Speaker 1: Get the entertainment you love with a little help from Google.
Speaker 1: No more jumping from app to app. Google TV is
Speaker 1: built into smart TVs and streaming devices that brings together
Speaker 1: movies and shows from all of your subscriptions. Need inspiration,
Speaker 1: get curated recommendations. Use Google's powerful search to find shows
Speaker 1: across ten thousand plus apps, or browse hundreds of free
Speaker 1: channels and with personalized profiles. Everyone's experience is customized for them.
Speaker 1: Search for Google TV to learn more, or find us
Speaker 1: at a retailer near you.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with
Speaker 2: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Cynthia Littleton, I am co editor in chief
Speaker 2: of Variety. Today's episode hails from Austin, Texas in the
Speaker 2: South By Southwest Festival. Kate Arthur, Variety's managing editor, hosted
Speaker 2: a Strictly Business Live event on March fourteenth about the
Speaker 2: burgeoning business of microdramas. Google TV is making a big
Speaker 2: push into the format, adding apps to its central hub,
Speaker 2: as well as discovery and navigation tools. Arthur speaks with
Speaker 2: Juan Ho Duran, Global head of Media and entertainment content
Speaker 2: Partnerships for Google and Tommy Harper, who was a veteran
Speaker 2: producer of film and TV. Harper has just launched the
Speaker 2: AI powered startup VU, which is producing and distributing microdramas.
Speaker 2: The two discuss the potential of the vertical drama market
Speaker 2: and how they hope to grow it in the US
Speaker 2: and other territories.
Speaker 3: JUANH. Duran is Google's global head of Media and Entertainment
Speaker 3: Content Partnerships and Tommy Harper is the founder and CEO
Speaker 3: of VU, and he flew in from Dublin last night.
Speaker 3: So can you talk about what Google TV is due
Speaker 3: with the format and what the viewing experience is like.
Speaker 4: To help understand, Like, there's the traditional way you consume
Speaker 4: this content on where the content originates in the apps,
Speaker 4: and the traditional ways you go to the app store
Speaker 4: in this case Google Play and download the app and
Speaker 4: consuming this content. Again, the reality is that at least
Speaker 4: in this other side of the world, not everybody is
Speaker 4: a work of that and it's a little bit foreign
Speaker 4: on how to deal with that. So what we are
Speaker 4: doing is on we have the Google TV app on
Speaker 4: on mobile, which is a place where you engage with
Speaker 4: content you have your watch list, you have your watch
Speaker 4: next based on the streaming services that you are subscribing
Speaker 4: and all of that, and that's the place where you
Speaker 4: rent and buy movies. And what we're doing now is
Speaker 4: we are making episode from most of our most major
Speaker 4: partners available in the in the in the app, and
Speaker 4: we just launched that last week. We're super excited about
Speaker 4: it and it's tremendous way for us to showcase to
Speaker 4: the audience, but also an interpoint in the industry for
Speaker 4: partners like Tommy and many other producers that want to
Speaker 4: get into space but perhaps don't want to go with
Speaker 4: the hassle off managing and creating an app.
Speaker 3: Tommy, when did you decide to get into this business?
Speaker 5: I would say last May. I read an article it
Speaker 5: was in the Financial Times about the vertical microdrama space
Speaker 5: and the boom of it, and I wasn't aware of
Speaker 5: it at the time, so I kind of like start
Speaker 5: studying it from that point on. And I was in
Speaker 5: Spain on a train reading the article and at the
Speaker 5: same time, these team girls got on it and literally
Speaker 5: popped it on their phone and started watching micro dramas
Speaker 5: on their phone, and so I realized like there, it
Speaker 5: just hit me right. It was all kind of the
Speaker 5: stars aligned, and so I did a deep dive in it.
Speaker 5: I started meeting with all the platforms executives at the
Speaker 5: platforms CEOs and producers that were making the content. And
Speaker 5: traditionally my day job is TV and film, so I came.
Speaker 5: I came into the space of like a student. And
Speaker 5: one of the things what I did right away was
Speaker 5: reach out to a few actors and I found one
Speaker 5: that was producing a independent microdrama called Love Underfire, and
Speaker 5: so I invested in it and produced it and just
Speaker 5: learned at the ground floor. And I found it fascinating
Speaker 5: because as a producer, I just liked making things and
Speaker 5: I like doing I like this style of making it fast.
Speaker 5: From the business side, I like the platform building.
Speaker 3: How did you to start talking? How did you get
Speaker 3: into business with Google?
