The Media Odyssey

Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Odyssey Podcast. That is Marion Ranchet,

Marion Ranchet: and that is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: And we've got a really special episode of the podcast this week. We've got a great guest from Tubi, but first let's jump into why we are bringing Tubi on the pod.

Marion, you and I talk about this a lot. I just actually have given a couple of presentations about this recently, this melding that I think we both see of mainstream traditional media or trad media, as I like to say, and the creator economy into this kind of single ecosystem that the consumer just, they turn on a screen.

They don't really differentiate as much as they used to between social media and mainstream media, because their favorite celebrities very often, especially if they're [00:01:00] under the age of 40, tend to be creators.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: I think it's a little bit more prevalent in the US what are you seeing on your end of the Atlantic when it comes to this kind of stuff?

Marion Ranchet: I'd say, whether we're looking at US or Europe, I think this year has been instrumental in that shift, right? Because we've been chatting, you and I for years about finding ways to bridge that gap. And you hear it from traditional media and you hear it from creators, right? So I listened to Colin and Samir last year, and they were looking at, what's the way of building that bridge between the two?

And I think this year a lot of companies have done just that, but very often I agree with you more on your side of the ocean than us. Although I will say there's been a lot of trials and errors, but perhaps what we haven't seen is companies investing in staffing the organization to actually lead that conversation, right?

Because there's a difference between licensing a few creators content here and there, [00:02:00] and actually building a program around it.

Evan Shapiro: That's a really excellent point. 'cause you see Netflix, even though it's interesting, Ted Sarandos will say, YouTube's for wasting time.

And then he keeps signing every single YouTuber thing that his hands on. And then they just announce that they're gonna put Spotify video podcasts on the platform. And I've heard they're even going more aggressive than that, going out to the podcasting world. So it does feel like there's Creatordom being injected.

But to your point, it's a, there's a difference between kind of sprinkling creatordom on top of your mainstream platform and actually building a creator friendly ecosystem. And that's what we're gonna talk to Tubi about. And I, something I and it's not just because we have somebody from Tubi on the pod this week.

I have said this on the pod recently, I've said this many times, Tubi, especially when it comes to the AVOD, FAST world, seems to zag when everybody else zigs, right? They're mostly On Demand where everybody else is mostly linear. They started as a tech platform, not a content platform, [00:03:00] and have reverse engineered.

That's why they're, I think, really leading the pack as far as the fast folks go from an advertising standpoint. And then just this week on Fox's earnings call, they announced that they had their first profitable quarter ever. So I feel like they're an, a house of innovation. Anjali Sud, who runs the platform, is really frigging brilliant, ex of Vimeo. And I just feel like they're leading innovation in the AVOD space.

There are, obviously you have other players in the premium space and then you have YouTube as well. That's why I'm really excited to have their general manager of creator content and business joining us today, Rich Bloom, do you wanna join us on the pod here?

Rich Bloom: Hello. Great to be here today.

Evan Shapiro: Hi, Rich. Thanks for joining us. What the fuck is a GM of Creator business at Tubi? If you don't mind me asking. [00:04:00]

Rich Bloom: It's a good question. So to, it really reflects Tubi taking I think a unique approach with Creator. So we look at Creator as not just being a subset of content acquisition, we think about really creating a scalable creator ecosystem here.

So my team, which is a new team, I've been here for about six months and we're staffing up, is responsible for launching this creator program, and we really see it cutting across, in addition to content, product, we're starting to actually build products for creators both behind the scenes and for the viewer experience that are specific for creators marketing operations.

So we are taking a unique approach. I report into Anjali, our CEO and we do a lot of cross-functional work to really create a scalable, full-fledged creator program as opposed to simply licensing a group of creator content.

Marion Ranchet: And Evan mentioned at the top that you, of all of the platforms operating in free streaming, you had that edge, right?

You were already very much leaning into communities, that you were very genre based. So I think you, you understand fandom and passion really well, which I'm assuming you are, you decided to invest in that program not because it's hype or anything, but because you've seen potentially numbers from the way people consume or behave on your platform that led you to believe that they wanted more of a connection than that kind of one to many relationship that we traditionally have in mainstream media.

