Taking a Deep Look at Nature Yields a Golden Year

Deep Look, KQED’s award-winning wildlife series, had a momentous year. In its ninth season, the series continued to grow and engage audiences by giving viewers a closeup view of the natural world they rarely get to experience. Along the way, the series has inspired a love of nature for many fans and has made Deep Look KQED’s most successful digital video production.

The digital-only series hit 2 million subscribers on its YouTube channel and had close to 60 million views. It also expanded to the social video platform TikTok, earning more than 20 million views in its first seven months. Both YouTube and TikTok engage millennial and Gen Z fans, which are priority audiences for KQED.

Besides being a hit with younger fans, Deep Look also won some prestigious awards.

Its 150th episode, “Barnacles Go to Unbelievable Lengths to Hook Up,” won a Jackson Wild Media Award in the Micro Movie category. This international, juried award is equivalent to an Oscar for nature films. The video was produced and filmed by Josh Cassidy, Deep Look’s lead producer and cinematographer.

To close out the year, Deep Look brought home a 2022 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award in the “Video Spot News/Feature Reporting” category. The awards, administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), are given out by independent panels of science journalists and recognize distinguished science reporting from around the world. Deep Look ’s full video collection is at kqed.org/deeplook and at youtube.com/ kqeddeeplook.

Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the members of KQED.