Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the Variety podcast Strictly Business,
Speaker 1: where we talk to some of the brightest minds working
Speaker 1: in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein, co editor
Speaker 1: in chief of Variety. There's no shortage of digital content
Speaker 1: companies these days trying to carve out audiences for themselves,
Speaker 1: but few have innovated the sector's business models as much
Speaker 1: as Kin Community and it's co founder and CEO, Michael Wayne,
Speaker 1: my next guest. The talent he works with, for one thing,
Speaker 1: isn't just the usual digital native stars, and the revenue
Speaker 1: isn't just cuts of advertising and subscription dollars. Michael, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming in. Let's let's walk through some of the
Speaker 1: different things that you're doing. And but first just explain
Speaker 1: what Kin is, the brand, the demographic you got it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Andy, pleasure to be here. Kin
Speaker 1: is a lifestyle entertainment company, simply put, So what does
Speaker 1: that mean exactly? What we do A number of things. Uh,
Speaker 1: we have a studio that produces content. We have, like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, a network of digitally native influencers. We have
Speaker 1: owned and operated channels. Uh. That exists across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Prime, Twitter,
Speaker 1: pretty much every social platform. The newest part of our business,
Speaker 1: which we launched about a year ago, is working with
Speaker 1: more traditional TV talent like a timor Um who who
Speaker 1: do we know Tia from? Yeah. Timre Is is a
Speaker 1: good example of the type of talent we're working with.
Speaker 1: She had a show in the late nineties called Sister Sister.
Speaker 1: It was a big show, was on ABC, she and
Speaker 1: her twin sister, tamoraw uh. And then since then she
Speaker 1: has had a really broad career in entertainment. She was
Speaker 1: on a show on E with her sister. She had
Speaker 1: multiple shows on the network. She's had a cookbook. She's
Speaker 1: done a lot of different things, but but a lot
Speaker 1: of which is in the women's lifestyle space. Uh. And
Speaker 1: she was pitched to us a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: by U t A. And at that point in our
Speaker 1: company's history, we hadn't really worked with traditional TV talent.
Speaker 1: We were focused early on on working with bloggers and
Speaker 1: then YouTubers and instagrammers. But there was something interesting about
Speaker 1: her one the fact that she was more or less
Speaker 1: a household name. She had been in the public consciousness
Speaker 1: for twenty years. She had twelve million social followers um
Speaker 1: and she was very passionate about women's lifestyle. So we
Speaker 1: kind of scratched her head and said, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: we've gotten to the point in time where the distance
Speaker 1: between a digitally native social influencer and a TV personality
Speaker 1: who has large social following, but also connects directly with
Speaker 1: an audience, UH, isn't very far apart. Maybe maybe these
Speaker 1: kind of ships are starting to pass in the night.
Speaker 1: So we said, what if we started a new own
Speaker 1: and operated channel where she was the focus of it.
Speaker 1: And we created a brand called Timris Quick Fix, and
Speaker 1: we launched it simultaneously on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram
Speaker 1: and Amazon Prime. And that was almost a year ago
Speaker 1: and it's been extremely successful. So she's the model for
Speaker 1: what you're she is. We we still have a studio
Speaker 1: business that produces channels like Tmris Quick Fix, as well
Speaker 1: as working with brands to do brand content. We still
Speaker 1: have a great network of digitally native influencers, but we
Speaker 1: are now building the Kin network, which we've called recently
Speaker 1: a neighborhood, which we can talk about why we're calling
Speaker 1: it a neighborhood, but um of really like minded talent.
Speaker 1: So we have since launched now five channels in this model.
Speaker 1: The tmri E quick fix model, and we plan on
Speaker 1: launching We'll have seven by the end of the year
Speaker 1: and hopefully next year. By the end of two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: about twenty of these channels driven by traditional TV talent.
