''What's Trending'' is an American live television show that streamed on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

. It stars

Shira Lazar Shira Lazar (born May 6, 1983) is a Canadian television personality, actress, writer, and video blogger who currently resides and works in Los Angeles. Lazar's writing has been featured on Hollywood.com, CBSNEWS.com, MSN.com, and others, and s ...

as host, who has anchored the show since its inception. What's Trending features segments on pop culture, music, and movies, including trending videos and personalities on the internet.

History

The show debuted on May 15, 2011 and originally streamed live once a week. On August 20, 2012, the show rebranded itself and expanded to stream five days a week covering the most popular videos on

Format

The show consists of a daily Trending Now top 5 video countdown that showcases the biggest viral videos of the day on

. Throughout the week, different segments feature musical performances, packages featuring curated lists of videos on YouTube, and interviews with high-profile celebrities and YouTube talent. Guests have included

will.i.am William James Adams Jr. (born March 15, 1975), known professionally as will.i.am (pronounced "Will-I-am"), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is the founding and lead member of the musical group Black Eyed Peas. ...

Larry King Larry King (born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger; November 19, 1933 – January 23, 2021) was an American television and radio host, whose awards included 2 Peabodys The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program ...

Mark Cuban Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...

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Kevin Smith Kevin Patrick Smith (born August 2, 1970) is an American filmmaker, actor, comedian, comic book writer, author, YouTuber, and podcaster. He came to prominence with the low-budget comedy buddy film ''Clerks'' (1994), which he wrote, directed, co ...

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iJustine Justine Ezarik ( ; born March 20, 1984) is an American YouTuber. She is best known as iJustine, with over one billion views on her YouTube channel. She gained attention as a lifecaster who communicated directly with her millions of viewers on ...

, Spoken Reasons,

Cimorelli Cimorelli is an American singing group from El Dorado Hills, California consisting of 5 sisters: Christina, Katherine, Lisa, Amy, and Lauren. They first gained popularity on YouTube singing Cover version, cover music and were subsequently signed ...

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, Jon Landeau,

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and

Greg Grunberg Gregory Phillip Grunberg (born July 11, 1966) is an American film and television actor best known for starring as Eric Weiss in the ABC series ''Alias'', Matt Parkman in the NBC series ''Heroes'', Temmin "Snap" Wexley in '' Star Wars: The Forc ...

. ''What's Trending'' has worked in conjunction with

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

's O Music Awards as well as the American non-profit organization

The Trevor Project The Trevor Project is an American nonprofit organization founded in 1998. Focused on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, they offer a toll-free telephone number wher ...

to stream their yearly event. Actor

Daniel Radcliffe Daniel Jacob Radcliffe (born 23 July 1989) is an English actor. He rose to fame at age twelve, when he began portraying Harry Potter in the film series of the same name; and has held various other film and theatre roles. Over his career, Rad ...

participated in a live chat on the show discussing The Trevor Project. ''What's Trending'' has conducted interviews with

Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, film producer, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. ''Time'' ...

, while promoting his autobiography, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, and was one of the first news outlets to interview

after the successful launch of the

Curiosity rover ''Curiosity'' is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Gale crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. ''Curiosity'' was launched from Cape Canaveral (CCAFS) on November 26, 2011, at 15:02:00 UTC and lan ...

. In December 2012, ''What's Trending'' participated in the first "Tube-A-Tweet-A-Thon". People would go to

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and tweet using the hashtag #Tubeathon and $1 would be donated to

Covenant House Covenant House is a large, Catholic, privately funded agency in the Americas, whose primary purpose is to promote Catholicism. It provides shelter, food, immediate crisis care, and other services to homeless and runaway young people. Covenant H ...

to try and raise $50,000 to serve homeless youth. On June 17, 2013, Bedrocket Media Ventures made a seven figure investment in the series. In June 2017,

Sinclair Broadcasting Group Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland ...

announced a partnership with Lazar and What's Trending to create a new show, "Circa Pop Live with Shira Lazar" that will appear on

Circa News ''Circa News'', also known as ''Circa'', was an American online newspaper and entertainment service. The site was founded in 2012 by Matt Galligan, Ben Huh and Arsenio Santos. The service had news stories and features consisting of individual bits ...

' website and Facebook page. In August of that same year

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

announced a partnership that would have a new segment, "What's Watchable," produced by Lazar, to be shown in between episodes of Comcast's streaming service, Watchable. In December 2018, What's Trending announced a partnership with Gas Station TV, where viewers can see reports nationwide across their 18,000 locations.

