One Chicago consolidating online presence, but is it the right move?

NBC is reducing One Chicago’s footprint on YouTube and streaming.

You’ve probably noticed drastic changes in the One Chicago fandom over the past two months. First, Peacock was announced as the streaming home of the franchise (though that turned out to be with some caveats).

Then NBC shut down the individual Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med YouTube channels in favor of a combined One Chicago channel.

And last week, they did the same thing with the shows’ Twitter accounts—making what had been a pretty big social media footprint two-thirds smaller than it used to be.

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From a network standpoint, this makes sense; NBC has particularly leaned into the whole “one universe” ethos for the last two years, so they’re putting all of the Chicago-related online content in one place, too.

But while a combined universe is great for promos and crossover episodes, it might not be as effective when it comes to social media and fan engagement.

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When viewers search for show-related content, they’re more likely to search for Chicago Med, Chicago Fire or Chicago PD than they are for One Chicago—because people remember the names of TV shows easier than names of franchises.

And even for fans, it’s pretty broad to assume that every fan watches all three shows. There are many that do, but there are others that don’t, and they won’t want to see Twitter or YouTube content from the series they don’t care about.

Plus, piling three times the tweets and videos onto one account automatically makes it harder to find the stuff that you do care about—or the big surprises. Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and search the YouTube channel, you now have to scroll through three times as many videos. Unless a major announcement is pinned, you’ll be reading through three times as many tweets, too.

The phrase “too much of a good thing” comes to mind.

The one place where it makes perfect sense to consolidate One Chicago is streaming—but that’s the area where NBC hasn’t pulled everything together yet.

When Dick Wolf signed his major new contract with NBCUniversal, the entire back catalogue of all three shows was supposed to go to Peacock. But when the service launched in July it only had the latest seasons, and only Chicago PD was free.

It hasn’t been announced if the previous seasons are going to be added to the platform later on, or if they’re also going to end up behind a subscription paywall. But fans have been clamoring for one convenient location to watch old episodes, and it would be a great resource, since only PD has any kind of on-TV syndication right now.

That’s where the franchise has the most room to grow, not necessarily social media or YouTube. Will NBC’s combined strategy pay off when the new season comes, or will content (and fans) feel lost in the shuffle? We’ll have to see this fall.

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