Speaker 1: So what was wrong with the model that was more
Speaker 1: based on the traditional influencer You've got eyes were pretty
Speaker 1: active on that front for quite a while. We are
Speaker 1: that that space has changed pretty dramatically since we got
Speaker 1: involved in it. Um described that change. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think it goes back even before the YouTubers. So
Speaker 1: when we started our company was in what year which
Speaker 1: was two thousand seven, which is like the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: for incial media. But we started the company in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, and we always had the idea of
Speaker 1: building brands I P video brands if you will. Back then,
Speaker 1: uh talent. We we had this belief that we wanted
Speaker 1: to work with digitally native talent. But in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: that meant bloggers. Because there's really really at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of YouTube in general, so the whole social influencer
Speaker 1: thing hadn't really started from a video standpoint, but bloggers, Uh,
Speaker 1: we're kind of the social influencer of of that time.
Speaker 1: So we were doing video series working with bloggers, and
Speaker 1: we learned a lot back then. One that blogging is
Speaker 1: very different than video. Two. At the time, there weren't
Speaker 1: a lot of video platforms. In fact, that that time,
Speaker 1: YouTube was just doing user generated content, so we didn't
Speaker 1: even really think of it as a as as a
Speaker 1: video platform like we do today. Um we created websites
Speaker 1: so that people could come watch these video series in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, and that's really hard to get people
Speaker 1: to a website to watch video, let alone just get
Speaker 1: them to a website. Period. Brands weren't quite ready to
Speaker 1: do all that. But but what we did learn back
Speaker 1: then was that when you have open platforms that you
Speaker 1: can very quickly commoditize talent. So we were working with
Speaker 1: the best bloggers at the time, the best mom bloggers,
Speaker 1: the best food bloggers, but we were What we were
Speaker 1: seeing is that large blog networks were forming and pretty
Speaker 1: much anyone who throw up a blog was part of
Speaker 1: a blog network. And that created a lot of problems
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, the ad dollars had to
Speaker 1: be spread around not hundreds of bloggers, but thousands, tens
Speaker 1: of that millions of bloggers. It was hard to navigate
Speaker 1: what are the good bloggers, what are the bad bloggers.
Speaker 1: It just got very crowded very quickly, and very commoditized,
Speaker 1: and we were like, oh, we don't we don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. That's not interesting for us. So when
Speaker 1: YouTube started really getting behind their their stars, their creators,
Speaker 1: we kind of realized and actually make our studio and
Speaker 1: folks like that started aggregating tens of thousands of channels
Speaker 1: we got. We we had some pause there because we
Speaker 1: had seen what it looked like in the blog space,
Speaker 1: and so we said, hey, if we're going to curate
Speaker 1: a network, let's make sure it's the biggest and the
Speaker 1: best uh channels in our categories, which were food and
Speaker 1: home and d I y and style and beauty and
Speaker 1: things like that. So we only focused on about a
Speaker 1: hundred YouTubers at the time, and for a few years
Speaker 1: we were the place where brands would come to work
Speaker 1: with those influencers. But as you know, in fact I
Speaker 1: wrote an op ed pe or an opinion piece for
Speaker 1: Variety many years ago about the problems with with the space.
Speaker 1: It got also very crowded very quickly. Lots of um
Speaker 1: other you know, the market was flooded with YouTubers, agents, managers, MCNs,
Speaker 1: social influencer networks that could go on and on. All
Speaker 1: started to figure out that there was a growing business
Speaker 1: here and they wanted to get in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: So we we realized probably a few years ago that
Speaker 1: this was going to get pretty crowded pretty quickly, and
Speaker 1: realized that UM also at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we didn't We don't own our influencers channels. They own it,
Speaker 1: So we are in a sense, Uh, it's almost like
Speaker 1: a manager or an agent to them. And that's really
Speaker 1: never why we got in the business in the first place.
Speaker 1: We wanted to be a content business that owns I
Speaker 1: P and that builds video brands, and so it's still
Speaker 1: a part of our business, but uh, it's not uh
Speaker 1: the growing and most valuable part of our business. I
Speaker 1: would say it is. It is, Uh, it is one
Speaker 1: of many parts of our business. So you're working with
Speaker 1: a higher level of talent. What kind of deals can
Speaker 1: you offer them, because I would assume they've got options.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a great question. So I think the
Speaker 1: interesting part of our model right now is that while
Speaker 1: digital influencers were building their brands, UM everyone started building
Speaker 1: their social as well. That you me variety uh a
Speaker 1: TV talent, And over the last five years, you've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of TV talent build social followings as big
Speaker 1: as a YouTuber and Instagram who started as digital native, right.
