Julian Shapiro-Barnum launches online-only late-night show

Julian Shapiro-Barnum launched Outside Tonight on YouTube as a weekly late-night series filmed outdoors across New York City, with interviews, games, live music and comedy built into the format. The show premiered June 17 as YouTube’s first direct attempt to build a late-night franchise of its own.

At the launch event at the Cherry Lane Theatre, the city’s oldest off-Broadway theater, Shapiro-Barnum said, “Not a kid in sight, in fact they should all be asleep by the time this airs.” The premiere featured a black carpet, a park bench standing in for the usual red-carpet backdrop, and a conversation with Gianmarco Soresi after the screening.

YouTube is also selling the show as an ad product. At Brandcast 2026, marketers could buy sponsorships and ad inventory for individual creator shows, while Custom Sponsorships and a Custom Content Shelf linked brands more tightly to creator programming. In a YouTube for Business segment, Shapiro-Barnum said brands would be an integral part of the storytelling.

Instead of a studio and a fixed schedule, Outside Tonight was set in public parks, plazas and street corners. YouTube reached more than 244 million people 18 and older in the United States in November 2025 and had been Nielsen’s No. 1 streaming service in watch time for three straight years, according to Nielsen.