Agnes Chu Tries to Bring Some Disney to Condé Nast. It’ll Be a Challenge.

A year ago, executives at Condé Nast turned some heads when they hired Agnes Chu, a rising star who helped launch the Disney+ streaming service, to bring some entertainment mojo to magazine brands including The New Yorker, Vogue and Vanity Fair.

The idea was to develop more films and long-form shows and documentaries that the company could sell to Netflix and other streaming services, potentially offsetting steep declines in print advertising. While viewership of shorter videos like Vogue’s “73 Questions” and Wired’s “Autocomplete Interview,” were booming on platforms like YouTube and Snap, Condé Nast wanted to build up its video revenues faster by diversifying beyond ad-sharing deals with those platforms. It also wanted to produce more international content.