IGTV deal comes seven months after Obamas’ production house announced it would work with Spotify on podcasts

Barack and Michelle Obama’s fast-growing media empire has received another boost, after the former first lady signed a deal to launch a documentary video series on Instagram’s video platform.

The IGTV deal to produce a series focused on the experiences of four first-year college students comes seven months after the Obamas’ production house, Higher Ground, announced it would begin working with Spotify to develop, produce and “lend their voices” to podcasts “connecting them to listeners around the world on wide-ranging topics”.

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In May 2018, the former president announced a multi-year production deal with Netflix set to produce “scripted series, unscripted series, docuseries, documentaries and features” highlighting themes he pursued during two terms in office.

“We hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the entire world,” Barack Obama said at the time.

The presidential couple have said they do not intend for their media interests to counter conservative voices in the media and their choice of subject so far focuses on race, class, democracy and civil rights.

To date, the Obama/Netflix lineup includes: American Factory, a documentary about a Chinese-owned factory in Ohio; Bloom, a racial barrier drama set in the world of fashion in post-second world war New York City; Overlooked, a series about remarkable people whose deaths did not make a New York Times obituary; Listen to Your Vegetables and Eat Your Parents; a global food adventure; Fifth Risk, based on the Michael Lewis book about everyday heroes; and Crip Camp, a documentary project about a summer camp for disabled teenagers in the early 70s.

The initial six-part Instagram series, A Year of Firsts, created by an outside production house, Attn, follows four students of colour as they tackle social, scholastic and economic stress of college fits within the Obamas’ Reach Higher initiative for the US to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

“No other president until the Obamas could have out together a portfolio like this because those things didn’t exist for other presidents,” said Robert Thompson, professor at the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

The only precedent of a media pioneer emerging from a White House, Thompson said, is Bill Clinton’s vice-president, Al Gore, who produced the climate crisis documentary An Inconvenient Truth and later set up a cable channel, Current TV, which was sold to Al Jazeera in 2013 for $500m.

“The real precedent the Obamas need to look at are not previous political figures but the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, who turned their identities into brands with a capital ‘B’, who used their TV shows as a base of control to send sorties out into magazines, publishing and product lines.

“The Obamas’ deals are entirely brand-consistent, and the sky is limit to how far and how wide their potential is,” Thompson said. “I could see the Obamas’ borrowing a few tricks from both the Oprah, Jay-Z and [Gwyneth] Paltrow empires.”