Speaker 1: But there's a little bit different to someone who's built
Speaker 1: the last twenty years or ten years of their career
Speaker 1: being a TV star. One. They probably aren't likely to
Speaker 1: want to pick up their iPhone and start shooting videos
Speaker 1: every week and putting it on YouTube. That's probably not likely, uh,
Speaker 1: what they're gonna want to do. Um. They might not
Speaker 1: want to hire a whole production team also to come
Speaker 1: out every week and spend the money on doing a show. Um.
Speaker 1: They want it probably to look really good. They've been
Speaker 1: on TV their whole career, they've gotten to a level
Speaker 1: of success. They probably want content that's going to look
Speaker 1: as good, if not better than what they've been doing
Speaker 1: on TV. They also probably don't want to build a
Speaker 1: whole data and strategy team and become experts on how
Speaker 1: these platforms work day in and day out. So as
Speaker 1: we've talked to UH some of the more traditional talent,
Speaker 1: what we find is there they've been successful on television.
Speaker 1: They've built large social followings, but then taking the next
Speaker 1: step into video isn't so easy. They're not just going
Speaker 1: to start from scratch like a YouTuber might have UM
Speaker 1: who made YouTube kind of their primary career, if you will.
Speaker 1: So we come in and we say listen, we want
Speaker 1: to work with you care natively. But we have all
Speaker 1: the infrastructure. We have all the camera equipment, we have
Speaker 1: all the producers, we have all the editing facilities. We
Speaker 1: have a strategy and data team that's really really smart
Speaker 1: about how you should think about your you know, a
Speaker 1: content brand with us UM. But ultimately we're not there
Speaker 1: to create the only digital video opportunity for these stars.
Speaker 1: We believe we want to create a show with them,
Speaker 1: a series with them, not unlike they might go to
Speaker 1: a TV or a cable not a TV company to
Speaker 1: cable company and create a show on cable. So we
Speaker 1: really focus on just what swim Lane we think would
Speaker 1: be fun and profitable to build out with them. So
Speaker 1: with Tia, it was quick Fix, it was d I Y,
Speaker 1: it was how can she help young women who may
Speaker 1: or may not have young children get through the day
Speaker 1: with easy quick tips that X we have a show
Speaker 1: with Adrian Balion called All Things All Things Adrian, which
Speaker 1: is really focused on style and beauty. Um you know,
Speaker 1: we just launched a show with Jordan's sparks. Jordan's Sparks
Speaker 1: one American idol ten years ago. She has a passion
Speaker 1: for baking, so we have a show called Heart of
Speaker 1: the Batter with Jordan's Spigs and jordan Sparks. So so
Speaker 1: that's that is a swim lane. Will Jordan do other things? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I think last night she had a show on Lifetime
Speaker 1: that launched um or or a one hour series, one
Speaker 1: hour documentary on Lifetime. She has her albums that she's
Speaker 1: gonna She'll have plenty of other things to do. But
Speaker 1: in this one swim lane, we want to be a
Speaker 1: partner and we really want to build an asset that's
Speaker 1: valuable that can you know, thrive over the hopefully years
Speaker 1: and years come. And so how do doing deals with
Speaker 1: these types of people? How do you make that economical?
Speaker 1: Because I would imagine cost control is the name of
Speaker 1: the game here. It is, and that's that's what's exciting,
Speaker 1: you know, you o this. I've been involved in digital
Speaker 1: and in particular digital video really from the beginning in
Speaker 1: launch media in the late nineties, and so I was
Speaker 1: there when the first bits of video started streaming over
Speaker 1: the Internet, and I've always been fascinated with how it's
Speaker 1: evolved of the last twenty plus years, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: very excited about it now, more than I ever have
Speaker 1: because of a number of reasons. One is, I think
Speaker 1: there are more video platform scaled video platforms now than
Speaker 1: there ever have been. So you have you've had YouTube
Speaker 1: really was the only game in town for a long time. Now, Facebook,
Speaker 1: then Instagram, obviously Amazon Prime is there and some of
Speaker 1: the other platforms, but there there are multiple places now
Speaker 1: when you create a piece of content you can monetize it.
