Amelia Dimoldenberg says her YouTube show Chicken Shop Date has become as important for celebrities seeking media attention as Graham Norton's chatshow or BBC Radio 1, a decade after publicists ignored her.
Speaking at the Edinburgh TV festival, Dimoldenberg recalled that when she started the show in 2014, no publicist or manager would allow their talent to appear on a YouTube show. She described the early years as challenging, saying she would be "banging down the doors".
Now, she said, the situation has reversed. "If your publicist is coming to you and you've got a movie out, or you've got an album rollout campaign, now I do think one of the first things up there on the list of things to do would be to come on Chicken Shop Date," she told the festival.
From rejection to A-list guests
Dimoldenberg's rise illustrates how digital platforms have reshaped the media world, with viewers across all ages switching to YouTube, especially under-35s. Her show features awkward conversations with guests over chicken and chips.
She has interviewed Ed Sheeran, Charli xcx and Jennifer Lawrence, although Lawrence got Dimoldenberg's name wrong. Paul McCartney appeared on a date in a vegan chicken shop this year, declining Dimoldenberg's suggestion that he adopt a pet otter.
Dimoldenberg initially focused on UK rap and grime figures when she launched the show in 2014. Her first big name, actor Daniel Kaluuya, agreed to appear because he was a fan of the show.
YouTube's growing influence
Her interviews have repeatedly gone viral, including Louis Theroux rapping and the chemistry between Dimoldenberg and actor Andrew Garfield. "I didn't realise fully how much the audience would catch on to how obsessed he is with me," she said.
She is increasingly picky over guests and rejects anyone who wants to appear only as part of a "press run" publicising their latest project. The shift in the media hierarchy was underlined when Pedro Pina, YouTube's head for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, gave the keynote MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival last week.
Pina insisted YouTube was "not the villain" about to destroy the TV industry, though he made clear the age of monopoly for TV networks was over.
Creators moving both ways
The appeal of total creative control, along with ads, sponsors and brand deals, is attracting established media names to YouTube. Presenter Holly Willoughby launched her YouTube channel over the summer, amassing 22,000 subscribers so far. Amol Rajan is set to leave BBC Radio 4's Today programme and launch a YouTube show, The Amol Rajan Connection.
Dimoldenberg, however, is moving toward conventional media. She is writing a teen drama for the BBC, similar to Skins, which ran for seven series on E4. She is also writing a Hollywood romcom in which she stars as a journalist who finds romance with a celebrity after interviewing them.
"It's a character that I've been playing half my life, so I feel like I know it very well," she said. "It's definitely just an exaggeration of who I am."
