Philip James DeFranco (born Philip James Franchini Jr.; born December 1, 1985), commonly known by his online nickname PhillyD, is an American news commentator 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 6.3 million subscribers and 1.27 billion views, as of October 2021. 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.
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 influences as Ze Frank, Dane Cook, and the Vlogbrothers. Early on, he began calling his news-centered videos The Philip DeFranco Show. 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.
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.