Speaker 1: And I don't just mean like doing brand integrations, but
Speaker 1: just just running pre rolls and mid rolls. Now you
Speaker 1: can do that across multiple platforms. Our company has always
Speaker 1: been focused on high quality, premium, premium content, and the
Speaker 1: platforms now are focused more and more on building clean,
Speaker 1: well lit neighborhoods. It's one of the reasons we've called
Speaker 1: what we're building a neighborhood. And so what we're seeing
Speaker 1: is as we put our videos across all these platforms,
Speaker 1: they're getting higher and higher CPMs again, this is just
Speaker 1: low touch programmatic. And so what we're finding is is
Speaker 1: that we can actually cover most of our production costs,
Speaker 1: in some cases all of our production costs with just
Speaker 1: distributing our content across those platforms. Now, we're still doing
Speaker 1: brand integrations, and we're doing e commerce, and we're going
Speaker 1: to do licensing of our of our content. All of
Speaker 1: that's going to come into play. But I think for
Speaker 1: the first time, you're now able to on a unit
Speaker 1: economic basis, we have a show with a particular production cost,
Speaker 1: in a particular you know, set of economics, we can
Speaker 1: pay that off now across platforms with low touch, as
Speaker 1: opposed to hiring dozens of salespeople to hopefully sell branded
Speaker 1: integrations to pay off this content. Well, that's really saying
Speaker 1: something where we are because a year or so ago,
Speaker 1: the notion that there was more than one game in
Speaker 1: town YouTube would really be a stretch. So sort of
Speaker 1: review the rest of the pack there. How do you
Speaker 1: like the evolution of let's call it the monetization opportunities
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram all that. So our audience, uh,
Speaker 1: and I didn't bring this up before, but is really
Speaker 1: women and there they tend to be women from about
Speaker 1: twenty five to forty four. That's the core, and we
Speaker 1: even within women four it's really to thirty four is
Speaker 1: the core core of our audience. We call them builders,
Speaker 1: that's our our name for them because they're entering in
Speaker 1: their mid twenties a different stage of life where they're
Speaker 1: focusing on their home, their physical home. Uh, they're focusing
Speaker 1: on their career. It's no longer just a job. There
Speaker 1: actually think about their career. They're focusing on their family,
Speaker 1: which could be a significant other. It could be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a husband or a wife at that point,
Speaker 1: it could be young children. So they're building really their
Speaker 1: lives and that Uh. If you think about our content historically,
Speaker 1: even going back to two thousand seven and two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, we've always focused on that demo and um
Speaker 1: in our content is both entertaining but also helpful and
Speaker 1: informational and in some ways educational to those women going
Speaker 1: through those uh, those ages and stages. It's not surprising
Speaker 1: platforms like Facebook and Instagram lend themselves very very well
Speaker 1: to our demographic. In fact, I think ten years ago,
Speaker 1: um or even five years ago on Facebook. Uh when well, actually,
Speaker 1: let's see when it was it In two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: YouTube as part of their first original funding program when
Speaker 1: they funded their their first channels. They actually partnered with
Speaker 1: us to start kin as a brand, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to create a women's lifestyle brand on YouTube. But even
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, it was a little early. Like
Speaker 1: YouTube as a platform or I'm still skews fairly, fairly young.
