The partnership between Snapchat and Comedy Central will come to an end later this month. Comedy Central had been producing customized content for Snapchat Discover Channel on a daily basis but this contract will now not be renewed. For every edition, between five and six stories are produced and this includes content from franchises such as Broad City, Key & Peele and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Reports indicate that the two firms are considering producing content that is more like traditional television programming.
“We have loved our collaboration with Snapchat and look forward to continuing our conversations with them about producing Snap Shows for the platform,” a spokesperson for Comedy Central said in an interview with Business Insider.
Discovery Comedy Central
This is not the first time that a traditional media company is discontinuing its partnership with Snapchat Discover. Earlier in the year CNN discontinued a magazine that was featured on the platform. The cable news giant, however, began offering more videos to a youthful demographic by starting a news show known as The Update.
Revenue contributor
Since it was launched two years ago, Discover has been a key contributor of advertising revenues to Snapchat. According to research firm eMarketer almost 50% of the total revenues that Snap Inc generated last year were obtained from Discover. eMarketer has now projected that the year-on-year growth of ad revenues from Discover will be 62.3% and will reach a figure of $243.2 in the current fiscal year. The research firm however expects Snapchat Stories to outperform Discover in 2017. Earlier in the month, college newspaper publishers were allowed to add their content to Discover as Snapchat tries to increase its userbase that consists mostly of teenager and millennials.
Comedy Central’s move to pull out of Discover has coincided with a decision by Snap Inc to remove Al Jazeera’s Discover channel from its Saudi Arabian app. This was after a request had been put forward by Saudi authorities. In a statement Snapchat’s parent company said in the various jurisdictions in which the firm operates in, it always tries to comply with the local laws.