Speaker 5: My vcs are very tight with Google. They used to
Speaker 5: run Google Ventures, and so there was a natural course
Speaker 5: of let's connect you. And then from the first moment
Speaker 5: on we sat down and start talking about it. We
Speaker 5: knew there was a lot of opportunities at play here.
Speaker 5: So we're continuing conversations daily and yeah, been great partner.
Speaker 4: Yeah, similar I think we have really tied connections with
Speaker 4: the English Fry under partners that we're managing, and we
Speaker 4: began sharing our plans and how we were thinking about it,
Speaker 4: and then that's how some of those deeper conversations came on.
Speaker 3: Tommy, as someone who produces, like a show like Wednesday,
Speaker 3: can you talk about the vast differences and how these
Speaker 3: shows are made and in the productions, I mean the timeline,
Speaker 3: the budgets, Like, how does that work?
Speaker 5: From one side of the spectrum? Is you do Wednesday
Speaker 5: or Top Gun. You're creating these things for years, you're
Speaker 5: developing them. It is a massive undertaking to build the
Speaker 5: world and kind of like the brand, and it takes
Speaker 5: two years to get the script drive, it takes a
Speaker 5: year or two to shoot them, a year to promote them.
Speaker 5: The opposite with this. I was on the phone this
Speaker 5: morning talking about a project and saying, Okay, can we
Speaker 5: shoot in six weeks? And my producer for Verticals was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's fine, the problem, We'll be ready. It's the complete opposite,
Speaker 5: which I love. So that part excites me and I
Speaker 5: think what we want to do is push the boundaries.
Speaker 5: I want to do everything in the vertical space that
Speaker 5: in a way I'm doing in my trudition TV and
Speaker 5: film with the understanding of what works right, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to try to change that. I understand what works,
Speaker 5: I understand that efficiencies, But I want to do action.
Speaker 5: I want to do you know, or I want to
Speaker 5: do romance. I want to hit like you know gen
Speaker 5: Z World, And we're very much PG thirteen. We don't
Speaker 5: go hardcore seventeen and all that stuff. But I think
Speaker 5: that the audience is this is a TV in your
Speaker 5: pocket and everybody's on it. Everybody's watching. So if you
Speaker 5: can give the content that people want to keep coming
Speaker 5: back to, and you kind of learn what's worked in
Speaker 5: traditional TV and film with good stories and good actors
Speaker 5: and just making people kind of want to be engaged,
Speaker 5: I think that can work in this format just just
Speaker 5: as much as it does everywhere else.
Speaker 3: Wanho there. Because this is such a new format, there
Speaker 3: aren't a lot of like experts about this yet. Can
Speaker 3: you compare what you're seeing with micro dramas to like
Speaker 3: the wild West of the early days of YouTube another
Speaker 3: Google product.
Speaker 4: Began my career at Google YouTube, and some of the
Speaker 4: trends that I see compared to what's going on right
Speaker 4: now in micro dramas are so similar. I remember the
Speaker 4: days when we're convincing big media companies to put their
Speaker 4: content on YouTube and monetize that content, and it was
Speaker 4: a part of the shift at the time they began putting it,
Speaker 4: and then the process on created content also began for YouTube,
Speaker 4: but then the problem was to helping them change how
Speaker 4: they were producing for a platform like that. And I
Speaker 4: see that happening right now. I see that what's going
Speaker 4: on is you need to kind of forget what you
Speaker 4: know and and but at the same time utilize it
Speaker 4: to go and create content for a platform and a vertical.
Speaker 4: That it's different in the pace, as Tommy was saying,
Speaker 4: different how you think in the back end operationally, on
Speaker 4: how you're releasing, how you're engaging with the partners. So
Speaker 4: what we're doing is we're helping the industry. We're helping
Speaker 4: with workshop. We're going to be having one in in
Speaker 4: LA in late September to make sure that we are
Speaker 4: fostering the industry. And really what is happening is that
Speaker 4: transforming that lack of understanding of how things are going
Speaker 4: to go into more proficiency and getting into that and
Speaker 4: for for professionals and producers like Tommy being way easier
Speaker 4: to get teams to work on this type of content
Speaker 4: and make it it bigger. But yeah, tremendously correlation chained.
Speaker 4: So you need to go and study what's going on there,
Speaker 4: and we need to bring people that know, and that's
Speaker 4: what we're doing, bringing people from APEX from Asia mainly
Speaker 4: to help disseminate the knowledge.
Speaker 3: What do they know in Asia that we don't know
Speaker 3: yet here.