Speaker 1: I would say there's a much higher concentration on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram of our audience than there is on YouTube,
Speaker 1: or at least primarily on YouTube. Right. I think they're
Speaker 1: you know, there's two billion people on YouTube, so they
Speaker 1: cover everyone. But but really the heart of their audience
Speaker 1: tends to be pretty young, under eighteen. So when we
Speaker 1: launched Ken in two thousand eleven, it was slow growing
Speaker 1: as a as a channel, um, And it wasn't really
Speaker 1: un till Facebook a couple of years ago where we
Speaker 1: started to really focus on Facebook, that we started to
Speaker 1: see our audience scale. To answer your question specifically, though
Speaker 1: YouTube has been in the game of selling mid roles
Speaker 1: and pre roles and working with content creators with brand
Speaker 1: integrations for years. Facebook, Um, it's fairly new. It's really
Speaker 1: Facebook Watch is a year old. Uh, you know, selling
Speaker 1: pre rolls and mid selling mid roles is probably about
Speaker 1: that long. I you don't want to speak for Facebook.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how long, but it's fairly recently
Speaker 1: selling pre roles even more recently. So we're very bullish
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and we're excited Instagram now is launched Instagram TV,
Speaker 1: and hopefully we'll monetize. But um, I think what we're
Speaker 1: seeing is growth on Facebook and Instagram, a faster growth,
Speaker 1: and even from a monetization, faster growth. But but YouTube
Speaker 1: is a mature platform and the way you monetize it
Speaker 1: is mature. So uh, my instinct is is that Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram will probably outpace uh YouTube as a monetization
Speaker 1: platform for us over the coming months and years. What
Speaker 1: about Amazon, because you're you distribute there, and my god,
Speaker 1: I guess there's just so much buzz about even what
Speaker 1: they're doing from an ad perspective. Now, that's right, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're It's funny, we've been for the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about their new platform that's going to
Speaker 1: be AD supported and making sure that we're from and
Speaker 1: center on it. We we've worked with Amazon for years
Speaker 1: and in multiple capacities. We've we've produced programming with them,
Speaker 1: UM and different types of programming with them. We were
Speaker 1: part of a program, still are part of a program
Speaker 1: where they've selected UM a handful of digital companies that
Speaker 1: they thought had really high quality digital content to be
Speaker 1: part of Prime. So you can actually find our content
Speaker 1: on Amazon Prime behind a paywall, so if you're a
Speaker 1: Prime subscriber, you can get it. And we're able to
Speaker 1: post our content onto pot Prime on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Now that's not ad supported, so that I just want
Speaker 1: to be clear, that's different than that their new product,
Speaker 1: or at least what we've read in the papers, their
Speaker 1: new ad supported product that's coming out that when we
Speaker 1: post our content to Prime, we get paid like any
Speaker 1: content provider to Prime, we get a piece of the
Speaker 1: subscription revenue. Obviously, most people go to Prime to watch
Speaker 1: movies and TV. So I would say the digital partners
Speaker 1: of Prime are probably a little lower down the totem pole,
Speaker 1: but we still we still partner with them on that
Speaker 1: and and uh, we think Amazon is a great platform
Speaker 1: for us for a lot of reasons. We also have
Speaker 1: a relationship with them where a lot of our content
Speaker 1: has have stores so today you can go to UH
Speaker 1: to some of our new channels and on videos click
Speaker 1: through to buy some of the merchandise, all things Adrian
Speaker 1: I mentioned with Adrian Bellion it's a style and beauty
Speaker 1: channel and UH you can click through and buy the
Speaker 1: makeup that might be in her video or by the
Speaker 1: swimsuit she might be showing off this this past summer.
Speaker 1: And so that's a really cool part of our relationship
Speaker 1: with Amazon as well. So it's it's both the e
Speaker 1: commerce side and the content side that it's interesting to
Speaker 1: hear you even talk about that as a viable revenue stream.
Speaker 1: It's typically companies like yours, it's all about advertising, maybe
Speaker 1: something in subscription. So how meaningful is this? I think
Speaker 1: they're all meaningful. I think, getting back to my original
Speaker 1: point about where we are and kind of the video landscape,
Speaker 1: I think there's been for the last few years this
Speaker 1: um this feeling like you need to have a very
Speaker 1: large ad sales team to sell big and its sponsorships
Speaker 1: or big brand brand content to get these video series made. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean they're you know, the running joke at the
Speaker 1: New Front was you get presented with a lot of content,
Speaker 1: but like you never know what was gonna get made
Speaker 1: or what wasn't going to get made because brands had
Speaker 1: to come in and subsidize that. And I think now
Speaker 1: what is really exciting is there is this sustainable, repeatable
Speaker 1: and profitable model where low touch revenue can support high
Speaker 1: quality video. And so we talked about programmatic being one
Speaker 1: form of that. I think e commerce is is the
Speaker 1: other low touch way of doing that, and we're doing
Speaker 1: that with Amazon across our channels. Uh it's meaningful. It's
Speaker 1: not as meaningful, I'll be honest, it's not as meaningful
Speaker 1: yet as advertising, whether that's um pre role mid role
Speaker 1: branded integration, but it's becoming more meaningful. I think where
Speaker 1: it gets really exciting for us is not just where
Speaker 1: we're linking to an Amazon or linking to another e
Speaker 1: commerce platform, but where we're creating our own products around
Speaker 1: our channels. So I think that to me is is
Speaker 1: where UM we get into licensing our brands, creating bespoke
Speaker 1: products around Uh some of the brands were building with
Speaker 1: our talent. I think that that we haven't gotten there yet.
Speaker 1: So there's no no, no imminent announcement there, but I
Speaker 1: think that's going into two thousand nineteen going to be
Speaker 1: a real focus for us. What else in is you
Speaker 1: look Ahead is sort of top of mind for you
Speaker 1: in the business. Yeah, well, I think for us, we're
Speaker 1: really excited about UM how our audience is engaging with
Speaker 1: our content and just consuming our content. So we've partnered
Speaker 1: with Nielsen UM to rate our content. Thank you and
Speaker 1: I have talked about this before, uh, and we have
Speaker 1: found that on a regular basis, our shows, whether it's
Speaker 1: TM or Quick Fix or other shows, are getting cable
Speaker 1: size audiences on a weekly basis. In fact, he is
Speaker 1: Tia Moore's Quick Fix has multiple times been quite literally
Speaker 1: the number one cable show, even though it's not on cable,
Speaker 1: it's across digital platforms in women eighteen to thirty four
Speaker 1: or in total viewership. So what we're excited about is
Speaker 1: now that we have five of these channels, going to
Speaker 1: seven by the end of the year, going to twenty
Speaker 1: by the end of next year. We truly believe we're
Speaker 1: going to be able to compete on a cable network basis.
Speaker 1: We we really think of ourselves as a next generation
Speaker 1: cable network. We're building a next generation cable network brand
Speaker 1: with KIM and we will have audiences in the US
Speaker 1: and without a question, internationally bigger than cable audiences today
Speaker 1: on television. So to me, that's that's really the exciting
Speaker 1: thing going into next year, the promise of building the
Speaker 1: brand of Kim now. But when you are comparing to
Speaker 1: cable audiences, you are making a truly apple to apple comparison.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of people have died on these shows,
Speaker 1: they have tried to make these comparis so and I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I look forward to refining this. So Nielsen
Speaker 1: cannot Today they have something called dc ARE and Digital
Speaker 1: Content ratings and they have TV ratings, And what we
Speaker 1: have done is tried as close as we can to
Speaker 1: compare the two. Some people have just said, oh, the
Speaker 1: digital content ratings and the TV ratings, you can compare
Speaker 1: apples to apples. We we've actually tried to go much
Speaker 1: deeper than that. We've said, if we're going to get
Speaker 1: close to apples to apples, then let's do not just Live,
Speaker 1: let's do Live plus seven, and not only Live plus seven,
Speaker 1: but let's aggregate all the airings of the shows during
Speaker 1: that week. So you know, you might go to a
Speaker 1: cable network and they might have a show that they
Speaker 1: air twenty times in a week. So we're saying, okay,
Speaker 1: if you do Live plus seven plus an aggregation of
Speaker 1: all the airings during that week of a show, and
Speaker 1: then compare it to our show, it's still not exactly
Speaker 1: apples to apples, but it's about as close to apples
Speaker 1: as apples as you're gonna get. And so we can
Speaker 1: say in a week Timore's Quick Fix at eight point
Speaker 1: eight million total US viewers watch her show in a week,
Speaker 1: and then compare it to what I just described Live
Speaker 1: plus seven plus an aggregation of all the viewership of
Speaker 1: all of the airings of that show on that network.