Rich Bloom: Yes. Yeah. And let me start, I can just give like a quick Tubi overview 'cause I think it's helpful to talk about how we think about fandom and serve fandom. So Tubi, like Evan said, we've been around for more than 10 years.

We've been part of Fox for about five years and we are, we are really an AVOD, an ad supported video on demand platform. About 95% of our viewing time comes from on demand video. About 5% is linear FAST, and that's really by design. We want an, we're building for an audience that's leaning in and really intentional.

We have over a hundred million monthly active users on the platform. We stream over a billion hours a month. We account for about 2.2% of viewing time in the US. So we have great scale, and then one of our biggest different differentiators is the breadth and depth of our library. So we have over 300,000 Hollywood movies and TV shows. And then now over 10,000 episodes of creator content and over 400 originals and about one in four viewers watching original a month. So even though it counts for a small amount of our library, we're getting a lot of engagement there. [00:07:00] But in general, we're not a hit-driven business. We have some hits, but we're really, it's taking that huge library that's really diverse.

And then we have really good technology and that's where like our Silicon Valley founding really helps. We have great technology using ML AI to surface the right content to the right viewer. And we talk a lot about creating rabbit holes of fandom. In all these different disparate areas, there's some,

Evan Shapiro: Yeah.

Yeah. It seems like other platforms are very afraid of niche. Like you say the word niche at a lot of these streaming platforms, and they like, get hives. But you embrace the niche. You embrace the kind of hyper fandom around not hyper niches people who appreciate certain types of content.

Yeah?

Rich Bloom: We do. And so I mean, we have fandoms around broad areas and then there's niches where we do really well [00:08:00] and we will continue to add to those rabbit holes by adding more content. And that's where creators come in. We saw 70% of Gen Z says they want more original, unique IP. And the number one place they point to for that is creators.

One of the big aha moments was last year, we had our most successful original ever was a movie called Sidelined. It was based on a Wattpad novel.

Evan Shapiro: Oh, wow.

Rich Bloom: And it had this built-in fan base from Wattpad. And then we cast Noah Beck in the lead role in his first acting role. And he wanted to make the transition. And Noah Beck is a really big TikTok star originally, who now has transitioned from that movie into an acting career. And that movie drove, it was most successful by almost every measure including driving a lot of new audience to us and a lot of returning viewers to us, [00:09:00] especially Gen Z viewers.

We also had a program last year called Studios where Issa Ray worked with us and it was this fan fueled process where 2,000 creators submitted ideas, and between us and fan voting, we picked four projects to green light as Tubi originals, and those are, some of them are out and some of them are coming out, but we saw so much engagement with that.

So the signals from some of what we had released, the clear signals we got from our Gen Z audience, and about 55% of our audience is Gen Z and millennial, which skews much younger for especially an ad supported streaming platform, and we have a really diverse audience, very multicultural, which is something we also really lean into.

So all that led us to believe that we had these signals. It wasn't just hype, that our audience really wanted creator content. [00:10:00] And that's really what led to me getting a job and us moving forward with this program a few months ago.

Marion Ranchet: And when you started working with creators anything that you've noticed that you were perhaps expecting or not?

We were at MIPCOM a few weeks back and you still feel that there's a bit of a misunderstanding as to the businesses that are behind those creators. We're still hearing this thing. It's just kids in the room, on YouTube. What can you tell about the creators that you know came through your door, whether that's those four projects you chose, or some of the partnership that you've signed ever since.

Rich Bloom: Yeah so we launched the program in the middle of June. So it's been what, about four and a half months. We started with six creators and a few hundred episodes of content. We're now up to over a hundred creators and over 10,000 episodes of content.

And we're working with professional creators. [00:11:00] We're working with creators who are generally already creating longer form content. We're,

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. That's a, now let's take a beat on that phrase. Yeah. Professional creator is like an oxymoron to most of mainstream media, but in reality, when you look at the work and the revenue that these folks generate, it is professional creator. That's a real legitimate phrase.

