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Sammi Cohen has hundreds of thousands of followers who tune in to her podcast focused on the intersection of business, tech and culture — and she thinks they’re hungry for a live dose of her brand of news and analysis.
Next month, Cohen is launching Social Commerce Network (SCN), a digital-first business news network livestreamed across YouTube, X, TikTok and Instagram. SCN will broadcast three times per week (on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pacific. The show will feature a mix of news and interviews with CEOs and other business folks spanning consumer businesses, tech and fintech, retail, CPG, beauty and the creator economy.
Cohen will be joined as a co-host on SCN by Alaina Hartley, who is an ex-principal at VC firm Greycroft and a former Bain & Co. consultant who now heads her own consumer-brands consultancy, Santa Monica-based Dream Hunter.
SCN will officially launch on Oct. 6. The show will be shot in a new studio in Los Angeles’ Sawtelle neighborhood.
“Think CNBC for the generation that gets their news on their phone,” Cohen told Variety. “It’s a news show for the generation that is getting their news on social media.”
Cohen has built an audience of over 500,000 followers across digital platforms, including 250,000 on Instagram and 107,000 on YouTube. She produces short-form video and hosts the weekly podcast “Social Currency,” in which she conducts interviews with CEOs. Cohen said she’s going to continue producing the weekly podcast as well along with the thrice-weekly SCN shows. “It’s gonna be a lot!” she said.
For each of SCN’s broadcasts, the plan is for the first half of the show to cover the latest breaking news, with the second half comprising short-form interviews with CEOs and decisionmakers, “the people in the conversations we’re talking about,” Cohen said.
Another touchstone for Cohen is TBPN, the Technology Business Programming Network, which streams a daily talk show focused on Silicon Valley and Wall Street. TBPN was acquired this spring by OpenAI, whose execs see the show as promoting a “constructive” dialog with leaders about the future of AI.
“I think what TBPN has done was brilliant,” Cohen said. “They knew exactly what their target audience was and created a media platform to serve this audience.”
But Cohen expects the viewers of SCN to be more female skewing, according to Cohen: She said her followers are roughly 70% women.
“We are going to be talking about the companies driving massive shifts across the landscape of consumer businesses, and interviewing the leaders of those companies,” said Cohen, with an eye on women-led enterprises.
To fund the launch of SCN, Cohen has lined up several sponsors — across tech, fintech, hospitality, creator media and marketing — but she declined to name them. “We are looking to build this show alongside our sponsors who have come on board for the first year,” said Cohen. “They are truly partners in building the show with us.”
In the first two months, Cohen is going to be “hyper-focused on what our audience looks like,” and what kind of coverage they want to see going forward.
Why is she launching SCN now? “It is such an exciting time in the media landscape right now. My take on the industry is, as all forms of communication become automated, people are yearning for a human touch in media, and there’s nothing more human than live,” she said, adding that SCN producers will incorporate live feedback and questions from viewers for the show’s hosts. In addition, said Cohen, “we are seeing this incredible opportunity for creators like me to make their own media businesses.”
