Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties, weekly podcast featuring conversations with
Speaker 1: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 1: Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety Today. My
Speaker 1: guest is Sean Atkins, president of Jellysmack. Jellysmack is a
Speaker 1: prime example of a company that is active in an
Speaker 1: emerging business sector that I have been watching with great interest.
Speaker 1: The creator economy, the wild West of social media personalities,
Speaker 1: is really starting to take shape as a content marketplace
Speaker 1: unto itself. With market structure comes support and administrative services
Speaker 1: like those offered by Jellysmack. I'll let Atkins explain in
Speaker 1: detail what Jellysmack offers its creator clients. It's a mix
Speaker 1: of talent scouting, marketing and content distribution services. Atkins brings
Speaker 1: good perspective on how the creator economy is maturing thanks
Speaker 1: to his long resume as a digital leader in traditional media.
Speaker 1: Before joining Jellysmack in twenty twenty one, he worked as
Speaker 1: Chief Digital Officer for Discovery Communications and served a hitch
Speaker 1: as president of MTV. He was also CEO of RTL's
Speaker 1: Digital Video Group and senior vice president of New Media
Speaker 1: Programming for HBO. That's a title that signals how long
Speaker 1: ago he held that job. Atkins and I spoke at
Speaker 1: Varieties Offices in late August, just a few days after
Speaker 1: we both attended the Streamy Awards that recognize influencers and
Speaker 1: digital creators. That event proved to be a jumping off
Speaker 1: point for the conversation coming up right after this break,
Speaker 1: and we're back with a conversation about the creator economy
Speaker 1: with Sean Atkins, president of jif Smack.
Speaker 2: What did you see on stage?
Speaker 3: What did you see in the caliber of talent that
Speaker 3: was at the event that said that tells you something
Speaker 3: larger about the creator economy and where it stands right
Speaker 3: now in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think the first thing, as someone who's been
Speaker 4: in both the creator economy and the traditional side of business,
Speaker 4: is an indication of how much the industry is exploding matures.
Speaker 4: It felt like I'd gone to the Emmys or the
Speaker 4: Golden Globes or to the OSCAR that felt like a
Speaker 4: traditional award show with the red carpets and people mingling
Speaker 4: and sometimes too much alcohol given at the tables, alcohol
Speaker 4: and cosplay. What could go on to say, you know
Speaker 4: the same amount of like insider jokes that was happening there.
Speaker 4: You saw, you saw talent that would have had huge
Speaker 4: businesses for decades in the business and emerging ones. I
Speaker 4: think the thing that was a little bit differentiated is
Speaker 4: the absolute diversity of that talent base. Right. We talk
Speaker 4: about in the traditional side of business with the desire
Speaker 4: for diversity and the struggles we're having as an industry,
Speaker 4: but you look at the streamings, they don't have that
Speaker 4: problem at all. Right, Like, there was absolutely by type
Speaker 4: of creators that were there, how seasoned they were, how
Speaker 4: senior they were, they were new, they were old. You
Speaker 4: had the entire operation kind of outlined there, and it
Speaker 4: was really impressive to see now the whole industry come
Speaker 4: together and get celebrated, but sort of the indication of
Speaker 4: the level of maturity that's happening in the market.
Speaker 3: You could not you'd have to be blind not to
Speaker 3: notice that the creator economy is creating all kinds of
Speaker 3: lanes for all kinds of diverse talents.
Speaker 2: Some of the big.
Speaker 3: Winners were totally new names to me, I will completely acknowledged,
Speaker 3: but you know, groups like AMP and RDC World were
Speaker 3: very very clear that this is you know, truly grassroots
Speaker 3: content that is being wheeled up by fandom and that
Speaker 3: you could really see, you know, very writ large there,
Speaker 3: you know, like like a traditional word show.
Speaker 2: There were cheering sections.
Speaker 3: But you could sense that in the way that you know,
Speaker 3: the streams again just as a microcosm has evolved, and
Speaker 3: talent is getting up there and thanking their teams right
Speaker 3: and their manager and it's you know, we can see
Speaker 3: from our vantage point of variety covering the content business
Speaker 3: in the last call it you know, probably accelerated by
Speaker 3: the pandemic, like most everything else in our lives these days,
Speaker 3: but the emergence of social media not just as a
Speaker 3: platform for people to come out and then translate to
Speaker 3: books and TV shows, but truly making serious a significant
Speaker 3: living and a significant impact unto in social media, unto themselves.
Speaker 3: How is that emergence of that economy? How is that
Speaker 3: an opportunity for jellysmack Well.
Speaker 4: I think the thing that first people need to understand
Speaker 4: is that the scale of what's going on with talent
Speaker 4: and with the businesses they're building and the career economy
Speaker 4: is most people generally don't really understand it. Right, If
Speaker 4: you think about the headline you might see in a
Speaker 4: writing magazine like the Rock signs twenty million dollars deal
Speaker 4: to be interfeated. That's a front page news that happens
Speaker 4: like every day in the creator space with creators that
Speaker 4: people have never heard of it. You know, you talk
Speaker 4: about mister Peace, who's does very well, but there's you
Speaker 4: look at the dude perfect team that has not only
Speaker 4: a great digital business, they have a huge touring business.
Speaker 4: You can look at other ones like Charlotte Doebray representives
Speaker 4: a comedian who's not doing so on the platform. She's
Speaker 4: actually self funding her own pilots in series to develop
Speaker 4: for television. So there's this immense amount of kind of
Speaker 4: success in capital for creators who actually completely control the
Speaker 4: entire means of production and the means of distribution, which
Speaker 4: really doesn't happen in the traditional media. So that's the
Speaker 4: most fascinating thing you see. But the level below and
Speaker 4: where Jellysmack comes in is with that explosion of talent
Speaker 4: and the maturing of that business. Like any great entrepreneurial ecosystem,
Speaker 4: whether you look at restaurants being minted, or you look
Speaker 4: at real estate or anything that has a large entrepreneuri closs,
Speaker 4: there's an infrastructure layer that has to exist so those
Speaker 4: entrepreneurs can skip, because then the challenge for the creator class.
Speaker 4: And I was actually having this conversation last night with
Speaker 4: some people who are both actors and creators, and they
Speaker 4: were talking about the difference between they started in the
Speaker 4: acting side of the world and they were used to
Speaker 4: like there as a DP, as an editor and all
Speaker 4: this infrastructure, and then they became a creator and there's none.
Speaker 4: I'm setting up my ring line, They're sitting everything, And
Speaker 4: they were talking about how it's probably easier to start
Speaker 4: as a creator because you don't know that infrastructure exists,
Speaker 4: so you sort of build this DNA and you own
Speaker 4: all the means of production. But the contrary to that
Speaker 4: is creators who grow up in that ECOSYSM have a
Speaker 4: tendency to confuse the mean of production as the creative itself. Right,
Speaker 4: So if you think you have to edit and write
Speaker 4: and do everything to scale to multiple platforms, it's very complicated.
Speaker 4: Just like if you and I started a restaurant decided
Speaker 4: we were also going to build an organic farm and
Speaker 4: make silverware and build we would have a trouble scaling. Right.
Speaker 4: That's where Jellysmack comes because creators are in that moment
Speaker 4: right now where they're realizing like, oh, I got to
Speaker 4: hire editors, or I need capital to build a studio,
Speaker 4: or I want to build a merchandise line, or I
Speaker 4: want to build a touring business. They need partners who
Speaker 4: understand that scale, what that infrastructure needs to look like.
Speaker 4: As what Jilly Smack does. We use all of our
Speaker 4: AI and technology to develop services that identify these creators
Speaker 4: at an early stage and then support them so they
Speaker 4: can grow into real, viable businesses across multiple areas.
Speaker 3: And where are you seeing outside of like you know,
Speaker 3: signing a book deal, signing a TV show development pact
Speaker 3: or something. Where where are you seeing those big, those
Speaker 3: big twenty million level or you know, commensurate dollars.
Speaker 2: Where are you seeing those deals?
Speaker 4: So the detail is so it's interesting. So this is
Speaker 4: the thing I think gets a little bit confusing when
Speaker 4: we look at the creator economy from a traditional media lens, right,
Speaker 4: because we look at it from an entertainment perspective, and
Speaker 4: there is a sizeable amount of that. They're making videos,
Speaker 4: so that makes sense, But the other things you have
Speaker 4: to realize the creator economy is actually transversally impacting a
Speaker 4: lot of different communities. And so when you talk about
Speaker 4: a creator, they might be on YouTube and they get
Speaker 4: ad revenue from YouTube, or they might get brand revenues, right,
Speaker 4: so they dual stream like they have a direct relationship
Speaker 4: with brands. But then they might come from not like
Speaker 4: an entertainment vertical, like for example, we have people who
Speaker 4: are in the legal space and they make a ton
Speaker 4: of money from referrals into their law firm. Or you
Speaker 4: might have creators who for example, one creator who Blacaltes,
Speaker 4: who has such a big business that she's got a
Speaker 4: giant target retail partnership. Now, if you're looking for anything
Speaker 4: in the yoga space, but you can go through almost
Speaker 4: every vertical you can think about, and there's a creator
Speaker 4: with a very dominant position, whether it's real estate, you're
Speaker 4: looking at legal, you're looking at retail. We have creators
Speaker 4: like Patrick Starr who have big beauty lines. We have
Speaker 4: creators like, for example, Karen Nate. They are creators who
Speaker 4: do travel. Now, travel and traditional doesn't work that well anymore, right,
Speaker 4: travel channel doesn't really do travel anymore. No, we don't
Speaker 4: have people running around doing travel logs anymore. But in
Speaker 4: there for their ecosystem and their audience. Not only do
Speaker 4: they really have an audience who follows them for the
Speaker 4: information of pro but they're so well now they have
Speaker 4: an app and a business that helps people book travel
Speaker 4: at a discounted rate. There's like something you wouldn't see
Speaker 4: in a traditional meaning is where they use the power
Speaker 4: of their distribution actually build whole business credibility and credibility
Speaker 4: in those areas. And so it's really hard to find
Speaker 4: actually a vertical that doesn't have creators pretty dominant in
Speaker 4: almost any industry, Which is what the thing when people
Speaker 4: I don't think they understand the size of the impact
Speaker 4: that's happening is it's not just in the media business,
Speaker 4: literally happening to every industry at the same time.
Speaker 3: So it sounds I mean, it's clearly it's clearly star
Speaker 3: driven at the very top. You've got to have millions
Speaker 3: of followers and it's got it. You've got to have
Speaker 3: that personality. But it sounds like what you're saying is
Speaker 3: you can make a kind of a call it a
Speaker 3: middle class living, you know, a load to mid six
Speaker 3: figures with some savvy and obviously some success and some luck.
Speaker 2: But that does exist, or you can.
Speaker 4: If you look at it from a pure media business. Right,
Speaker 4: Media is media, Right, it has a power a lotl dynamic.
Speaker 4: There is ten percent five percent depending which VERTICALI like
Speaker 4: a thing as it correct has an outside control of
Speaker 4: what's going on. The difference in the creator space is
Speaker 4: that you can, to your point, you can build a
Speaker 4: middle class lifestyle. I mean just even in Jellysmack, I
Speaker 4: think it's about eighty percent of our clients have made
Speaker 4: over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and we're an
Speaker 4: ancillary business to them. We're not their core business. You
Speaker 4: think about that like that, I think something like five
Speaker 4: times the size of the media and US income, So
Speaker 4: it's not small dollars. And again as an emerging market,
Speaker 4: right with ever growing consumption, ever growing creators coming into it.
Speaker 4: The thing we know that happens as markets like the
Speaker 4: middle class just starts to scale, right. I often tell
Speaker 4: people like it's kind of like China. People used to
Speaker 4: question twenty years ago, is China ever going to get
Speaker 4: past the power al of the concentration on top? And
Speaker 4: clearly we know the answer to that. The answer is yes,
Speaker 4: is there middle class the size of the US middle class. No,
Speaker 4: but will it be yes, And the same thing will
Speaker 4: happen in the creator space over time, just because it
Speaker 4: isn't only playing in the media space, right, because if
Speaker 4: you're playing in the larger economies, know, ultimately you're talking
Speaker 4: about essentially the creator space will impact everything in the GDP.
Speaker 4: So it's hard to argue that that's not going to
Speaker 4: have a pretty tremendous mid market impact over time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's correct.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you, and just to boil it down,
Speaker 3: Jelly Smack fundamentally offers people like crucial marketing and distribution support.
Speaker 2: Would that be a fair character? Yeah? O.
Speaker 4: The way to think about it is that we are
Speaker 4: a detection engine on AURA that finds creators who are
Speaker 4: most likely to have their content either distribute to another
Speaker 4: form of monetization or another platform. We got our beginning
Speaker 4: because we're actually founded by three creators who are huge fans.
Speaker 4: I always have to clarify this from my American ads,
Speaker 4: but football European not American. And you know, back in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen when they founded a company and social video
Speaker 4: isn't what we knew it today, they had antypothesis it
Speaker 4: would become what it would be today low those many
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 2: Business moves fast.
Speaker 4: When we were both twenty the they thought to like, oh,
Speaker 4: I think this is going to be a big opportunity,
Speaker 4: but I also think that technology will be a big
Speaker 4: way to grow it. And so they built to about
Speaker 4: four billion streams in multiple verticals. So they started in football,
Speaker 4: which I always said, and so the next logical one
Speaker 4: they went into his beauty because that's what sports guys
Speaker 4: do with the video gaming entertainment. So they really figured
Speaker 4: out how to build content by identifying the type of
Speaker 4: talent most likely to resonate across these platforms. That technology
Speaker 4: is what other creators started coming to. Initially for Jelly'smack
Speaker 4: go like, Hey, I'm struggling as an entrepreneur. I have
Speaker 4: I'm completely dedicated to the algorithm and distribution of one platform.
Speaker 4: I spend every waking moment trying to speak to my
Speaker 4: audience developed this business. Can you give me time, effort
Speaker 4: and efficiency And so the big thing that Jelly Smack
Speaker 4: ultimately says when we partner with our creators, like, look,
Speaker 4: it's a big back end in terms of the tech
Speaker 4: we can bring it. At the end of the day
Speaker 4: when we give you is ability to de risk and
Speaker 4: move your content to multiple platforms and ultimately expand your
Speaker 4: business so that you can be not dependent on just
Speaker 4: one source of income.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which versification is the standard? Is the standard business
Speaker 2: across me?
Speaker 3: So let me ask you, is there there's a selectivity
Speaker 3: on your part. So there's also a talent almost a
Speaker 3: talent scouting it's correct part on the part of Jelly Smack.
Speaker 4: The way to sort of think about it is that,
Speaker 4: you know, I always like to use analogies that our
Speaker 4: own creators have used for me when they explain our
Speaker 4: own business, and like, oh, that makes sense, I'm going
Speaker 4: to use that. You know. One of them said is like, look,
Speaker 4: you're a little bit like universal music. Right at the
Speaker 4: end of the day. You sometimes find them when they're
Speaker 4: busking in a subway, right. And we have creators we
Speaker 4: found and we had like five fifty thousand subs and
Speaker 4: we turn them into multimillion revenue companies in a matter
Speaker 4: of like months. And then we have other creators like
Speaker 4: mister Beasts or who have such scale or called the
Speaker 4: Taylor Swift as is the universal music, that have such
Speaker 4: scale that they could kind of do if they wanted
Speaker 4: to the complexity of what we do for them, but
Speaker 4: they're like, I need a partner who has scale expertise,
Speaker 4: and so that's really the best way of talking about
Speaker 4: Our detection systems are kind of like an A and
Speaker 4: R group that are trying to find the talent, to
Speaker 4: identify where they're most likely to be successful, and then
Speaker 4: provide them to services to help them scale.
Speaker 3: What I'm hearing you're saying is that you do a
Speaker 3: lot of matchmaking. If you somebody that's big in the
Speaker 3: beauty space, you find the beauty people and try to
Speaker 3: try to bring that right.
Speaker 4: Now, you want to identify what the most likely thing
Speaker 4: is because is interesting is that people ask us a
Speaker 4: lot like what genre should I be in? And there's
Speaker 4: actually kind of not an answer to that because it's like, well,
Speaker 4: it depends on.
Speaker 2: What you can ask that question.
Speaker 3: You may not be built to be a social media.
Speaker 4: The thing is all artists have a spark of something
Speaker 4: they want to communicate. So I say, start there, what
Speaker 4: are you? What do you want to do? I said,
Speaker 4: Because again, the thing that's fascining about the creator space,
Speaker 4: like we have we have creators. Charlottever is a great
Speaker 4: example of thin unbelievable talented community and absolutely talented writer,
Speaker 4: absolutely incredible on camera, and but it's so successful in
Speaker 4: our creator space, she's literally funding her own sitcom, right,
Speaker 4: But you think about that from an empowerment of the
Speaker 4: creative and an attachment to the autist with that sort
Speaker 4: of changes in the dynamic. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: we also have people in our thing and actually one
Speaker 4: of the one the stream is right who do Invisible
Speaker 4: People People is a five h three C charity and
Speaker 4: just by passionately communicating about homelessness, which you would think
Speaker 4: is not something I if I went to flon I
Speaker 4: want to do a series on homelessness, they can be like, yeah, no, no,
Speaker 4: it's going to watch it. But yet this person's found
Speaker 4: a way to use the storytelling about the impact of
Speaker 4: homelessness around the nation to build a large viewership that
Speaker 4: is powering a business that's solving the problems that is covering,
Speaker 4: but you wouldn't necessarily think about it as an entertainment vehicle.
Speaker 2: Right right. That's interesting.
Speaker 3: Can I drill down a little bit in terms of
Speaker 3: Jellysmax business. Do you work on like a commission basis?
Speaker 3: Do you work on a fee basis.
Speaker 4: With yes the answer because we play in so many
Speaker 4: different lines of business and so many different verticals. So
Speaker 4: you think about it, we go from helping you identify
Speaker 4: an ID eight to all the way to distribution, marketing, promotion, infrastructure, financing,
Speaker 4: so we basically play in the whole value chain. For
Speaker 4: some of our creators, most of our products we have
Speaker 4: a shared revels new model where we take the capital
Speaker 4: risk on their behalf and then sharing the upside so
Speaker 4: that we keep our interests alive. But all the cases
Speaker 4: will take like a rev share of some sort of
Speaker 4: split that we do. It's typically, I would say the
Speaker 4: model it looks more like is probably like consumer products,
Speaker 4: where essentially we have a relationship over a period of time,
Speaker 4: where we have a licensing relationship up to some of
Speaker 4: their intellectual profit or period of time, and then we
Speaker 4: help them monetize it.
Speaker 2: How many people do you have with jelly'smack now? How
Speaker 2: many employees?
Speaker 4: We have about five hundred people in our major centers
Speaker 4: are Paris, where the founders are originally from London, New York,
Speaker 4: Las Vegas, and.
Speaker 1: La Don't even think of scrolling away. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back after this break and we're back with more from
Speaker 1: JELLY'SMAC president Sean Atkins.
Speaker 3: There's so much right now you know in the ether
Speaker 3: about the about the biggest of social media platforms.
Speaker 2: Obviously the you.
Speaker 3: Know, the site formerly known as Twitter x has been
Speaker 3: making a lot of moves. Where do you feel the Google's,
Speaker 3: the Facebook's Youtubes? Where are they right now in this
Speaker 3: moment of the creator economy? Do you feel like there's
Speaker 3: an understanding that this is really starting to become its
Speaker 3: own big thing unto itself.
Speaker 4: I don't think they're really having a sudden epivity. They've
Speaker 4: known for a long time, and you thinking about face,
Speaker 4: I guess YouTube. They've been paying out billions and billions
Speaker 4: of dollars to creators on an annual basis for over
Speaker 4: a decade. Right now, you know, Facebook is on a
Speaker 4: pace in a uh you just last announcedlash your reels
Speaker 4: as a products is a year old and Mark just
Speaker 4: said it makes ten billion dollars in revenue. That's like
Speaker 4: it's a pretty incredible ramp in one year. So it's
Speaker 4: more that they know they have a significant dependency or
Speaker 4: symbiotic relationship depending on whose side you're asking you what
Speaker 4: day in that dynamic and trying to figure out look
Speaker 4: their business. They're trying to figure out how to maximize
Speaker 4: their margins by leveraging creator content, and creators are always
Speaker 4: trying to figure out how to sort of maximize their
Speaker 4: margins against platforms who have a little bit more power
Speaker 4: than they do in the dynamic. I think that for creators,
Speaker 4: their biggest concern in the grand scheme of thing is
Speaker 4: we sort of pain we saw. I was like, how
Speaker 4: do I manage multiple platforms at one time? And then
Speaker 4: sort of what is always platform uncertainty right that they
Speaker 4: their equivalent of in the television business or feature film business,
Speaker 4: like your film doesn't work? Is a platform changes this algorithm?
Speaker 4: One day? You were making success one day and the
Speaker 4: next day you don't. Saw this happened with YouTube actually
Speaker 4: did it to its own business this year, where it's like,
Speaker 4: I'm so worried about TikTok, I want to move a
Speaker 4: significant amount of my traffic to short form. Right, So
Speaker 4: you saw very significant players who are making millions of
Speaker 4: dollars a year be like I just lost thirty percent
Speaker 4: to my bottom line. This is a period of time.
Speaker 4: This is a sequence of time. So I think more
Speaker 4: of the debt it's creators are trying to navigate platforms. Well,
Speaker 4: platforms are mostly trying to figure out two problems. One
Speaker 4: is how do we manage in a world where we
Speaker 4: have a lot of like competition from other platforms because
Speaker 4: people always assume they're like once YouTube, Facebook control things,
Speaker 4: nothing that's going to be around again. And the TikTok exploded,
Speaker 4: right seven years another platform comes are right, it comes,
Speaker 4: it comes along, so right now, I'd say the video
Speaker 4: platforms are all trying to figure out what do they
Speaker 4: do about short form, right, and they're all doing different
Speaker 4: levels of experimentation. I think that obviously TikTok TikTok is
Speaker 4: doing with its systemic issues of like, well we're going
Speaker 4: to be banned, are we're not going to be banned?
Speaker 4: Or what's happening with us?
Speaker 3: How do you see the kind of the dials going
Speaker 3: between the amount of time people are spending on social
Speaker 3: media on TikTok just purely watching on creator platform you know,
Speaker 3: creator friendly platforms.
Speaker 4: There was a day where ninety percent of ad revenue
Speaker 4: into newspapers. Yeah, yeah, because that's where attention was, right
Speaker 4: and so it is in our that attention is moving
Speaker 4: to social and to the creators, right. I think the
Speaker 4: last thing is not like if you look at the
Speaker 4: number one television network on televisions today and I'm closing
Speaker 4: like the spots is YouTube television, not YouTube television the cable.
Speaker 4: It's like YouTube the app is the number one television
Speaker 4: network in the world. Right, And you're start to get
Speaker 4: TikTok and avods and spots and fashionannels and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: So that's only going to continue. The second thing is,
Speaker 4: and this is what we have a generational shift in consumption.
Speaker 4: And that's one thing. But we're not at a one
Speaker 4: gen We're now two generations into the shift. Right, So
Speaker 4: people like me who are early adopters of digital consumption,
Speaker 4: I have four teenagers, right, they only lived in a
Speaker 4: world with totalitarian control. And if you looked at the
Speaker 4: interests of my four kids of what they watch, they
Speaker 4: have like nothing in common. Right, Like, sure, we'll sit
Speaker 4: down where you know, we have a tradition as a
Speaker 4: family we love Survivor. We sit down when it's why
Speaker 4: do we watch Survivor? But the other ninety percent of
Speaker 4: the time I picked up my phone and I showed
Speaker 4: you what my kids are watching. Right, you'd be like
Speaker 4: when kid's watching video game playthroughs, another one is watching
Speaker 4: beauty hacks, another one just watches funny memes on TikTok.
Speaker 4: That means that the that it always lags the advertiser
Speaker 4: dollars always lag, but they always end up where attention is.
Speaker 4: And so that is and is we're only debating what
Speaker 4: the timeline is. And it reminds me I suspect you
Speaker 4: recall this, remember when cable first started and they would
Speaker 4: talk about most of the attention is moving every year
Speaker 4: to cable more cable, but you see how much the
Speaker 4: monetization was, like yo, but like, oh, the super Bowl
Speaker 4: is getting you know, you're like why is And cable
Speaker 4: to this day still cable systn't fully monetized at the
Speaker 4: level of attention that it had versus broadcast. But it's
Speaker 4: like ninety sid of the way there, and so the
Speaker 4: same thing.
Speaker 2: Just going down and starting to on that other side.
Speaker 4: Yeah, cable is the one I might argue might have
Speaker 4: one of the heaviest morphs in the space versus a
Speaker 4: lot of the other industries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, and it's such a it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's almost been whiplashing in terms of it was you know,
Speaker 3: it was the way for the.
Speaker 4: The greatest, the greatest cash machine, like by the way
Speaker 4: I started my career espace.
Speaker 3: But I think I think there's an like around nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty to twenty twenty is a bookend of of an
Speaker 3: earnings machine that we will probably not see the likes
Speaker 3: very soon. But but you know, even as we sit
Speaker 3: here and speak it, in twelve twenty four months time,
Speaker 3: somebody could have come up with something that you know,
Speaker 3: blazes a trail that we can't even that we can't
Speaker 3: even conceive of.
Speaker 2: Now that's how fast look and innovative this space is.
Speaker 4: People talk about the machine or Cable, right we really
Speaker 4: break it down into a financial person. They're talking about
Speaker 4: the amazing margins that cable kicked off. Are you talking
Speaker 4: about forty percent margins? Right where it's a production company
Speaker 4: might t fifteen twenty percent. The thing is like, if
Speaker 4: you look at creators, I look at creators doing forty fifty, sixty,
Speaker 4: seventy percent margins. It's incredible what these businesses are doing
Speaker 4: is why I always find it interesting. Look when I
Speaker 4: was at MTV and people come in pips like I
Speaker 4: found this new creator. Let's let's have them pitch a show,
Speaker 4: and they picked unbelievably wonderful creative and then you'd show
Speaker 4: them the economics of the deal you want to do
Speaker 4: with them. I'm like, let me get this straight. I
Speaker 4: do whatever I want creatively every single day. Yes, and
Speaker 4: all the money accrues to me. Yes. But if I
Speaker 4: come work for you, I got twenty people giving me
Speaker 4: notes every single thing I do, Yes, and you're gonna
Speaker 4: pay me like one one hundredth and I own none
Speaker 4: of the rights. Yes, why would I do that? And
Speaker 4: so that's the other thing I think people don't understand
Speaker 4: about their creators space. It's like, yes, there's creators who
Speaker 4: want to do a traditional thing and this is part
Speaker 4: of their story one hundred percent, I said. But I
Speaker 4: think the other thing that people don't understand as a
Speaker 4: lot in fact, you remember the person who won that
Speaker 4: Show of the Year. What she talked about is like,
Speaker 4: I am making something that would never be green lip.
Speaker 4: That is an audience bigger than something that's never been
Speaker 4: green lit. Yes, with seven people.
Speaker 2: Michelle Kane of Challenge expected.
Speaker 4: Correct, and she's right, that is a minimum at least
Speaker 4: a cable caliber quality show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's right. Dare show which would have not been.
Speaker 4: Green lit, and she owns all the rights, had all
Speaker 4: creative control as full relationship with So that's what I
Speaker 4: think is really empowering to the creative class is that
Speaker 4: you have this incredible thing that I don't think it's
Speaker 4: an or. I think it's an ad. You can have
Speaker 4: an ant. Yeah, you can have your creative passion and
Speaker 4: be monetized and have a middle class lifestyle, and you
Speaker 4: can do the traditional route at the same time. It
Speaker 4: doesn't have to be you have to be one or
Speaker 4: the other, or one is dependent on the other.
