America’s Funniest Home Videos is a TV legend. Reaction content creators are helping give it new life online.

Creators make content. That’s the most basic tenet of our industry. Platforms like YouTube and TikTok are, at their bones, massive troves of user-generated content (UGC), all made by creators.

But some creators also need content.

Like people who make reaction videos and clip compilations. These genres of video (and livestream) can be contentious, with creators like SSSniperwolf and xQc catching flak for using other creators’ content without permission and not adding enough of their own original commentary. Despite that, though, reaction and compilation videos have a major presence on platforms. Just look at Daily Dose of Internet, which has more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube and to date has generated over 14 billion views.

There’s a big audience out there for this stuff. People who just want to watch “100 funniest clips of kids falling down” compilations, or their favorite YouTuber scrolling through cute cat videos. And where there’s an audience, there’ll be creators catering to it.

Which means those creators need somewhere to–legally, affordably, and in a way that’s not going to run them afoul of copyright systems like YouTube’s Content ID–license clips they can use.

That’s where V10 Entertainment comes in.

V10 was founded in 2023, and that same year acquired Vin Di Bona Productions, the longtime producer of America’s Funniest Home Videos for ABC. AFV has been one of TV’s most recognizable programs since its 1989 debut, but V10 envisioned a fresh frontier for it: a digital presence that could not only earn ad revenue for AFV’s massive trove of 2.6 million clips, but could also drive acquisition of new videos and build a business letting creators use its content for a fee.

“You could say AFV was the pioneer of UGC entertainment,” Shawn Kallet, V10’s Head of Revenue & Partnerships, tells Tubefilter. “We’re really focused on the growth of the clip and content library that the Vin Di Bona team had been collecting and curating and developing for the past 35 years.”

AFV has had a YouTube channel since 2011, but when V10 came in, it launched an expanded network of official accounts across YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, all powered by AFV‘s library. Those channels now collectively have over 100 million followers, and in 2024 drove over 9.5 billion views.

Being so present on social media showed V10 that “the UGC ecosystem really encompasses all of social media,” Kallet says. “All creator content is, by nature, UGC. And UGC can be enhanced and transformed into storytelling-driven content with the right editing and narrative applied.”

What V10 saw on social media was an opportunity to provide clips to creators applying that “right” editing and narrative–aka, reaction and compilation creators. Those creators can churn through dozens of clips every time they make a video, so need a constant stream of content. Sourcing that amount of content ethically and legally puts a strain on them, Kallet says.

The big draw for people out there to submit clips to America’s Funniest Home Videos is the chance that they may end up on the show and win $100,000 if their vid is voted funniest. But even if it isn’t, and even if the clip isn’t featured in an episode at all, V10 may still find ways to license it, giving the original owner a bit of cash and licensees clearance to use it.

“We have a system to obtain the rights and clear that video for use depending on whether it’s going to be used in the show, on our digital platforms, or held on to for future opportunities,” Kallet explains. “We have a clearance team under our VP of Licensing, Andrew Dignan, that’s both clearing content and working with licensing partners on utilizing our clips.”

Thanks to V10 embracing creators, they now comprise a number of those licensing partners. One type of creator/V10 partnership sees creators pay V10 a fee to license clips, and then are assured that those clips are cleared for use on platforms like YouTube. (V10 won’t say what creators pay to license clips, but Kallet says “we are competitive with the marketplace,” and that creators can pay via flat fee, subscription fee, or bulk order.) Creators are also allowed to use those clips in monetized videos, something that’s not always possible with licensed UGC.

“We will support creators who use our clips by allowing them to legally use them on channels eligible for monetization,” Kallet says. “We work closely with executives at YouTube at a very high level to ensure that everyone is following the latest platform policies and guidelines, and YouTube is very supportive of our efforts and of creators in general who are trying to grow their businesses on the platform.”

We said ‘one type of creator/V10 partnership’ above. That’s because there’s two types. V10 obviously sees a financial benefit from straight licensing partnerships. But it’s looking for benefits beyond the cash, which is why it also establishes marketing partnerships with creators, where creators can use V10 clips for free in exchange for encouraging viewers to submit clips to America’s Funniest Home Videos and continuing growing that licenseable library.

Kallet says these partnerships are vital, and have helped drive AFV to collecting over 200,000 new clips each year.

“Over the past 12 months, V10 has seen an 18% increase in organic video submissions to the library,” he says. “A large contributing factor has been the visibility and reach driven by digital creators and larger partners, including Daily Dose, Collab, and Mythical.”

And so this is the business in our year 2025: a longtime legacy TV brand leaning into creators, recognizing how valuable they are for brand exposure. V10 views the process as a flywheel, where AFV clips can support the creator economy, and creators in turn can call on their audiences to bulk up AFV‘s trove.

“I see the demand for UGC only growing,” Kallet says. “The creator economy is obviously booming, and the amount of content being uploaded to YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok is growing every day. Starting with a base of UGC, a nugget of entertainment, gets you one step further down the road of making more videos without burning out and without having to rely on being on camera every second. With our approach, we think we can help elevate the entire YouTube ecosystem by using UGC the right way.”