Speaker 4: I think it's a correlation on how how you think
Speaker 4: about the content and the data. Usually it's it's you
Speaker 4: think different you you on traditional media and Tommy might
Speaker 4: be or is way better suited to speak about this
Speaker 4: than me. But the way you think about it, you
Speaker 4: think about like the whole process in the beginning, and
Speaker 4: they are thinking one batch at a time, and at
Speaker 4: the same time, they are making adjustments and they are
Speaker 4: completely shifting in different ways and they are utilizing that data.
Speaker 4: And I think that's the piece which is very similar.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day. As a YouTube creator,
Speaker 4: you need to understand how your audience behaves and you
Speaker 4: need to serve that audience specifically and utilize what the
Speaker 4: platform tells you. So in traditional media you have several
Speaker 4: ways of distribution. In this place, you're going to have
Speaker 4: the app, you're going to have potentially the release on
Speaker 4: a transactional platform like ours and goal to be so
Speaker 4: you need to understand and be able to adapt and
Speaker 4: make it successful.
Speaker 3: Tommy, YouTube started as outside of the mainstream, and now
Speaker 3: it is the mainstream. It'll have the ass in a
Speaker 3: year or two, which is unthinkable when you remember back
Speaker 3: to what YouTube started out as. Do you see microdramas
Speaker 3: as feeders for mainstream entertainment in the way that YouTube has.
Speaker 5: I think it's a place to actually find talent and
Speaker 5: find ip I'm having these conversations now with studio partners
Speaker 5: and different people. I think. I think what's interesting is
Speaker 5: if I go make a movie, I'm paying more for
Speaker 5: a script that I'm paying to produce a microdrama. So
Speaker 5: I think it's a chance for every creator to go
Speaker 5: make something on their own personally. Like for us, for
Speaker 5: our platform, we don't have to produce it in house.
Speaker 5: We just want to make kind of premium vertical content
Speaker 5: to put on our platform. We want to essentially be
Speaker 5: like HBO meshed up with TikTok and and so we
Speaker 5: want to elevate the content put on our platform, and
Speaker 5: in order to do that, we're open to stars everywhere.
Speaker 5: And I don't think like a few of my directors,
Speaker 5: for instance, I've found on YouTube, I've seen their shorts
Speaker 5: on YouTube. I reach out on Instagram or whatever, I dmm,
Speaker 5: they reach back, We do a zoom and then they're
Speaker 5: writing stories now and one just directed one for us
Speaker 5: two weeks ago. So I'm looking for creators everywhere. They're
Speaker 5: going to have a shot. Then studio can hopefully look
Speaker 5: at them and look at their stories that they're telling us.
Speaker 5: And I think it's the same with actors. So for us,
Speaker 5: for our platform, we're looking for actors that are in
Speaker 5: the space, actors that have acting chops and they can
Speaker 5: really bring it. But a few of the stories that
Speaker 5: we're developing right now are with more influencers and either
Speaker 5: on TikTok or YouTube, or comedians that are hilarious but
Speaker 5: haven't gone in the narrative form yet, and we're going
Speaker 5: to give them those opportunities.
Speaker 4: Can I chime onto that once, please? I just want
Speaker 4: to go back in time and think about several years ago,
Speaker 4: would we think that streaming services content will be off
Speaker 4: for nomination on the Ulscars and where we are right now,
Speaker 4: and then if you change or add to that the
Speaker 4: fact that consumption habits are completely changing. New generations are
Speaker 4: watching in a new way. So I think going back
Speaker 4: and summarizing yes, potentially, yes, but I think the industry
Speaker 4: and everybody needs to adapt, and that's what we're trying
Speaker 4: to do. So it's super exciting.
Speaker 1: Get the entertainment you love with a little help from Google.
Speaker 1: No more jumping from app to app. Google TV is
Speaker 1: built into smart TVs and streaming devices that brings together
Speaker 1: movies and shows from all of your subscriptions. Need inspiration,
Speaker 1: get curated recommendations. Use Google's powerful search to find shows
Speaker 1: across ten thousand plus apps, or browse hundreds of free
Speaker 1: channels and with personalized profiles, everyone's experience is customized for them.
Speaker 1: Search for Google TV to learn more, or find us
Speaker 1: at a retailer near you.
Speaker 3: Tommy, can you see turning it into a show or
Speaker 3: a movie? For in the more traditional like would you
Speaker 3: use it as an incubator?
Speaker 5: That's what I want to do. We have a projects
Speaker 5: that we have developed and have scripts for that are
Speaker 5: like action franchises, that if they work in this space,
Speaker 5: we could spin them off in TV or film. Same
Speaker 5: with all genres. Essentially, I think that I think there's
Speaker 5: a version of what happened in Asia where you had
Speaker 5: the web novels that were very successful, they had the data,
Speaker 5: they knew what worked, flipped them into microdramas, and then
Speaker 5: now we're watching them here. We're not doing so much
Speaker 5: of that, but what you could do is do the
Speaker 5: microdrama version, if it works, flip them into TV and film.
