Bob Ross

Twitch fans watch 545.9M minutes of famous painter Bob Ross making art

Gameplay livestreaming site Twitch took a risk nine days ago when it announced Twitch Creative, a new platform that enables musicians and artists to livestream their works in progress. They celebrated the launch with a live broadcast of all 403 episodes of the TV series The Joy of Painting, hosted by artist Bob Ross, a series aired originally on PBS.

Twitch draws more than 100 million people a month to view live broadcasts of video games. But the social video platform has experimented beyond that core audience as part of an expansion plan that takes its technology to new kinds of creators.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.