AM to DM isn’t BuzzFeed News’ first time at the live streaming rodeo: Back in November, BuzzFeed News and Twitter partnered up for election coverage. The success of the venture led to talks about regular programming. Morning news was “so far away from anything we’d ever done,” recalls BuzzFeed’s Head of U.S. News, Shani Hilton, who plays an advisory role for the show. “But Twitter came to us and said that’s what they wanted to work on with us and we were like, ‘OK. Let’s try.’”
A Balance of Topics and Guests
The show, airing at 10 a.m. EST every day, is executive produced by Cindy Vanegas-Gesuale and hosted by cultural critic Saeed Jones (pictured at top left) and founding books editor Isaac Fitzgerald (top right). Regular segments include roundups of popular tweets and viewers’ responses to the show, breakdowns of buzzy news stories, the latest in politics, and life advice from Jones. Guests who stop by for sit-down interviews run the gamut from high-profile celebrities to “people who have earned their popularity on Twitter,” as senior booking producer Edward Wyckoff-Williams notes. Recent guests have included New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio; Real Housewives star Bethenny Frankel (also of Skinny Girl fame); Ryan Scott, star of the recently viral Ciao videos, and Joe Gatto and James “Murr” Murphy, the hosts of truTV’s Impractical Jokers. (Pictured below, left to right: Murphy, Gatto and Fitzgerald.)