The Lupe Fiasco fiasco

On June 7, rapper/producer

Lupe Fiasco Wasalu Muhammad Jaco (born February 16, 1982), better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco ( ), is an American rapper, singer, record producer, and entrepreneur. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his debut album, ''Lupe Fiasco's ...

was interviewed during the program and said, "My fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America." On June 20, Lupe Fiasco appeared on the

Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...

show ''

The O'Reilly Factor ''The O'Reilly Factor'' (originally titled ''The O'Reilly Report'' and also known as ''The Factor'') is an American cable television news and talk show. ''The O'Reilly Factor'' first aired in the United States on Fox News Channel on October 7 ...

'' defending his comments.

Departure from CBS News

On September 10, 2011

CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 H ...

ended its relationship with Lazar and the show after a tweet was posted by a junior staffer claiming Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had died. A formal apology was issued live at the beginning of the September 13 show, Now the show carries on independently through partnerships with

Ustream IBM Watson Media (formerly Ustream and IBM Cloud Video) is an American virtual events platform company which is a division of IBM. Prior to IBM acquisition, it had more than 180 employees across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Budapest offices. ...

and

Livestream Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...

. Marc Hustvedt of

Tubefilter Tubefilter, Inc. is a privately held company based in Los Angeles, California that operates media businesses focusing on the online entertainment industry. Tubefilter is best known for Tubefilter News, a blog targeted at the fans, creators, pro ...

wrote, "The show itself is still groundbreaking, and arguably the most polished half-hour live show on the internet right now. It brings intelligent people together to talk about top news stories in an informative way." In 2014, HLN announced a development deal with What's Trending. Also in 2014,

Marriott Marriott may refer to: People *Marriott (surname) Corporations * Marriott Corporation, founded as Hot Shoppes, Inc. in 1927; split into Marriott International and Host Marriott Corporation in 1993 * Marriott International, international hotel ...

announces What's Trending as part of their development studio slate. As part of that partnership, Marriott celebrated its Millionth Mobile check-in with Lazar and Jeana Smith, founder of Prank vs Prank. Marriott would later announce a new series, in partnership with What's Trending, titled Experiences. What's Trending partnered with

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

to provide live coverage from the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

in January 2015, as well as

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...

in March. Also in 2015, What's Trending announced a new COO in James Haffner, who most recently acted as an executive producer for DeFranco Creative.

Reception

Critical reception

Steve Rosenbaum of

Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

wrote, "It's clear that CBS is committed to this story -- jumping past the cheesy bluescreen or robo-set and building Lazar and her team a truly 'webified' set that is both high tech and modern. When the network springs for a set, you know they're in it for the long run." Mike Hale of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote, "What's really new about "What's Trending," and most of interest to Watchlist, is simply the fact that it's a live, scheduled half-hour Web show being done on the site of a major broadcast television network (and with a major corporate sponsor AT&T). That's revolutionary, whether the subject is social networking or retirement planning." Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web wrote, "It will all be run through the living experiment of multi-platform viewer engagement that What's Trending is using and building at the same time. It's an effort that could help illuminate some developments in the future of entertainment on the web and it's ambitious enough to be downright inspirational."

Awards and nominations

In July 2012, ''What's Trending'' received nominations for the

Primetime Emmy The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the Primetime E ...

Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Original Interactive Programming. The show also received two 2012 Webby Award Nominations for Best Host and Best Variety Show. On January 12, the

IAWTV The International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV) was founded in 2008 and is devoted to the advancement of the arts and sciences of streaming television and web series production. Since 2011, the academy has hosted an annual awards ceremony cal ...

held their award show in Las Vegas, in conjunction with the

. There, What's Trending received four awards: Best Directing (Non-Fiction) - Brett Register, Best Host (Live) - Shira Lazar, Best Interactive/Social Media Experience and Best Hosted Live Web Series. In February 2013, ''What's Trending'' won a

Streamy Award The YouTube Streamy Awards, also known as the Streamy Awards or Streamys, are presented annually by Dick Clark Productions and Tubefilter to recognize excellence in online video, including directing, acting, producing, and writing. The forma ...

for Best Live Series. In 2015, the International Academy of Web Television announced Lazar as a nominee for Best Live Host.2015 IAWTV Award Nominees
, Retrieved 2015

References

{{Streamy Awards Winners CSS Discontinued American non-fiction web series Television series about social media Fullscreen (company) channels Streamy Award-winning channels, series or shows