An inside look at Oxygen’s partnership with reddit for ‘The Jury Speaks’

Oxygen recently completed an impressive four-part miniseries called “The Jury Speaks.” The show, which aired at the end of July dug into some of the biggest trials that have been captivating the binge-watching world over the last few years. The show, “reexamines some of the most high-profile and infamous cases in history through the eyes of the people who served on the original jury.” The episodes included O.J. Simpson and Robert Durst whose cases were recently brought back to the public’s interest via massively popular documentaries on ESPN and HBO.

Additionally Oxygen partnered with reddit to bring for a live AMA with Christopher Darden, the former prosecutor of The People v. OJ Simpson trial. Found Remote interviewed Adam Zeller, the VP of Social Media for Bravo and Oxygen Media about the partnership.

Found Remote: Why is Oxygen doing this?
Adam Zeller: Our mission at Oxygen is to be THE destination for true crime content an all platforms from on-air, to online, on demand, and on social. True crime fans are not satisfied with simply a lean back experience and want to engage, ask questions, and investigate every aspect of the cases they’re interested in. We are simply giving them the opportunity to do so.

FR: Why was reddit the right place?
AZ: The community of Redditors are some of the most passionate people in the social landscape. The AMA (Ask Me Anything) subreddit is the perfect place to host a forum where Americans can finally ask both Juror’s and lawyers from some of the most monumental cases in history, what it was like being a participant. Reddit and the trials in “The Jury Speaks” have one thing in common—both have had a lasting cultural impact so it was a no-brainer to activate the platform for this program.

FR: Since OJ’s bail hearing has interest surged?
AZ: Metrics from our AMA definitely show a surge of interest in the case. The relevance of the case to today’s audience is undeniable keeping in mind that the conversation on Reddit generated hundreds of thousands of page views, tens of thousands of votes and thousands of comments.

FR: How did the partnership come about?
AZ: We’ve been interested in working with Reddit again for a long time now, and had wonderful success with them in the past. The team at Reddit was very encouraging about the level of interest in true crime content on the platform, and considering that the engagement on our AMAs has far exceeded our expectations, they were clearly right!