Stay In and Stay Warm

 It’s colder than usual in California, which means now is the perfect time to stay in and catch up on your favorite reality TV shows. Here’s a list of popular binge-worthy Netflix favorites that’s sure to keep you entertained till the sun comes back out. 

1. Is It Cake? 

Netflix took reality baking shows to a whole new level with Is it Cake? If you’re into baking competition shows, this may be your new obsession. In the show, 9 bakers compete to win $10,000 each episode. To win, you have to disguise your cake so it can’t be deciphered by 3 celebrity judges. As of now there are 8 episodes, about 40 minutes long streaming on Netflix, and a new season on the way. 

2. Selling Sunset 

Let’s talk about Los Angeles real estate. Selling Sunset is a reality show that highlights The Oppenheim Group located right on Sunset boulevard. Though the brokerage is owned by Jason and Brett Oppenheim, the women of the office steal the show. They bring the drama, well known buyers, and the high fashion on camera and make the show worth watching. Running 5 seasons strong, with season 6 on the way, Selling Sunset is definitely worth your while. 

3. The Mole 

If you like a good mystery, The Mole may be your new obsession. The Mole is a competition show that invites  individuals to Australia to complete a series of missions. But there is  a catch: During each mission,someone in the group is sabotaging the group as a whole. Their job is to find out just who that someone is. The Mole is a 10 episode saga that are about 40 minutes long each. 

4. Love is Blind 

A Netflix original turned Netflix classic, Love is Blind is one of the streaming services best shows yet. Nick and Vanessa Lachey host the hit show that calls singles to fall in love without ever seeing each other. It calls individuals to see if they can fall in love and commit to marriage with nothing but a strong emotional connection. Being that there are 3 seasons streaming now on Netflix, this is sure to keep you bundled up and entertained as cold passes. 

5. Twenty Something’s : Austin 

The description is in the show name. Twenty Something’s: Austin welcomes a group of 8 twenty something’s to Austin, Texas that have never been on their own to see if they’re ready to spread their wings. They live in a house together for free but have to navigate their own problems and drama. By the end of the stay they have to make the decision if they’re going to leave where they came from and relocate to Austin for good, or go back home. The 12 episode series is sure to keep you hooked all the way through.

6. Perfect Match 

Now if you finish all of these, and want to see a few familiar faces from your favorites off the list, the Perfect Match is for you. Netflix created a dating show with singles that failed the other love show experiences, or that just wanted to have a shot at finding their perfect match. Netflix pulled people from Love is Blind, The Circle, The Mole, Too Hot Too Handle, and a couple of their other original series. It motivates singles to get to know each other and win challenges to be deemed compatible and be declared the perfect match. The series released its first half of episodes already, but the last 4 are getting released on Netflix February 28th. 

Whether your interest is baking, real estate, love, lifestyle, or all of the above, this list is sure to keep you inside. 

Happy Binging! 

Web-Work

Running a web show isn't all fun and games. Of course everyone's had the YouTube fantasy of sitting in front of a webcam and speaking their mind, while thousands of strangers sit entranced by their words. But that's not really a web show, is it? A web show is something more than just a blog or an expulsion of opinions from a person's mouth.

A show has to have guests, topics that people care about and regularity. Now, granted, a lot of those things are hard to come by on a personal budget and hard to deliver when you're a student, but it can happen. For instance, I recently set up a four person interview where I sat down with the creators of a web-series and the men who created the video game that the series was based off of. Not only that, but the interview was at the game studio where the game was developed.

The reason we chose these guests were varied. For one, the website and series I manage all have to do with video games, their development and their impact socially. Pairing the creators of a successful web-show with the men that created the very thing they were making a show about was a good way to cause buzz. The show is incredibly successful as it garnered at least ten thousand hits a day every time a new episode came out and the creators offered to plug our show when the interview was posted. Their fans had also been asking if they'd received held from the game company when making the show, and I thought this would be a good platform for them to answer that as well as showcase my own channel.

While I hope this will aid my show, I have no idea if it will. We've been trying a variety of different things to garner the attention of the YouTube community, but like print journalism, you need to a lot of work for nothing before you get something. However, we're on the right track and have more going for us than some other shows.

But what about more successful shows? What do they have that makes them so popular that the users can actually live off of their YouTube partnerships? One of the most well known examples is Hot for Words (www.hotforwords.com). Marina Orlova, the host of the show, is a philologist/model; a combination only a nerd could ream of made into reality. Orlova uses her looks to get the attention of her audience, but they actually stay for the knowledge she brings to the table. On a fairly regular basis, between 1 to 3 days, Orlova releases another video about the root of a word or group of words, and their meanings.

There's no question that a portion of Orlova's 463,376 subscribers stay for her good looks and frisky Russian accent. A good portion of them stay because she actually produces interesting content off of viewer requests to continue getting formidable ratings. She even has a book out with a large "As seen on YouTube" stamp on the front that is "chock full of words and phrase origins, and includes 80+ pics of me to go along" to quote her personal site.

(The cover of Orlova's book ^)

While that might be the peak of YouTube fame, there are others who are just as successful minus book deals and lusting fans. The Needle Drop (www.theneedledrop.com), produced by Antony Fantano, is an album review show. Fantano grabs the latest music, listens to it and posts his personal opinions on the content. Now, there's no end to shows like this on YouTube, but 43,784 people subscribe to his channel for a reason. A friend of mine regularly watches the show. Christian Avina, 19, really respects Fantano's opinions on music because "he really knows what he's talking about. He does a lot of research and is pretty unbiased." The frequency on The Needle Drop is dependent on the music industry, but that's quite a clock to run with so content is not hard to come by.

(Antony Fantano ^)

When I looked at shows like these, I saw a lot of potential for my own, but also a lot of room for work. There needed to be some sort of kick to our content, some sort of draw. I'm hoping our latest interview will do just that. We work tirelessly to produce videos on a weekly basis, which helps viewers trust us on our commitment to content. Our reviews work with the latest games that come out, and the ones we can afford to buy ourselves. As an all male group we don't exactly have the sex appeal Hot for Words does, but we try and make up for it with humor and raw critiques. In the end, only time will tell if our 32 subscribers will grow into something more. One thing is for certain though, there's a lot of work to be done if that's ever going to happen.