So I'm sorry I interrupted you, but I wanted to take that beat and circle that phrase.

Rich Bloom: Yeah. And there's a huge population of professional creators like this is their job. A lot of them have teams around them. I mean.

Evan Shapiro: You're talking to two right now, but

Rich Bloom: That's right.

And so look we think of creators at, they are the media startups of today, without a doubt. They produce content, they own IP. They have these huge fandoms. They have different ways to, they own or rent their audience, but they have access. They have this audience and built in fandom. [00:12:00] They have multiple points of distribution increasingly. They're media companies.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah.

Rich Bloom: So you know, what we've seen is. I'd say the first thing, our first, we started by bringing on creators to distribute content to us on a non-exclusive basis that they were already creating for other platforms.

And because we're focused on content that's 15 minutes or longer, it's, their for many of them, their primary, at least the main platform is YouTube. And we were, our value proposition was you can take the content you're already making, give us your catalog of content, if it's evergreen and we're mostly focused on evergreen content and then refresh the content on an ongoing basis.

It requires a little bit of editing work. We wanna take out things like calls to action of things like subscribe to my channel that doesn't make sense on a streaming platform. But it was, it's pretty low lift. [00:13:00]

And I would say, we really quickly got past that first question of are creators gonna wanna go through the process of working with Tubi and we've had a huge amount of demand and we've been really successful in getting lot creators on the platform.

Evan Shapiro: But also the question of will it work? So you were able to test, with that first batch of content to see what the adoption rate was from your users too, yeah?

Rich Bloom: Yeah. So we really wanted to see, we wanted to see do creators want this? And once we get this content on the platform, how are our viewers gonna react to it?

And now we can. confidently say we have enough data that this content is really resonating with our audience. So in general, what we're seeing are the viewers watching this content and new viewers coming in where the first thing they watch is creator content, skew younger from our already pretty young audience. And also the retention of these viewers is actually higher. [00:14:00]

The other thing we see is viewers who start by watching creator, one of the other questions was gonna be. When we talk about rabbit holes, it was, are we creating rabbit holes of just creator content? And the answer to that in general is no. What we're seeing in, we're seeing somebody might come in to watch a video from Watcher, for instance, who's a great creator in like the paranormal in horror space. And then they watch a Tubi original horror movie.

And we actually see over time the cohorts of viewers who start out watching creator content, continue to watch creator content, but watch an increasing amount of traditional Hollywood movies and series.

So we're creating these rabbit holes where viewers are watching this mix of creator content and traditional Hollywood content. And that's really the bet we're making. There might be some viewers who just wanna watch this unique, curated group of creator content. But in general, most of them [00:15:00] want this mix of Hollywood and creator content, and it's just one more sign to us that this delineation between creator content and Hollywood is becoming less and less meaningful for people in general, especially younger people.

Evan Shapiro: And especially when you look at, so that, they're the, what you're saying is the fan basically code switches, yeah. They come in maybe for creator and then switch to mainstream, or they come in for a mainstream movie and then switch to creator and that line gets blurrier and blurrier.

I think that's being accelerated by the kinds [00:16:00] of content that you're announcing now with your creators, which isn't just back catalog of videos from their YouTube channel. But it's original series, and some of them are continuations of series or in, in some cases like a movie kind of version of a series they've been making on YouTube. But these are series. These are serialized narrative stories very often or they're feature films very often.

And it seems like, the line gets even blurrier as they become much more like mainstream directors, producers, actors, writers. Is that, and is your sense in working with them that you're seeing that the kind of professionalism meet in the middle there?

Rich Bloom: Yeah, I mean, look, the production quality of content from creators has been increasing and is only gonna get better. And we're working with creators. We just announced a few different projects where we're bringing in original, exclusive content to Tubi, which was

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, with Kevin Hart and his production company. You announced a huge slate, right?