Speaker 5: And you're doing it at a cost point where it's
Speaker 5: like you're not even you're barely getting a treatment out
Speaker 5: of a writer on the feature side, and here you
Speaker 5: have something that you can look at and study, and
Speaker 5: you have data, you have all the information, and so
Speaker 5: I think it's yes, we're very excited about that part.
Speaker 5: I'm talking to studios about that.
Speaker 3: In particular, I assume that there are academics somewhere who
Speaker 3: are studying why Quibbi, which came out in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: I believe, and had a similar idea but a very
Speaker 3: different business model. Huge stars, very high budgets, but short
Speaker 3: consumable content on the phone right when everyone was stuck
Speaker 3: at home, can you talk about what your thoughts are
Speaker 3: about what Quibi knew and what it did right and
Speaker 3: what it did wrong.
Speaker 4: This is the first thing that comes up when we
Speaker 4: began to discuss this type of content with traditional media partners.
Speaker 4: They all have this fear of going into this space,
Speaker 4: and that's what's going to happen. First of all, I
Speaker 4: think they were ahead of their time and timing was
Speaker 4: not perfect. But I think the main mistake, if I
Speaker 4: can summarize there potentially as you were saying the or
Speaker 4: should be major statues on this, but I think it
Speaker 4: was treating the content the same way, just in a
Speaker 4: different viewing ratio or aspect, just thinking the same thing
Speaker 4: is going to work and I'm gonna consume it on
Speaker 4: a vertical way, and that is what I think the
Speaker 4: industry went into, Like yeah, it makes sense, the idea
Speaker 4: makes sense, but you need to adapt and you need
Speaker 4: to kind of think it in a different way and
Speaker 4: not just like bring that. What we are seeing is
Speaker 4: we're talking with traditional media partners since a couple of
Speaker 4: years on when we began sewing this trend, and they
Speaker 4: were not sure about it. And you see what's going on.
Speaker 4: Disney and NBC announced on Disney Claws and Peacock this
Speaker 4: week that they are going into vertical content. And the
Speaker 4: announcement came with and this is public I'm not sureing
Speaker 4: anything that it's not being shared already, but the announcement
Speaker 4: came with the fact of them saying what Tommy was
Speaker 4: going into, we are gonna utilize this to understand more
Speaker 4: of how this content is being consumed. But then at
Speaker 4: the same time we're going to be getting into some
Speaker 4: things that are going to be from our carrent ip
Speaker 4: being produced into some other things. I think you need
Speaker 4: to spend some time again going back to the initial
Speaker 4: questions on the correlation with YouTube and understanding and not
Speaker 4: treat this as just the same media and just the
Speaker 4: same consumption and habits. You need to understand that this
Speaker 4: is potentially a different animal.
Speaker 3: Tommy, were you thinking about Quibi's what they did right,
Speaker 3: what they did wrong?
Speaker 5: I get asked this question with every investor on the
Speaker 5: film side, on the studio side versus a tech side.
Speaker 5: Tech side, you can get through it pretty quickly. On
Speaker 5: the film and TV side, they want to really know
Speaker 5: what you think about it and listen. Thank them for
Speaker 5: doing it first. But I think it's the model was
Speaker 5: is drastically different, right, Like I think what works is
Speaker 5: you keep the cost point efficient.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about the aesthetics of the genre. I
Speaker 3: watched Love under Fire and I enjoyed it, but it's
Speaker 3: so different from there's like telenovella, can't be aspects to it.
Speaker 5: Love Underfire is going to come out soon and this
Speaker 5: is the one the independent that I that I produced
Speaker 5: and invested in and we were I mean we shot
Speaker 5: it over the summer and we used a virtual wall
Speaker 5: to try to make the production value more and from
Speaker 5: that point to where we are now is shocking with
Speaker 5: what's happening with AI and visual effects mode AI. As
Speaker 5: I say, but we're basically trying to just elevate things
Speaker 5: to look better and to feel better and to travel globally,
Speaker 5: and I think you can. And this one in particular
Speaker 5: is very much like a action romance genre and Hanson
Speaker 5: and the Stone or something like that from back in
Speaker 5: the day. So you know the telenovelas they work for
Speaker 5: a reason. So for our company, we're working with like
Speaker 5: traditional TV and film writers in the space. But what
Speaker 5: ends up happening is when those scripts come in, they're long, right,
Speaker 5: So then I have a writer in Asia that consults
Speaker 5: for us, and she'll give very detailed notes and then
Speaker 5: literally I would say second or third past the writers
Speaker 5: hit it, and so that that's really good to see
Speaker 5: and the actors in the space that are working in
Speaker 5: the microdrama space or reading the scripts going this is
Speaker 5: actually really exciting for us because they're different stories. Like,
Speaker 5: I think what needs to change really fast is you know,
Speaker 5: like especially on our platform, we're not doing not abusing women.
