Coming soon to a small screen near you: Facebook TV

Facebook is starting production on high-quality television series and gaming shows to be broadcast on its platform.

The online platform is working on the project with a small group of partners and hopes to start putting out episodes of its forthcoming series by the end of the summer, says Nick Grudin, the vice-president for media partnerships.

“Our goal is to make Facebook a place where people can come together around video,” Grudin said. Facebook and its collaborators would “experiment with the kinds of shows you can build a community around – from sports to comedy to reality to gaming”, he said.

He says Facebook is funding the shows on its own at first, “but over time we want to help lots of creators make videos funded through revenue-sharing products like Ad Break”, a software tool that allows adverts to be directly inserted into Facebook’s online content.