Finnish media giant Nelonen is turning to YouTubers to try and drive hard to reach youth audiences in the direction of its streaming platform Ruutu.
Positioned as the online catch-up and video on demand service of Nelonen Media’s TV channels, the Ruutu service offers both standard and premium tiers to its audiences. This month, the platform unveiled a slate of digital originals that is designed to reach “an audience that is not watching linear television”.
The first 4 x 15-20 minute series sees popular YouTuber Jaakko Parkkali (pictured) spend his summer answering the ‘emergency service’ phone, a number known only to a select few stars in the entertainment world. When the phone rings, Jaakko’s tasks take him to places like movie sets and professional kitchens (producer Solar Films).
A second digital original, Ella & Helmi IRL: The Best Summer Ever, is a six-part documentary reality series about the lives, friendship, and summer of Finland’s most followed female YouTubers at time of writing. The series offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of their YouTube channel, which has nearly 200,000 subscribers, and discusses what it’s been like growing up under immense popularity (producer Troot).
The final series, also produced by Troot, is Suomen Suurinta Piilosta (The biggest hide-and-seek in Finland). The six-part series brings popular YouTuber Roni Back’s highly successful hide-and-seek videos from YouTube to the Ruutu platform. In the series, Back and his guests, including other well-known YouTubers and celebrities familiar from TV, compete in hide-and-seek games in some of the most unusual locations around Finland. Each episode is full of unexpected twists that keep both the seeker and the hiders on edge, elevating hide-and-seek to an entirely new level. Back is one of Finland’s most followed content creators, with over 1.3m followers.
