The Philip DeFranco Show, often abbreviated and referred to as the PDS, is a pop culture and news series created by American YouTube personality, Philip DeFranco, and his main claim to fame. The show has gone through several schedule changes through its lifetime, but as of 2023, airs weekly, Monday through Thursday. The first video with The Philip DeFranco Show included in its intro was uploaded on June 21, 2007. As DeFranco became increasingly popular, he signed with Revision3, which would eventually acquire all of DeFranco's assets, including the PDS. The Philip DeFranco Show has been sponsored by Netflix, Ting, and State Farm. The show has been nominated for and has won several awards that focus on internet culture and web series. In 2017, DeFranco purchased his assets back from Group Nine (the company that replaced Discovery Digital Networks) and the Philip DeFranco Show is now a part of the Philip DeFranco Network and produced by Rogue Rocket, DeFranco's production company.
Format
The show is recorded by DeFranco in his production office in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. The PDS is then edited by James Girardier so that the episode is presented in a fast paced vlog format, complemented with use of frequent jump cuts throughout. The topics discussed in the show vary, but usually cover pop culture and news. Episodes usually have a 10-minute duration in which Defranco lists both arguments of a story and then states his opinion. During the show's early existence, in 2007, DeFranco stated that he usually searches websites such as Technorati to find topics to discuss. Episodes of the series include recurring segments, such as the "Douchebag of the Day" segment and "Today in Awesome."
Some of the older episodes have been noted to include racy thumbnails, such as Big Boobs and You. As of June 2013, the video now holds a thumbnail of DeFranco speaking. The video was chosen as one of DeFranco's top five YouTube moments by New Media Rockstars. DeFranco commented on racy thumbnails in a Los Angeles Times article.
Eventually, DeFranco's format included a consistent opening line of "Sup, you beautiful bastards", or "What's going on, you beautiful bastards," noted as intentionally casual. For some time, the show's background set design featured a bright, distinctive blue DeFranco jokingly called "Phil Blue." Forbes contributor Fruzsina Eordogh commented "It was a very unique cobalt. The geeky toys on the shelves and various art [...] adorning the walls behind him let the viewer know what fandom he belonged to (like Star Wars, for example)." DeFranco introduced a new set in 2018. The Verge described DeFranco's show as "styled after anchored news shows," and added that he sits on a couch in the style of late-night shows.
History
DeFranco created his sxephil channel on September 15, 2006. DeFranco would begin to upload vlogs, before uploading the first PDS on June 21, 2007. Despite this, the show's debut date is disputed, and has been cited as being in 2006.
Early episodes of The Philip DeFranco Show were short and black and white for either most of or the entire duration of an episode. This was because DeFranco was limited to a $20 black and white camera.
In 2008, an episode of the PDS used footage of the 2008 Toronto propane explosion captured by then 24-year-old Saejin Oh without permission, a violation of YouTube's community guidelines. "I’m disgusted by it," said Oh in an email exchange. "Personally, I’m not worried they stole my video or made profit out of it. I’m rather more disgusted by the fact that they used a video of real-life event that caused death of two people to pay tribute to ... a movie." DeFranco declined a request from Wired for an interview on the subject. Saejin Oh submitted a YouTube copyright strike with YouTube, and the entire PDS video (not just the short segment featuring Oh's content) was eventually taken down. The video received over 351,094 views and had monetization enabled, giving DeFranco potentially hundreds of dollars from Google AdSense (if earning the average CPM).
During December 2008, one of his videos was removed from the front page, although, as a YouTube partner, his account was not suspended.
