Philip DeFranco

Philip James DeFranco (born Philip James Franchini Jr.; born December 1, 1985), commonly known by his online nickname PhillyD, and formerly known as sxephil, is an American media host and YouTube personality.

He is best known for The Philip DeFranco Show, a news commentary show centered on current events in politics and pop culture.

DeFranco has also been involved in the creation of other successful channels on YouTube, including personal vlog channel Philly D, the YouTube Original news channel SourceFed and its nerd culture spinoff SourceFed Nerd, gaming channel Super Panic Frenzy, and family vlogging channel TheDeFrancoFam.

His primary channel has accumulated over 6.5 million subscribers and 1.5 billion views, as of January 2024.

Over his decade-long YouTube career, he has been cited as a pioneer of YouTube and news coverage online, and has won various awards for his online content.

DeFranco was born Philip James Franchini Jr. in The Bronx, New York City, New York.

He is of Italian descent.

He has a stepmother who works at a car dealership.

He was a student at the University of South Florida, a biology student at Asheville–Buncombe Technical Community College, and later a junior at East Carolina University.

On September 15, 2006, DeFranco created his YouTube account during his finals at East Carolina University, originally registered as "sxephil", in which he talks about "newsie type stuff, and things that matter to [him] today."

DeFranco has cited his early influences as Ze Frank, Dane Cook, and the Vlogbrothers.

Early on, he began calling his news-centered videos The Philip DeFranco Show.

In 2007, Phil lived in Tampa, Florida, and later Atlanta, Georgia.

Once in Florida, he used his USF student loan to purchase a computer and camera.

He worked as a waiter in a number of restaurants while making videos in 2007.

DeFranco lived in a car until moving back with his father in Tampa, Florida, on condition that he would return to college, which he ultimately did not do.

DeFranco was raised Catholic but later identified as atheist.

An online viewer census from 2007 showed that one-third of his viewers were 16- and 17-year-old girls.

In the same year, DeFranco opened his second YouTube channel, "PhilipDeFranco", which includes a series of vlogs which he calls "The Vloggity".

He streamed on BlogTV twice a week and took a cut of the revenue which was up to $12 CPMs.

In August 2007, DeFranco conducted an experiment by uploading a video titled "Big Boobs and You".

The video's thumbnail image was what the title described, except that the image only flashed for a split second.

The rest of the video's content was DeFranco talking.

It quickly became his most successful video at the time, with 1.8 million views.

From then on he changed his content to sex, gossip, and news.

DeFranco's large online audience also enabled him to win Wired's Sexiest Geek of 2008 competition, a reader-voted contest.

In October 2008, DeFranco co-starred with Jessica Rose and Kevin Wu in Hooking Up, written and directed by Woody Tondorf as a promo for HBOLabs (the online arm of HBO).

Hooking Up is a scripted 10-episode web series set at a fictional university where the students spend most of their time emailing and using Facebook, but still manage to miscommunicate.

Guest appearances on Hooking Up were made by Kevin Nalty, Michael Buckley, and other popular Internet celebrities.

By the show's second day on YouTube, it had received more than 450,000 views.

Bobbie Johnson of The Guardian said that many Web surfers have "scoffed at what they see as a cynical attempt to cash in."

In 2008, he stated in an interview that his listed salary of $250,000 from a number of sources on the Internet, including and beyond YouTube, was initially a joke, but would become accurate.

He has been paid by companies to create videos to promote Carl's Jr.'s burgers, and the US television series Lie to Me and Fringe.

DeFranco was a founding member of The Station, but left only a few months after it was created.

In 2012, YouTube redesigned their website, as videos with cleavage thumbnails attracted many clicks but were abandoned instead of being watched.

DeFranco used his large audience to win the Spore Creature Creator, a game promotion competition, and in doing so beat celebrities such as Stan Lee, Katy Perry, and Elijah Wood.

The winner's prize was to choose which charity would receive a donation of $15,000.

He chose the PKD Foundation, an organization dedicated to fighting polycystic kidney disease (PKD), which he attributed to his family's history with the condition.

All of his sxephil videos from before March 13, 2017, have been privated or deleted from the channel.

Before the YouTube partner program was available, he asked for donations from his viewers after claiming to have run out of money, and selling everything except his Mac, camera, and clothes, and overdrawing his bank account so he could spend a night in a hotel as he found it too scary sleeping in a car in Brooklyn.