Like Netflix, but With YouTube Stars: Fullscreen Readies Its Subscription Service

Remember when Web video was something you watched for free?

It still is! Just head to YouTube, and now Facebook, and Snapchat. But if you want to, you can also pay to watch video on the Web. There are big distributors like Netflix and Hulu, as well as smaller players trying to extract a few dollars per month, like Crunchyroll and Defy Media. And YouTube itself is peddling a subscription service.

Now here’s another one: Fullscreen, which until now has specialized in generating billions of views a month from free videos, will launch a $5-per-month, ad-free service at the end of April.

This is the subscription service Fullscreen has been talking about launching for a couple of years; during that time the company was acquired by Otter Media, the video holding company run by The Chernin Group and backed with investment money from AT&T.

When Fullscreen’s service (the company’s press folks would like us to refer to it as “fullscreen,” but good luck with that) does launch, it will specialize in shows made by people who became famous on YouTube, and who still make stuff that shows up there.

So subscribers will get to see stuff like “Electra Woman & Dyna Girl” starring Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart, which will run exclusively on the paid service, at least for a while. They’ll also get old TV shows and movies Fullscreen thinks its millennial audience will appreciate, like “Dawson’s Creek” and “Saved by the Bell.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3JDXvz7G6c

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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