Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Chernin Group Invests in Latino YouTube Channel

Here’s another bet on YouTube, placed by people who don’t work at Google: The Chernin Group is leading an early investment round in MiTú, a Latino-focused YouTube network.

Peter Chernin’s holding company isn’t announcing the amount of the round, but I’m told it’s around $3 million.

Other investors include Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise; Advancit Capital, Shari Redstone’s VC firm; and Code Advisors.

There’s a lot of interest in Hispanic and Spanish-language stuff on YouTube, and the video site has funded several channels targeted at that audience, including one produced by IAC’s Electus and fronted by “Modern Family”’s Sofia Vergara. But MiTú doesn’t have any financial backing from YouTube.

And that seems to be working out just fine. The channel launched 7 months ago, and the company says its English- and Spanish-language clips have generated 800 million views so far. MiTú says it has signed up more than 2.3 million subscribers.

The investment comes alongside other big outside bets on YouTube channels/networks, like the $40 million round Time Warner is leading for Maker Studios. Meanwhile, YouTube is adding more funding to a select group of channels, while cutting off cash to many of the content creators it signed on last fall.

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald