Facebook Watch Renews ‘Sorry for Your Loss,’ ‘Sacred Lies’ for Second Seasons
Facebook Watch announced Thursday that it will be renewing two of its original series, “Sacred Lies” and “Sorry For Your Loss,” for a second season. The two shows, which launched in September and October respectively, have found early success on the platform.
“Sacred Lies,” a series based on the Grimm Brothers tale “The Handless Maiden” and Stephanie Oakes’ novel “The Sacred Lies of Minnow Blyl,” is produced by Blumhouse TV. The first season, which spans 10 30-minute episodes, follows the journey of a handless teen who escapes from a cult and finds herself in juvenile detention, suspected of knowing who killed her cult leader.
The show page has accumulated 300K+ followers with each episode averaging more than 1.7 million views (a view on Facebook is defined as watching a piece of content for at least three seconds).
Also Read: Facebook Watch Has a Big Consumer Awareness Problem
“Sorry For Your Loss” is a half hour drama that stars Elizabeth Olsen as Leigh Shaw, a widow struggling to put her life back together after her husband’s unexpected death. While the series hasn’t been as successful as “Sacred Lies” it has still attracted 138K follower and averages 800K views an episode, though a large portion of those views can be attributed to the first episode, which garnered 5.3 million views.
“Seeing our audience embrace and champion ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ and reading the comments and posts from people who feel seen and understood watching our show, has been one of the most meaningful experiences of my life,” Kit Steinkellner, creator and executive producer of the show, said. “Facebook Watch has been such a wonderful home for our series and I am grateful for the opportunity to work again with them and with Big Beach, to bring season two to life.”
Other shows coming back for a second season include Indigenous Media’s “Five Points,” a drama that follows the daily struggles of five teens in a South Side Chicago high school, and “Huda Boss,” a reality series that follows makeup artist and beauty blogger Huda Kattan and her family.
In addition to the renewals, Facebook shared new stats on the viewing habits surrounding its video platform. The company says that every month more than 400 million people spend at least one minute on Watch, while 75 million people spend on average 20 minutes on the platform.
According to the social giant, its most followed show and most active Facebook Group is Jada Pinkett Smith’s “Red Table Talk”; “Confetti,” an interactive game show, had the most comments out of all the shows on the platform; and the show with the most viewed episode was Mike Rowe’s “Returning the Favor.”
Also Read: IGTV Has Suffered Growing Pains Since Launch, Video Industry Insiders Say
Since Facebook Watch’s launch in August 2017, the social media giant has invested an estimated $1 billion into the platform. However, despite this investment, the platform has faced issues with discoverability and struggles to attract consumers. Half of adult Facebook users (despite actively using the social platform) have never even heard of the free Watch video service, according to a study released by The Diffusion Media Group in August. Watch has also struggled with discoverability issues, which has frustrated many video publishers investing resources into the video service.
In June, the platform showed a renewed focus on news content, investing an unspecified amount of money into shows from ABC, CNN, Fox News, Univision, ATTN:, and Mic, which recently laid off a majority of its staff in November.
Read original story Facebook Watch Renews ‘Sorry for Your Loss,’ ‘Sacred Lies’ for Second Seasons At TheWrap