Rich Bloom: Yeah. So the first projects, yeah, four projects. Two, which are named. One is Kinigra Deon, who's this amazing creator. Who creates scripted content. She has a her a studio in Alabama. She, her story is amazing. [00:17:00] She moved to LA as she started getting into the space. Then when she had a certain amount of success, she moved back to Alabama 'cause she was like, I can have my own studio there and operate there.

And she makes these amazing scripted programs. She was one of our launch partners and we saw a lot of success with her content. And then Hartbeat, Kevin Hart's studio, was circling around this idea in a similar way to us, and we already do a lot of work with them on the traditional side.

So we're partnering on the slate with Kinigra Deon, and then the second creator is 85 South. Who're these amazing creators. Really funny, really hardcore built-in following.

And then there's two other projects that we're gonna collaborate and we're in the process of adding those creators. And look, the our, and then we've also announced this new slate of series, mostly scripted series. [00:18:00]

Evan Shapiro: Actually, so let's let's take a beat there.

Rich Bloom: We're announcing, it's seven more, seven series.

Evan Shapiro: Wow.

Rich Bloom: And look, our approach in general to how we're doing these is it's not like a traditional, original. So we are, there, a lot of times a streaming service or someone else will take a creator, match them up with a production company and basically make a traditional Hollywood production featuring creators.

We're, what we're doing with these, with this slate is we're basically, we're matching with creators that are a good fit. We either first see them perform well, like Kinigra Deon on the platform with non-exclusive content, or it's a new creator where we just see it like alignment. In general they have an idea.

And that idea typically [00:19:00] is either, I've been making this thing and I want on a different platform and I wanna uplevel it. Or there's something new I wanna make. And in general, they don't want to deficit finance it, but what they do want is creative control and to continue to have ownership of their IP. And usually they have to decide.

And we're trying to give them a, an option that's different. And we're not just, we're not just doing out of the kindness of our hearts. We think it's a smart business decision and a way to keep creators engaged and incentivized and happy to be working with us. And frankly, a competitive advantage. And just the thing that makes sense.

So the reason, one of the reasons why we wanna work with creators is they've proven they know what their fans want and we believe what broader fans that we can bring them want. So our approach is to basically, we're making a bet on the creator, their idea. We're giving them money to fund production for it, and it's generally in the [00:20:00] form of a minimum guarantee against a rev share in most cases. So they know that they're gonna get funding for it.

They also have some upside and incentive if it performs really well, and we're generally doing that in exchange for an exclusive window. And so we're doing the deal. We're giving them a delivery date. They're going and making it. On their own. We're working with creators that have the capability with them and their team to produce.

Evan Shapiro: So you're not doing rounds and rounds of notes with them.

Rich Bloom: There's no notes. If we get something delivered and it's

Evan Shapiro: Wow that phrase just sent chiills through Hollywood. No notes.

Rich Bloom: No notes.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. I'd love to hear the timing of it all as well, because, Hollywood is what, two, three years to get anything, done.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. What is the turnaround some of these projects? That's a good question.

Rich Bloom: Yeah. So look, I mean, I started in the middle of June, I, sorry. I started in the end of April. We launched the Creator program in the middle of June. We had our first original, actually our first exclusive launch, [00:21:00] on October 30th, a series called Blood Suckers Origin by this amazing creator Rock Squad who had already been on our platform with library content was about to go in production on it.

And we, I mean, we, we did a deal with them less than three months before it went live on the platform. So we're,

Evan Shapiro: They were already moving train at that point.

Rich Bloom: Yeah, but they weren't producing yet. They had their script.

Evan Shapiro: Oh, really?

Rich Bloom: And they had ideas about how to uplevel the production and we allowed them to do it by coming in.

And with these other projects, again we've only been doing this for about four and a half months. We have another project is with Kev on Stage who's a really creator, who's been around for a long time, who has a amazing, he's had shows on streaming platforms [00:22:00] on TV. At his core, he has these really strong communities on YouTube and social, and he has a long history of creating premium content that's generally behind a paywall. He has his own Patreon. I was previously at Vimeo running Vimeo OTT. He ran his own subscription VOD channel there.