Speaker 1: We feel very confident that that's pretty that's that's close,
Speaker 1: and and that not only is it close, but our
Speaker 1: viewership is so much bigger than most of these shows
Speaker 1: that it's it's I think, very compelling to audience, is
Speaker 1: very compelling to brands, very compelling to partners that we're
Speaker 1: working with. So you guys have been out there, going
Speaker 1: back to your days when you were known as Decca
Speaker 1: for over a decade, and you've been an independent all
Speaker 1: the while picking up rounds of funding here and there.
Speaker 1: The name of the game, though in the sector more
Speaker 1: and more people are talking about though, is consolidation, that
Speaker 1: everything is going to have to come together to get scale.
Speaker 1: So where's your attitude there? Are you looking for where
Speaker 1: the exits or where is your head at right now? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I think my head is the same place it was
Speaker 1: eleven years ago, which is I am focused and even
Speaker 1: before eleven years ago, because we've talked about it, I've
Speaker 1: been in the space for over twenty years. I've always
Speaker 1: been interested in how do you create value in the
Speaker 1: space and something sustainable. So you know, some some entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: maybe look for opportunities that exploit it and then let
Speaker 1: someone else worry about the value. I've always looked at
Speaker 1: what we are doing as a continuum. It's an evolution.
Speaker 1: People sometimes go, oh, you've pivoted from this to that.
Speaker 1: To me, I've always looked at everything we've done is
Speaker 1: just an evolution of the space. Now, clearly we live
Speaker 1: in a time where fang you know, Facebook, at Apple, Netflix,
Speaker 1: Google or Facebook? Is it? What is it is? It's Facebook,
Speaker 1: But there's Amazon has got to be in there too.
Speaker 1: I think there you go, it's a Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Uh,
Speaker 1: clearly the world I mean their their global platforms their
Speaker 1: technology companies fundamentally UM, and they've truly disrupted everything. Right.
Speaker 1: We're a small company, but we're very very attuned to
Speaker 1: how these platforms work, and we have expertise and really
Speaker 1: super bright people internally who understand the ins and outs
Speaker 1: of how these platforms work. And so for us, we
Speaker 1: think that's super valuable. Being able to create a repeatable,
Speaker 1: uh scalable, profitable model around high quality content with really
Speaker 1: really talented people we think is very very valuable. So
Speaker 1: I guess, long story short, my feeling is that we
Speaker 1: continue to create value in the space, especially in a
Speaker 1: space where platforms need higher quality content, they need brand
Speaker 1: save content, they need content partners who understand their platforms.
Speaker 1: Brands are looking for this in the marketplace. We're going
Speaker 1: to continue to grow. If we were to find partners
Speaker 1: or a partner who really believes in the long term
Speaker 1: vision of Kin as a brand and as a value
Speaker 1: proposition in the marketplace, I think we would always be
Speaker 1: open to entertaining how do we partner to get there quicker?
Speaker 1: How do we partner to get there more efficiently or
Speaker 1: effectively or more powerfully? Um And along the way we
Speaker 1: have partner we haven't been acquired. We haven't really talked
Speaker 1: to anyone about being inquired, but we have partnered with
Speaker 1: people who have invested in our company or who have
Speaker 1: been strategic partners who have helped us accelerate our business.
Speaker 1: So I guess at the end of the day, I
Speaker 1: don't really look at it as we're looking to go
Speaker 1: get acquired. I think we're out in the marketplace creating value.
Speaker 1: We're building a great brand. We have a great mission
Speaker 1: as a company. We have an awesome team who are
Speaker 1: building this brand. Is someone want to help us with
Speaker 1: that great like we're we're open to We're open to
Speaker 1: talk to them and see if there's a fit. We
Speaker 1: will see what brands we'll see. Thanks for coming in, Mike,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate it. This has been another
Speaker 1: episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week for another helping,
Speaker 1: accintillating conversation with media movers and shakers, and please make
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Speaker 1: Also leave a review in Apple podcast let us know
Speaker 1: how we're doing.