Ranting On...The Grace Helbig Show

James Corden and Grace Helbig

For those of you who haven't been watching (and apparently that's a lot of you), The Grace Helbig Show this past week finished its sixth installment of eight shows, and like so many shows (CSI, The Mindy Project), seems to be closer to cancellation than to another actual season.  The reason for this is simple (to paraphrase Bill Clinton, "it's the ratings, stupid"), but the larger question of its impact on the YouTube community is a bit more challenging and one that's worth discussing.

Since some of you may be unfamiliar with Helbig, I should probably not get ahead of myself here.  Helbig is the star of It's Grace, a channel on YouTube known for her irreverent brand of humor and frequent looks at pop culture and fashion.  Her recent transition to television from the video site, however, has been rocky.  The problem here isn't that the show isn't good-it got solid reviews, including from yours truly.  The show, in fact, seems to be in many ways an extended version of Helbig's It's Grace from YouTube, and younger viewers don't seem to want to have to sit on a couch at a specific time to watch the show.  This past week's episode was in fact the strongest-Helbig had James Corden and Lance Bass on as guests and played a game of Boy Band Karaoke as well as "Condom or Boy Band?" (which was a LOT harder to win than it initially seemed).  It was extremely funny, and her opening skits have improved dramatically with a running gag involving her driving around other famous YouTubers and having them visit psychics and fortune tellers.

All-in-all, there should be everything here that would equal success from Helbig's over 2 million fans on YouTube.  The show is basically just more Grace, but with the opportunity for more high-budget sketches and actual real-world celebrities like Jim Parsons and Hilary Duff to get involved in on the fun.  So the fact that the show can't seem to draw much of an audience is an issue for future YouTuber success in television, because it's extremely hard to imagine someone being better-suited for the chat show format than Grace Helbig.  Helbig's brand-of-humor is one of the few channels on the site that caters to both the young and to the older sets of Millennials.  Unlike someone like, say, Ricky Dillon, the channel doesn't have principally the youngest of Millennials and Generation Z in mind, a group that is not going to be up at 10:30 on a Friday.  This show should appeal to the same sort of person that tunes in to The Soup.  If Helbig, who has one of the wider appeals of any YouTube star can't transition, can anyone?

This is an interesting question because in other avenues, YouTubers have made the jump, particularly in the book game.  YouTubers ranging from Zoe Sugg to Connor Franta to even Helbig herself have had massive hits on the bestseller list and it seems every YouTuber seems to have a book out (to the point where I think it will hit its saturation point any day now).  Film seems to have been a bit more elusive-while Camp Takota (starring Helbig, along with a slew of other YouTubers like Hannah Hart and Mamrie Hart) got a ton of buzz and solid reviews, it didn't create the sort of impact that had casting directors knocking at their door, and the next YouTube movie (Shane Dawson's Not Cool) was considered a massive creative and commercial failure.  Probably the biggest potential movie hit is coming in July, when The Smosh Movie (starring Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, they of the 20-million subscriber Smosh) comes out with a proper distributor (Lionsgate).  Like Helbig's show, a lot is riding on this film being successful and if future film producers will assume subscribers will transfer over to being viewers in other mediums.  If Smosh, who specializes in extended sketch-comedy and is arguably the most popular YouTube channel after Pewdiepie, can't make the transition, who will waste their time and money on other YouTubers?

Some YouTubers have had success in television, it's worth noting (most famously Bethany Mota, who made it to the Finals on Dancing with the Stars), but no one has been able to create a talk show or scripted series that actually clicked, and this is what makes Helbig's series' low ratings so frightening.  It's not just a personal investment fans have in Helbig, but also that YouTube is a notoriously fickle beast-you're constantly reinventing yourself, and you live in a world of likes and subscribes that could leave you without much of a leg to stand-on.  We've talked about this a bit before, but the reality is that YouTubers don't really have a sustainable fanbase in the same way that actors or entertainers do-they can't wait and try to reinvent themselves if all they have is their channel, and that's why expansion into other mediums such as television are so important for long-term success and growth.  And yet, if one of the highest-profile examples is a flop, it's going to be a harder sell for Hannah Hart to join The View or for Tyler Oakley to get his own morning talk slot.  So while Helbig seems to be saving her biggest stars for last on the series (Jack Black and Dwayne Johnson will both be on in the next two weeks), I will be watching eagerly to see if YouTube fans may be signing their beloved creators' death warrants by not turning in for thirty minutes of what they could watch for eight on a computer.