How Jonathan Skogmo disrupted the viral video clip economy — and plans to do the same in travel media
Through Jukin Media, Skogmo mastered the art of licensing YouTube videos to media companies and brands. Now he's acquiring media outlets focused on travel.
Editor’s note: This article was produced by Carson Brunson, a freelance writer based in Nashville.
In the mid-2000s, Jonathan Skogmo’s average workday involved a trip to the post office to collect stacks of VHS tapes and DVDs. These tapes, sent in by folks from around the country, contained hours of backyard bloopers, stunts gone wrong, family pranks, and silly moments starring cute kids and pets. It was Skogmo’s job to review the footage to see if anything was funny enough to air on CMT’s “Country Fried Home Videos.” If you aren’t familiar, think “America’s Funniest Home Videos” but with a lil’ Southern twang.
The job wasn’t exactly what Skogmo had envisioned when he moved to Los Angeles. In 2005, he graduated from film school in Chicago, where he’d already worked on a few sets, including Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.” Out in La-La Land, he had to start from scratch.
“It really was like a crazy kind of Hollywood story, where I moved out, didn't really know anybody, was almost at one point living out of my car, and doing a lot of odd jobs,” he said. “I wanted to be in films, but more importantly, I wanted to put my stake in the ground somewhere in the entertainment industry.” Turns out, that wasn’t on film sets — it was on clip shows.
Back in the office, Skogmo worked tirelessly to review home videos. If he found a funny one, he had to reach out to the contributor to clear the rights so “Country Fried” could air the clip without any legal funny business. Now, keep in mind these were the analog days, so this was a whole process of phone calls and paperwork… and more phone calls and paperwork.
During one of these long days, Skogmo had an idea: Why not search for clips on the internet? He could sift through clips faster, and it’d be easier to reach out to creators. Sure, some of these video sites were questionable — clips of “Jackass” wannabes lighting their hair on fire mixed with NSFW content. But Skogmo found a new site where people uploaded more family-friendly videos. It was called YouTube.
As YouTube’s popularity grew, so did the demand for clip shows, and Skogmo quickly became known for producing them. Since his “Country Fried” days, he’s racked up 21 producing credits, according to IMDb. But that was just the start. He went on to launch — and sell — Jukin Media, a wildly successful entertainment company built around user-generated content. “Not that many people can say they’ve had a whole career around user-generated content,” he said. “If somebody has to be the king of that throne, it’s certainly me.”
Now? Skogmo is ready to disrupt another media segment: travel. In a recent interview, he reflected on his fascinating two decades in media, explained what he thinks legacy publishers are getting wrong, and went inside his strategy to create a next-gen media company.
Let’s jump into the findings…
A media company is born
For several years, Skogmo produced clip shows for MTV, truTV, Discovery and more. In 2009, about a year after the writers’ strike and when non-scripted shows were booming, he became interested in buying the rights to user-generated content himself. “I understood the market better than anyone — of how to monetize that content — because I was coming up with the budgets,” he said. He quit his job and, from his West Hollywood apartment, he bought the rights to his first video, marking the inception of Jukin Media.