So he typically, because of the level of work he wants to do, would put his content behind a paywall. And this is actually the first time he's making premium content that's gonna be available on a free streaming platform, which is also another reason why creators are finding it appealing to work with us in that it gives them the ability to be on a streaming platform, uplevel the work they're doing, but it's accessible to their fans in all the territories where they operate without someone, we're completely free. There's no paid tier. No friction. Someone can sign in or not sign in. [00:23:00] So that was another thing that was really appealing to Kevin and others.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah and something about, I mean worth mentioning about Tubi is unlike OEM operated FAST platforms, who shall go nameless, the only place you can get those FAST platforms is on those OEMs, whereas Tubi is available ubiquitously across all OEMs, at least in the US and a couple of other territories as well, UK.

And so you have basically ubiquitous distribution in these territories.

Rich Bloom: Yes. Yeah. And one of the advantages we have is, we've been around long enough that we've, we have really good real estate and big audiences. Which is a key thing, as a streaming platform to have that real estate on CTV.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it seems I mean, I used to ask this question at the beginning of every semester at NYU when I was teaching there, [00:24:00] which was who had watched certain platforms and I watched the rise of Tubi. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like few years ago, nobody knew what the hell it was. And then. And over the last couple of semesters and now it's closer to a hundred percent of the room of that target audience, which I think speaks to your demographic points from earlier.

By the way, you should note like 55%, millennials and Gen Z. That's a that's, a huge, that's higher than the United States.

Rich Bloom: Yes. Yeah, it's higher.

Evan Shapiro: So you over index for those generations. It's kind of impressive.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Yeah, that's, a lot of companies would want that audience, and I'm assuming advertisers as well. If I can double click on the way you work with creators is the fact that you are an ad supported business. How does that play?

I mean, these guys don't need to be preached on the value of advertising. They're often coming from social media and YouTube, but you guys you have [00:25:00] a rather low ad load. I think it's in comparison to the rest of the industry, I think we're talking four to six.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: Per hour.

But so what are you do, what you often say is that you're very data driven and that you can, even if you have a lower ad load, you are precise. You are, nothing beats that from other services. So how are you working with those creators? Do you see scenarios where you could do more experiential format?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah.

Rich Bloom: I think when it comes to advertising, we're, so our initial plan was really we're gonna launch this creator program. Start to build scale and then, we're running advertising against it, but start to have specific creator opportunities for our advertisers. What's happened is since announcing this program, [00:26:00] we've had an amazing amount of inbound interest of the idea.

We have this sort of pre premium experience with a curated group of creators, we're expediting that, we're accelerating that process a little bit. And we'll see. I mean, that, we're, already, as can be targeted to creator content. All this content, the way this content lives on Tubi, there's a home for it in an area on the homepage called the creator verse.

Where all this content lives. And a lot of people discover it there, but it's also living side by side, traditional Hollywood content in its corresponding genres. So it's getting a lot of exposure. And then, there could be opportunities to do certainly we're thinking about and there's a lot of interest from both the advertising community and the creator community for us to do other, look at other ways we can do interesting things with [00:27:00] creators on the platform.

The one other thing I just wanna hit quickly, we talked about the slate and I feel like I went on a tangent without fully talking about it, which is a big step for us. The other

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, let's dive in. You're talking about the series, the new series stuff?

Rich Bloom: Yeah. I just wanted,

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, let's go back to that. 'cause you have a really impressive big new slate and this is breaking news for us. Please walk us through 'cause it was, I read through it earlier and it's really exciting. I mean, it's great stuff and it's a mix of pure, original new IP and continuations of creator IP from other platforms.

Yeah.

Rich Bloom: Yeah. It's a really interesting mix in that case. And most of them are scripted, episodic, serialized series. So I mentioned Kev on stage, so our series from him SafeSpace launched last week. And it's this really funny show about couples therapy where he plays the lead therapist. And then we have a second series coming from him in a few months early next year called [00:28:00] Bald Brothers.

And that is these sort of improvised shows. That is, we're gonna, we have eight live episodes of that coming or sorry, taped live episodes of that. Another really

Evan Shapiro: That's in front of an audience that he's taping it?

