WorldWide Entertainment TV media head of creative, Kevin Douglas, was recently interviewed by American outlet, Shout Out Arizona.
Below is an excerpt from the interview.
Hi Kevin, what do you attribute your success to?
The most important factor with WorldWide Entertainment TV’s brand success is adapting to the always moving forward entertainment industry. You need to keep in touch with trends and also understand sustaining your roots of why people continue to watch your product.
In this business, once you realize there are ups and downs, you can remain steady in knowing that some days you can catch lightning in a bottle and other times you fall with a learning curve. Consistency is key and being a brand that you can count on for content is important.
So the key to the success has been about connecting with artists and entertainers and entrepreneurs from different parts of the world trying to get exposure and reporting of their events or projects.
What should our readers know about your business?
We started out with promoting and managing Toronto hip hop acts in our original incarnation on our old Youtube channel. At the time we just wanted to get the music online for people to have an option to listen and watch. This was during a time when no one knew exactly how big Youtube would actually get.
As things changed from the early days of how Youtube worked with copyright issues and things of that nature, we ended up learning from mistakes to grow with rebranding and new Youtube launches due to legalities and the new takeover from Google.
What changed the game for WorldWide Entertainment TV is the time we expanded from Toronto to other regions in the United States such as New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. Going across seas with a United Kingdom arm truly provided us with that worldwide theme that we came known for. We have helped with artist getting into other regions and setting up shop such as Tara Lord from Toronto to the United Kingdom. We were instrumental with our WorldWide Entertainment TV United Kingdom team setting up a concert tour for Toronto rapper Robin Banks. With the success of these two artists, major artists such as Drake started to follow suit with touring in Europe with the likes of Pressa.
We were able to do this with the help of Youtube at the time when they created the Youtube studios in those regions. WWETV was able to interview artists from those regions live and in person. In Los Angeles, our biggest interview included the co-star of the Tupac Shakur biopic “All Eyes On Me,” Dominic Santana, in the weeks leading up to the movie premiere.
In Atlanta, our host Ms. Goldi was able to get into contact with the other co-star who portrayed Tupac Shakur in Demetrius Shipp, Jr. Ms. Goldi was instrumental in WorldWide Entertainment TV becoming the media sponsor platform for the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center For The Arts in Atlanta. The owner Jim Burnett who bought the land and property from Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, wanted us to help bring awareness to the plans of building a new statue and continuing the legacy Ms. Shakur wanted for the city.
As stated above, in terms of ups and downs, it was great being the platform that broke news with TMZ about the Tupac statue, but it was also a down when legal issues arose with higher ups beyond control of Afeni Shakur and Tupac Shakur. It was a fun time however as we interviewed some of Tupac’s family and had artists coming from around the world to be interviewed at the Tupac Center.
One of our biggest interviews included Akon when he toured in the United Kingdom. He was launching a new music label at the time called Konvict Kartel and we had the first interviews with his new signees at the time. Our forte of covering live events caught the attention of the promoter of the tour.
We have been doing coverage for live events and been sponsors for concerts in Canada, United States, and United Kingdom. In Toronto, we have sponsored many events that include TDot Fest, Youth Fest, and other various live events that included the historic Canada 150 event celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday. At that event, were able to capture a historic Drake appearance and provide the only coverage of the legends from Canadian hip hop such as Maestro Fresh Wes and Michie Mee performances. The icons who paved the way for the likes of Tory Lanez and The Weeknd. We have also interviewed these artists in the past.
We have appeared on television outlets such as CTV’s ETalk when we covered the MuchMusic Television Video Award ceremony from the Red Carpet. At that event we captured footage and pictures of celebrities such as Amber Rose, Desiigner, 5th Harmony and Gigi Hadid. Another historic event we captured in the 6ix included The Raptors NBA Championship parade where got photos and video with Drake celebrating with Raptors on the parade run.
One of our strengths is helping artists at the start of their career and giving them a platform with interviews and special event coverage such as Pressa of BFR at the funeral of his close friend Wassi. and Cash Money Record artist J Soul’s contract signing with Birdman. At the same time we also pay homage to the veterans who may not have received their flowers from the mainstream press.
The latest big event we had exclusive VIP access for was Rolling Loud Toronto. Brooklyn Tea Talk was on sight for Tory Lanez listening party for his last album. It occurred soon after his live performance in front of his home crowd and she also had backstage access to report on the event.
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