Speaker 3: And in a world where streaming licensing deals are changing
Speaker 3: quite a bit, they're not quite as rigid as they
Speaker 3: have been. Somebody coming in with I own the format.
Speaker 3: I own every stitch of every minute of content, every frame.
Speaker 3: That person coming in, if they do want to do
Speaker 3: a more traditional TV deal, is going to have a
Speaker 3: lot more clout at the negotiating table than somebody that
Speaker 3: only you know is only a star in their own show.
Speaker 4: Well, also, you have to transition that I still remember
Speaker 4: when I was first started working and lef when reality
Speaker 4: TV started, right, people are like, Uh, that's never going
Speaker 4: to be thinking it's not going to be thing. Right,
Speaker 4: But that was the explosion of case production companies. So
Speaker 4: which and again it is roll up of those cable
Speaker 4: production companies. They're the biggest television production companies today, right, Fremantle, ITV, whatnot.
Speaker 4: I said, but all of those companies were built in
Speaker 4: a world where a broadcast hour was like four to
Speaker 4: six million dollars and then cable companies like I'll pay
Speaker 4: three hundred thousand bus and people like that's impossible, you
Speaker 4: can't do it. But you saw like a ten times
Speaker 4: the same thing's happening in digital. Right, You're just saying
Speaker 4: the cost of production is coming down, but they'll to
Speaker 4: lack the ability of having creative talent on a global
Speaker 4: basis to be able to service that. And so what
Speaker 4: I think one of the interesting opportunities for the traditional
Speaker 4: channels that are getting squeezed on the cost side is
Speaker 4: you're going to have like a nut like the cable
Speaker 4: class came in, can produce what became the reality burned
Speaker 4: and sort of help with that cost structure. The digital
Speaker 4: teams are going to come in and have that same thing.
Speaker 4: I was like, okay, well I could call a creator
Speaker 4: to your point and like I can get eight what
Speaker 4: looks like one of my primetime shows. I'm not paying
Speaker 4: five hundred thousand an hour anymore, I'm paying one hundred
Speaker 4: thousand and so I think it also the creator ecosystem,
Speaker 4: and they're that class has an ability to help the
Speaker 4: traditional side to make sure that the kind of volume
Speaker 4: of production is not going to go away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you're seeing there, you know, pulling a
Speaker 3: lot of personalities are coming there. Do you sometimes advise
Speaker 3: people on you know, how that they shouldn't spend too
Speaker 3: much on this piece of content? Do you do you
Speaker 3: advise people sometimes on the margins, like if you you know,
Speaker 3: if you do this to make it look good, you're
Speaker 3: going to have to put in this much.
Speaker 2: Yea product justice, we.
Speaker 4: Have tire again, an entire tech team that's analyzing, uh,
Speaker 4: what works, what formats, what lengths, what time on period?
Speaker 4: And it all goes down to even you know. One
Speaker 4: of our most frequent acquisitions, Network Media, is an entire
Speaker 4: entity focused around us where they actually focus on finding
Speaker 4: what I call entertainers. So not like not necessarily a kid,
Speaker 4: I was playing video games and I became a Twitch creator,
Speaker 4: but someone's like, oh, I was a a circus entertainer
Speaker 4: or was a musicians like I want to get into
Speaker 4: digital thing. And what they do is we teach them
Speaker 4: and train them using all of our data, all the
Speaker 4: best ways to make sure to make content that entertains
Speaker 4: for the platform that you're on. And it's all completely data.
Speaker 4: I mean, they literally get a training update every single
Speaker 4: day of literally what's working.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, John, I really appreciate you letting
Speaker 3: you know, letting me lob questions at you and telling
Speaker 3: us about your business.
Speaker 2: And it's a very fascinating.
Speaker 3: Space and we definitely I definitely prize I call my
Speaker 3: tour guides to helping me understand this. I know it's
Speaker 3: important and I know it's important that Variety be on
Speaker 3: top of it.
Speaker 2: So thank you for helping me do that.
Speaker 4: Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
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