Rich Bloom: That was in front of an audience. I saw him in New York a few weeks ago perform it. Every episode is different. There's this huge fan base for it.

Then another one is Joey Graceffa, who's like OG of a creator, and he has this hugely popular show, Escape the Night. It actually was a YouTube original initially and has continued to live on. He's produced, there have been four Seasons and we're, we actually have the exclusive on season five of it which is a short season.

And then we'll also, this is a key part of what we do when we talk about creating these rabbit holes of fandom [00:29:00]. We also will have the back catalog of the first four seasons. So that, it's a way for us to introduce it to a new audience and then have them, that's a big part of this in general, when we're working with creators, when we do an exclusive, we also wanna get their catalog so that somebody a new, we're bringing a new fan to watch their project, and then they can go down a rabbit hole of watching their other content.

So one of the themes across all these is in almost all these cases, these are scripted originals. We will be doing some, unscripted. But this is an, this is a place where we feel like there's an under-appreciation for how much talent there is with creators to [00:31:00] fully handle elevated production on scripted episodic series and we're really excited to continue to do work there.

Evan Shapiro: When you talk about elevated right? But let's frame this, which is, these are not [00:30:00] gargantuan budget. This is an up level for them, right? Yeah. So it's an elevated budget for them, but in context, both in time and budget, they're able to produce at a high quality, at a much lower cost per minute, and in much speedier turnaround than all of the major studios that we're traditionally used to seeing stuff from. Is that, am I getting that right?

Rich Bloom: Yes. Yes. So I mean, they're able to turn it around much faster, which is huge for us. It's cheaper. And look, the other piece of it is we find, and like I find from my past experience of working with creators where you're where they're elevating what they're doing and trying to appeal to viewers on new platforms and drive some of their fans to new platforms to watch their content. Even if we could give them bigger budgets and they could create something super slick for, not for all creators, but for most creators it's not what works. [00:31:00]

And the key thing is like we talk a lot about, we wanna give creators the this bridge to Hollywood while allowing them maintain their authenticity. And part of that is not departing like not departing too far from what made them successful in the first place. So that's another piece of it is like viewers view this, the production value is high enough, but viewers appreciate a little bit of grittiness in it, and they take that as authenticity and it's important as creators evolve.

In general, there's definitely exceptions to it. To take these steps of upleveling things and not suddenly create something that's totally different from what made them successful in the first place. For the most part.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, because that's what's appealing to those existing and new audiences, right?

The fact that they're, relatable and easy access. [00:32:00] People are looking for new things. I mean, what Hollywood does, Hollywood does. Folks want something else, something on top? So I get that, and I think that's perhaps the trickiest thing to do. During MIPCOM again, I interviewed a creator and all of a sudden he had, that was not a lot of money, but yeah, he, it was five times what he was usually spending, and even there he was like, I need to stay in my scrappy approach, otherwise I'm gonna, I'm gonna lose that authenticity that you were you were speaking to.

Evan Shapiro: It feels the scrappiness is something that the bigger studios and platforms need to lean into a little bit more with their own budgets, because you know when you spend $150 million on something, right? And some of these series can get even higher than that. Millions of dollars an episode. If it doesn't work outta the blocks, you've spent all this time, all this money on top of the marketing, [00:33:00] and then suddenly you've got nothing to show for it.

And I was watching an interview about the Roadrunner, the Coyote Acme movie that Warner Brothers shelved and is now putting out. like just that whole trauma around that film that doesn't happen in this sphere, which to me is a good segue into a project that we're working on together. Not you, Marion.

But me and Rick, about a year ago, I green lit a project, which we've talked about a little bit on this pod called Skit which is a creator led, creator produced, creator directed, creator starring film.

And it gets into a point like you're talking about some of those, one shoe, 7 million subscribers sounds like a lot, but it's really kind of a mid to small tier creator in the grand scheme of things. We brought you this project Skit, which we produced for $65,000.

Rich Bloom: Yeah. That's amazing.