Speaker 5: We're not slappy, and we're not drugging, we're not doing anything.
Speaker 5: We're not interested in that, We're not doing any of that,
Speaker 5: and that genre needs to change immediately. But I think,
Speaker 5: like aesthetically, back to your question, I think it's it's
Speaker 5: all about helping the filmmakers have the tools. To give
Speaker 5: them the tools and talk to them about it, about framing, style,
Speaker 5: light costumes, all that stuff will elevate it immediately.
Speaker 3: Wano. I just wanted to ask, do you see I mean,
Speaker 3: we have a Google TV at home, and you know
Speaker 3: we have the tiles like the Netflix and on the
Speaker 3: HBO Max, and do you see there being like a
Speaker 3: vertical drama? I mean, how much do you see this
Speaker 3: migrating to an actual television.
Speaker 4: The reality is that it has been happening for years.
Speaker 4: YouTube in the living room has been that from factor
Speaker 4: has been the fastest and largest for several years, even
Speaker 4: from the time that I was working there. We just
Speaker 4: recently launched about a month ago Instagram on Google TV,
Speaker 4: and that just speaks about the fact on how different
Speaker 4: generations are consuming the same type of content in different
Speaker 4: form factors, and that's something that we're very excited about
Speaker 4: in the platform. It's not only about the TV side.
Speaker 4: You can watch and make it available in the car,
Speaker 4: in your tablet, in your phone, smart speakers and different
Speaker 4: things nowadays. But what's going on is that social element
Speaker 4: of watching content. We believe that it's going to be growing.
Speaker 4: So what we're doing is we're catering to that type
Speaker 4: of content because at the end of the day, you
Speaker 4: cannot treat it the same way as you treat like
Speaker 4: huge ten poles from traditional media partners, and there are
Speaker 4: some elements in the back end that are doesn't work
Speaker 4: the same. So when you work on things that are
Speaker 4: very useful for users, like they continue watching role, that
Speaker 4: requires a lot of technical and edge work in the
Speaker 4: back end, and we don't have the elements in the
Speaker 4: past to work on that. Now we're working towards that
Speaker 4: and we're going to be able to provide that same
Speaker 4: experience but for vertical content. So I think what you're
Speaker 4: going to see this year and in the coming months
Speaker 4: is that evolution on our platform and Google TV on
Speaker 4: how you integrate not only script form but also social content.
Speaker 4: Will begin obviously with our first party service, which is
Speaker 4: the in house YouTube, but you'll see that roll out
Speaker 4: to all of our other partners, and then hopefully that's
Speaker 4: going to be a seamless way for you to connect
Speaker 4: and consume content. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: why I'm excited about this is this is going to
Speaker 4: be a way to showcase what's going on for a
Speaker 4: lot of people that perhaps are not yet consuming dot content.
Speaker 4: And the beauty again of Google TV, what I love
Speaker 4: the most is you get content that means something to you.
Speaker 4: With all the signals that we know about you as
Speaker 4: a user, you're going to be able to get something
Speaker 4: at the right time, at the right moment, and hopefully
Speaker 4: this is going to be part of that experience for
Speaker 4: the audience.
Speaker 3: Thank you both so much for this. This was a
Speaker 3: great conversation.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
Speaker 2: at the podcast platform of your choice. We love to
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Speaker 2: sign up for the free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and
Speaker 2: don't forget to tune in next week for another episode
Speaker 2: of Strictly Business.
Speaker 1: Get the entertainment you love with a little help from Google,
Speaker 1: no more jumping from app to app. Google TV is
Speaker 1: built into smart TVs and streaming devices that brings together
Speaker 1: movies and shows from all of your subscriptions. Need inspiration,
Speaker 1: get curated recommendations. Use Google's powerful search to find shows
Speaker 1: across ten thousand plus apps, or browse hundreds of free
Speaker 1: channels and with personalized profiles, everyone's experience is customized for them.
Speaker 1: Search for Google TV to learn more, or find us
Speaker 1: at a retailer near you.