With AM to DM, BuzzFeed brings the morning news show to Twitter

Every weekday at 10am Eastern Time, BuzzFeed is live on Twitter with its hour-long morning news show AM to DM.

Hosted by Isaac Fitzgerald, formerly BuzzFeed books editor, and Saeed Jones, formerly BuzzFeed News’ executive editor of culture, AM to DM offers a social media take on a familiar format.

Launched on 25 September, the show reached one million unique viewers each day during its first week.

Some 78 per cent of the viewers who watched live during the premiere were under the age of 35, according to figures from BuzzFeed, and clips from the show were viewed some 10 million times in the first seven days.

Work on AM to DM started during the summer, putting together a team of 22 dedicated staff and building a studio for the show.

"We definitely didn't want to cannibalise the newsroom doing this, so we brought on people specifically for the show rather than pulling everybody out of the newsroom to make it," said Shani Hilton, head of US News for BuzzFeed News.

BuzzFeed journalists also make appearances on the show, as AM to DM highlights the organisation's breaking news reports, political coverage and other big stories of the day.

The idea for the morning show was developed in collaboration with Twitter, as BuzzFeed was looking for a format for live video on the platform after its initial experiments with an election night show in November 2016.

The team had been exploring ways to create a show for social media without replicating television.

Regular segments on AM to DM include: Fire Tweets, finding the best and funniest tweets; Push Alert, breaking down the biggest news story dominating conversations on the day; Live From The District, with Adrian Carrasquillo, reporting on political news from various locations around DC; and @US, taking viewers' questions, comments and critics.

The structure of the show is currently quite "regimented", as Hilton explained neither of the two hosts had worked on similar shows or television in the past, so having a clear rundown helped.

"I think that the format is getting a little looser as they get more comfortable and as time goes on," she said.

As well as monitoring the views the show gets, looking through the hashtag (#AM2DM) helps Hilton get a better idea of who is watching the show and in what circumstances.

"It's really interesting that we already have regulars who watch every morning, and people who are not in media clearly. And it's young, it's diverse, which is great to me.

"What we're trying to do every day is just make it a little bit better. At the end of the episode we know what went wrong and we figure it out.

"This show is wildly different today than it was two weeks ago when it launched, and I think in a month it will be totally different," she added.

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