Evan Shapiro: And said, here's a film [00:34:00] that's completely creator led, can we do a deal? And you decided to do a deal and we're launching it tomorrow.

Rich Bloom: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Another breaking piece of news. We're launching it tomorrow on Tube. I don't even know what time, but by the time you get home.

Rich Bloom: It'll be at, it should be at midnight.

Evan Shapiro: Okay, good midnight, turns up, it'll be up at midnight. Okay. Thank you. I'm learning something about my own film and and it, and we brought it to you and it's got a bunch of up and coming creators, but by no means household names. What made you what I mean, not to blow smoke up my own ass, but what made you attracted to that film?

Rich Bloom: It just checks boxes for what we're looking for, right? So it was, I mean, first of all, it was, it was really funny and inventive concept.

Evan Shapiro: Thank you.

Rich Bloom: It was the fact that, you made it on a very small budget, but it looks good. [00:35:00] But that you making it on that budget made your expectations, I think, realistic and made it easier to do a deal together.

And then the talent, the creator talent that you had in front of and behind the camera is really appealing to us. Like you said, these are not creators with millions of followers. They're creators with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of followers. And look, we talk about followers and subscribers a lot, and I think it's somewhat helpful as a top line metric, but it's really about engagement.

And so the thing we saw with the talent that you had involved in it is that they have really good engagement, right? They're getting a lot of views on their video, they're getting a lot of comments, there's a lot of engagement there, and they're on the rise.

And those are two of the big things we look at. And we're, we are, we have Mr. Beast on the platform. We're working with some of the biggest creators in the world and we do want to do that. We think that's an important ingredient. There's also a huge opportunity [00:36:00] when you go down to the torso of creators that have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of followers, but have really deep engagement.

And a lot of those creators have an even more passionate fan base. And there's this, that's definitely an area that we're really eager to plan. It's almost like a Moneyball situation where everyone's focused on the top creators and a lot of the creators that are not at that level aren't getting the same amount of opportunities.

And that's where, in addition to working with top creators, we see tons of opportunities and this really fit that. It was good storytelling. Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And then you're in the plot. And the plot kind of is a meta nice match.

Rich Bloom: It's very meta.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. So it's about the first generation of YouTube and about these three young women who try [00:37:00] to go viral on YouTube in 2007.

And so it, it's really about creators by creators and that's, frankly that's why we brought it to you is because we saw you get hired. We saw Tubi's, creator strategy building, and we thought this was just the perfect sweet spot. And then the nature of the deal, to your point from earlier, was really attractive.

So we're gonna get an exclusive window on Tubi, which helps us from a PR angle. It helps us from a promotional standpoint. You're gonna lean into it a little bit more than you would have had you had it non exclusively from launch. And then after we're done with that exclusive window, much like the rest of your slate there, we're gonna get out, get the opportunity to go out and make money elsewhere as well, and use the wind in our sails that you provided to us.

And then you look at these young creators. Lucas Arnold, who has about 4 million followers and actually was really active in the Mamdani campaign here in New York City. [00:38:00]

Rich Bloom: I saw that.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. He, and he, was like a really interacting and really proved, I think, think what you want about Mamdani, he was so good at the fandom, he was so good at the social media. And Lucas and Natalie Aukar, who's a really brilliant comedian, up and coming, she was named one of the comedians to watch by New York Magazine.

Rich Bloom: She's hilarious.

Evan Shapiro: And very funny. She was funny. Jamie Lynn Watson and a whole bunch of really young creators, including my daughter, Jamie Shapiro. Yeah. Who also produced it.

But the fact that you took a gamble on this young creator crew in a purely independent film. And then you look at the rest of the slate, it just feels like I, I was at the beginning of the independent film movement, yeah. Around when Quentin and the rest came up and it just feels kind of hearkening back to that, it feels like Sundance, [00:39:00] 25 years ago.

