{"id":601599,"date":"2026-08-31T13:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T13:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/601599\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T13:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T13:30:08","slug":"rise-of-chicken-shop-date-highlights-how-youtube-turned-the-tables-on-tv-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/601599\/","title":{"rendered":"Rise of Chicken Shop Date highlights how YouTube turned the tables on TV | YouTube"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a decade ago, Amelia Dimoldenberg<\/a> found it impossible to drum up any mainstream celebrities to come on her mock date YouTube show, in which she chats awkwardly with guests over chicken and chips.<\/p>\n

Even persuading a local actor connected with her London youth club to come on took years of prodding. Managers of A-listers with movies or albums to push instead battled to claim a spot on the hallowed cushions of the primetime TV chatshow sofa.<\/p>\n

Yet after those early years of rejection, Dimoldenberg has said that she has reached a watershed moment. Such is the influence of her Chicken Shop Date show, she says it now ranks alongside Graham Norton\u2019s chatshow or BBC Radio 1 for celebrities seeking media cut-through.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started the show in 2014, no publicist and no manager would let their talent come on a YouTube<\/a> show \u2013 that was just insane,\u201d she told the Edinburgh TV festival. \u201cI would be banging down the doors, it was just so challenging. Now it\u2019s so fascinating because it\u2019s the opposite.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your publicist is coming to you and you\u2019ve got a movie out, or you\u2019ve got an album rollout campaign, now I do think one of the first things up there on the list of things to do would be to come on Chicken Shop Date.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat has always been the ambition \u2013 my ambition \u2013 to make it as important as going on Graham Norton or going on Greg James, Radio 1, for example. So I\u2019ve achieved that goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dimoldenberg\u2019s rise is a prime example of how digital platforms have radically reshaped the media world, with viewers across all ages switching to YouTube, especially under-35s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dimoldenberg has shared the ketchup with Ed Sheeran, Charli xcx and Jennifer Lawrence, although Lawrence got Dimoldenberg\u2019s name wrong. Even Paul McCartney turned up for a date in a vegan chicken shop this year, declining Dimoldenberg\u2019s suggestion that he adopt a pet otter.<\/p>\n

Dimoldenberg initially focused on interviewing figures from the UK rap and grime scene when she launched Chicken Shop Date in 2014. She secured her first big name, the actor Daniel Kaluuya, because he was a fan of the show.<\/p>\n

Her interviews have repeatedly gone viral since then, thanks to Louis Theroux rapping<\/a> or the chemistry between Dimoldenberg and the actor Andrew Garfield. \u201cI didn\u2019t realise fully how much the audience would catch on to how obsessed he is with me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Amelia Dimoldenberg flirting with Andrew Garfield at the British GQ awards in 2022. Photograph: British GQ<\/p>\n

She is increasingly picky over guests and rejects anyone who wants to be on the show only as part of a \u201cpress run\u201d publicising their latest project.<\/p>\n

It marks a shift in the media hierarchy and underlines YouTube\u2019s muscle. The platform\u2019s rise has become so all-consuming in the TV world that Pedro Pina, YouTube\u2019s head for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was invited to give the keynote MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival last week, the industry\u2019s most important get-together of the year.<\/p>\n

Pina used the speech to insist YouTube was \u201cnot the villain\u201d about to destroy the TV industry, though he made clear the age of monopoly for TV networks was over.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, the temptation of having total creative control \u2013 as well as scooping up the ads, sponsors and brand deals that can follow \u2013 is now enticing more established media names to try their luck on YouTube.<\/p>\n

The presenter Holly Willoughby<\/a> launched her YouTube channel over the summer, amassing 22,000 subscribers so far. Amol Rajan will finish as a presenter of BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme this week and launch a YouTube show, The Amol Rajan Connection. The road from TV personality to YouTuber is already well established in the US.<\/p>\n

Yet in a media world that continues to converge, Dimoldenberg is moving in the other direction, seeking success in conventional movies and television. She is writing a teen drama for the BBC, similar to the show Skins<\/a>, which ran for seven series on E4.<\/p>\n

She is also writing a Hollywood romcom, in which she will star as a journalist who finds romance with a celebrity after interviewing them. Other than the chicken, it is a plot that sounds close to home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a character that I\u2019ve been playing half my life, so I feel like I know it very well,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely just an exaggeration of who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just a decade ago, Amelia Dimoldenberg found it impossible to drum up any mainstream celebrities to come on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-601599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}