The Drama Channel YouTube Playbook
Drama happens daily if you can find it, and there’s an audience ready to watch, but can you take the heat?
Newer drama channels have a high turnover rate because they cannot compete with their more established colleagues who post daily. If you cannot report breaking news in a timely manner, you will always earn fewer views. The demands are high, so you need to ask yourself if you’re the type of person that can handle this workload.
Beyond that, there is an emotional aspect to this job. You will sometimes have to report on heavy topics. Hate comments, even death threats, will be directed at you. You will make enemies. There is room for error, so you will misspeak or misreport at some point. You must brace for impact.
What Does It Take?
Time — You need to spend time researching and writing out talking points. You don’t get to be sloppy. The situation can escalate within minutes, so you must be prepared to scrap or add footage. Be prepared to clear your entire schedule to work on a video.
If this is your first YouTube channel, you should be aware that researching, filming, editing, creating thumbnails, and marketing takes hours. Any serious creator works on their channel daily even if they post weekly.
Knowledge — Not only should you be knowledgeable of what happened, but you also need to know every YouTuber’s timeline. Do they have a pattern of being aggressive or racist? This information is important to viewers.
You should follow every personality on all of their social media platforms. Read up on pop culture every morning. Scroll through Famous Birthdays to learn new names. Tell your friends to pass along important posts to you. Honestly, I would create an excel chart and log everything because over time this will increase your work speed.
And again, all of these steps take time. If you do not naturally live and breathe celebrity news, you may not have enough passion for this job.
Compassion — There are various levels of controversy that you’ll report on. Sometimes you will make a fluff piece on petty breakups and shady tweets. But other times, incidents involve marriages, minors, sexual assault, and violence. You need to handle every situation with care even when your viewers hype you up to “spill the tea.” You are the fuel to the fire, so always separate opinions from facts and check for bias word choice.
I suggest writing out a code of ethics to hold yourself accountable. You want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror. If you need help defining the line, I recommend turning to the journalism code of ethics instead of other drama channels. Sadly, many drama channels compromise their work to get views.
Some people argue that there is no level of compassion within drama channels. The voices in my head constantly debate this. A drama channel solely relies on talking about OTHER people to get views, gain popularity, and make money. Should they make a profit from others’ pain? Are they piggybacking off of somebody else’s hard work? The entire existence of drama channels is gross…
…But if you zoom out and examine the entire ecosystem, the drama channels keep these YouTubers relevant. It’s no different than our beloved LA actors having PR managers and tipping off the paps. In fact, these scandals often increase YouTuber’s engagement ratings, which allows them to negotiate better brand deals. Drama is a vicious cycle.
Types of Drama Channels
Different styles of drama channels exist. To avoid burnout, I suggest building a brand that matches your personality and values. There is a temptation to roll around in the mud with the pigs — to a point where other drama channels might even cover your drama channel — but when you make a fast entrance, you have a fast exit. If you’re looking to build a sustainable career, I would ease into this mud bath.
Let’s explore the different programming options. There’s not a wrong path to choose because you may not even know your direction. Keep experimenting, have fun, and take time to self-reflect as you ask yourself these starter questions.
Do you want to gossip during a mukbang or do basic sit-down? Analytics show that hybrid videos perform better, just look at the series Hot Ones. People oddly enjoy video podcasts similar to how we like to watch others play video games. I think a big factor depends on comfortability. Some people perform better while doing an activity and others don’t.
Will you have segments? Besides reporting on a scandal, some drama channels release weekly recaps or deep-dives into subjects with more layers. In the beginning, when you are developing your work ethic, you may want to focus on weekly recaps.
Avoid “going niche” by only discussing one YouTuber because you then run the risk of getting your channel deleted. One drama channel put all of its focus on Trisha Paytas, but Trisha turned around and copyright claimed all f her videos. Within one week, the YouTuber received 3 community guideline strikes and had her channel terminated.
Would anyone join you? The line between YouTube channels and podcasts continues to blur. If you do find a partner for the channel, you two will need a contract to decide workload and payout. If you have flakey friends, don’t bother; a contract won’t make them show up. But perhaps if you each worked on different projects, you could output more than one video per week.
If you want to ask guests to be on your show, be aware of the logistics. You now have to operate around their schedule. Booking a highly-sought-after interview will be a challenge. The public doesn’t want to hear you gossip with your best friend that they’ve never seen before, but an influencer won’t give you the time of day. It’s great to have goals, but don’t plan on having guests in the near future.
What’s your ideal video length and pace? Will you try to condense everything into a 10-minute video with gimmicky music, fast-talking, and quick cuts? Or will you pick a topic and go off for 30 minutes? Surprisingly, there’s an audience for both. The YouTube algorithm loves to push longer content, but that only works if you have the energy to carry the audience all the way through your video. If it’s a dry week, you can try to stretch the little things until someone calls it controversy, but you may earn a clickbait reputation.
Will you remain faceless? Anonymous drama channels aren’t anything new, but they never reached Gossip Girl success until Tea Spill entered the scene mid-2017. You save time and money on hair/makeup and studio setup. You can create a video in your pajamas from the comfort of your couch. If you want to work on outside projects, your image isn’t tainted by the drama. You get to walk around in public unrecognized with a dirty little secret. However, at the end of the day, your brand still doesn’t have a face. Your audience cannot connect with you on a deep level. But hey, you didn’t come to the party to make friends, you arrived to spill some tea!
Stay Yourself
So sappy, right? I say this because many new YouTubers try to copy their idol. When Emma Chamberlain rose to fame with her filterless remarks and over-played edits, everyone tried to do the same thing. But copying rarely works.
It’s hard to be yourself, especially when you admire D’Angelo Wallace or Smokey Glow (like me) and would enjoy producing what they make. That’s fair. Many channels overlap. But wouldn’t you say every YouTuber brings you joy based on their unique styles and personality?
