CNN throws in the towel on Casey Neistat and Beme
UPDATE: Jan. 25, 2018, 1:03 p.m. EST This piece has been updated after Casey Neistat removed his video announcing his split with CNN.
Almost two years ago, CNN made a blockbuster move to bring in one of YouTube's biggest stars with the dream of making a next-generation news outlet for young people.
On Thursday, CNN announced that it's throwing in the towel on that effort. The company is parting ways with Casey Neistat and folding Beme, the digital operation he had been running with his co-founder, Matt Hackett.
CNN, like most TV-based media companies, has been feverishly working to develop its digital side. Its Great Big Story video venture has found some success with social-friendly content.
Beme, however, never materialized. The closure, first reported to BuzzFeed News, highlights just how optimistic many old media companies became about digital news and video efforts directed at young internet users, only to see a variety of experiments fail.
“You can’t be afraid to take chances if you want to stay on top of an industry that is changing every day,” said Andrew Morse, general manager of CNN's digital business, in a statement “This was a chance worth taking — we built products and developed key talent that has made CNN stronger.”
Neistat published a video to his YouTube channel announcing the move. He offered a stark assessment of his time at CNN.
"Looking back at my time [at CNN], I think that we did a lot of interesting things. I think that... you know, maybe I struggled more in that environment than I had anticipated," he said.
The video later disappeared from Neistat's channel but was reuploaded by other YouTuber users. A copy is embedded here:
Hackett, who cofounded Beme and helped build Tumblr, published a blog about the move that was passed along to Mashable.
"Ultimately, while we have built some valuable things, we didn’t hit the escape velocity the business needed to exist independently," Hackett wrote.
When the move first happened, Neistat was trumpeted as part of CNN's future, even appearing alongside Jeff Zucker and Anthony Bourdain on a Hollywood Reporter cover. CNN reportedly paid $25 million for Beme, which at the time had been around for only about a year.
Since the acquisition, Beme published a handful of videos to YouTube but little else.
Some Beme staff will be offered jobs in other parts of CNN, according to BuzzFeed.
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
