepts that are simply more unique than those that emerge from traditional, often risk-averse content development processes. Nebula should be the home to ‘bizarrely good.'”
