:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63700876/the-grill-iron1.0.1467092797.0.jpg)
The TV guys, as you may have heard, are looking to the digital guys to help them figure out this whole future of media thing.
And the digital guys? They’re interested in making TV shows.
Here’s the latest example: Tastemade, a Web video startup aimed at people who like making and eating food, has sold one of its shows to the Cooking Channel.
“The Grill Iron,” a series of shorts about college football and barbeque that Tastemade ran last year, will be packaged into 30-minute shows for the TV network; meanwhile, Tastemade is starting up a second season of the digital show this fall.
This digital-to-TV migration hasn’t happened that much in the past, but this one was pretty obvious: Tastemade is very much designed to be a digital version of the Cooking Channel or the Food Network, both of which are owned by Scripps Networks Interactive. And Scripps is an investor in Tastemade. So there you go.
Bonus points for Tastemade: It gets paid multiple times for the same product, since Hyundai already underwrote the original production in return for being integrated into the shows.
https://youtu.be/I2SlZebdYYo
Tastemade co-founder Larry Fitzgibbon said that despite the Scripps investment, this was an arm’s-length deal between the companies. More important: He said that while Tastemade may do more digital-to-TV deals, it doesn’t think it will be a significant part of its business: “We’re always going to be focused on digital first — and, more so, mobile first,” he says.
Still digital natives like Tastemade have been making TV-quality programming, at a fraction of the cost of traditional producers, for a while — particularly for the “unscripted” stuff that makes up a big chunk of the TV guide. I think you’ll see more and more of this.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
