A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
Did you know that people really like watching people play video games online?
This week, Amazon bought the video game streaming service, Twitch, for $970 million. The site allows users to watch and interact with people playing video games in real time.
This phenomenon of watching gamers online has been rising in popularity in recent years, on Twitch, but especially on YouTube.
27-year-old Brad Colburn has made it his career. Known as “The Rad Brad” on YouTube, he’s been making a living since 2012 by posting videos of himself wielding his controller. Today he has more than 3.2 million subscribers and his videos regularly rake in hundreds of thousands of views — and the advertising that goes with that.
The Frame producer Michelle Lanz got Brad on the line from Atlanta to talk about the big business of gameplay webcasting.