It does not feel like the bullshit that's going on in Hollywood right now. So for you to take a risk on a feature film like this. First of all, it was really gratifying for me and the crew, but it also feels like you're on the cusp of really creating a new, I think, golden era of independent artists in, on the platform that isn't just, Hey, kids, go put your shit up and hope someone finds it on YouTube or TikTok.

You are cur curating a real ecosphere, like you said, and creating all these tools. It's just, it's a very. I don't know, progressive and inventive and risk-taking thing.

Rich Bloom: One of the other things that was really appealing about your project was you already had almost a fully baked marketing plan for it. And we see that with some of these creator projects. They have really specific ideas of, this is how I'm gonna market it, this is how I'm gonna drive audience. Not in all cases, [00:40:00] but that's a big added bonus.

Marion Ranchet: And that often speaks to that bottom up approach about how they produce that piece of content, right?

They're really leaning into what their audiences and communities want, and then they think it through audience first from from the get go.

So amazing having you on, you've done this in six months. I mean, that's pretty impressive. Yeah. Congratulations. And that says a lot about what's gonna happen next, right?

When your [00:41:00] team grows bigger, when maybe you grow a bit more international. So what's gonna happen next in the next few months without giving us your secret sauce, what is gonna be your main point of focus.

Rich Bloom: I will tell you a big part of my secret sauce of being able to get so much done in the first six months has been Tubi as a business is really invested in this.

So I expected to come in and have to beg to make my case for resourcing [00:40:00] from product and engineering or from marketing. But I came in to an amazingly talented group of people that like were, really believed in this vision and are prioritizing it, and we're really working on it across the company that allows us to move really fast.

Look, we're we're just starting to do these exclusives. We're gonna do a good number of them, and we're really in a test and learn phase. Tubi for creators is not an experiment. Like we are that creators are core part of to be moving forward. But the details of what works best, that we're gonna test and we're gonna learn.

We're not gonna pretend that we have an exact formula, but the general tenets of the program will remain working with creators in a way that maintains their authenticity, gives them creative freedom. Except for maybe a few exceptions, when we do traditional originals, allows 'em to maintain ownership of their IP.

We're gonna continue [00:42:00] to move FAST, so you're gonna see us continuing to add creators. We'll add hundreds of creators and then decide what the right number of creators in general is. And you'll see us do a lot more original content that's exclusive to Tube and experimenting with different lengths of windows and figuring out what type of content works best. But we're gonna continue to move fast and just increase the universe of creators that, that we're working with.

Evan Shapiro: I think that leads us to a good moment here, which is our question of the week. We started talking about this melding of creatordom and mainstream media.

And then you talked about the core tenets of creatordom, which is test and learn. And then you talked about something that rarely happens in these instances when you come to these big companies is they under, sure you can go dabble in this, but we're gonna under resource the fuck out of it.

So it seems Tubi, inside Fox, [00:43:00] is really succeeding in this, or at least giving itself the best possible opportunity to succeed in this.

So my question is, can Hollywood truly move into the creator sphere? Can they adopt these creator tenants, or do we feel like Hollywood is, generally speaking, outside of Tubi, too stuck to make the move into full creatordom?

Rich Bloom: I hope that they're too stuck because right now it's an advantage for us. I think, look, I think what we're doing is, to me it's relatively intuitive. And I've worked with creators in different places for a while. I'm the concept of taking, creating elevated content on a new platform. So to me, this approach is just an intuitive approach.

I do think we're gonna see I think we're gonna see more and more [00:44:00] platforms. Certainly you're seeing this huge boom of almost everybody wants to work with creators. And I do think over time it's going to, this is gonna become more the norm of working with creators in a way that gives them more creative freedom.

In the meantime, it's a, it's frankly a good situation for us to be doing something that is unique in the space and we're gonna keep sprinting and working really fast to expand with creators while what we're doing is pretty differentiated from the rest of the market.

Evan Shapiro: It's a testament to the the courage and the vision of the leadership there. And I think it starts with an Anjali. And obviously, you were a great hire in this space. Thank you so much for partnering with us on Skit. Thank you so much for coming on here and giving us some breaking news about your new series. [00:45:00]

Everybody out there needs to watch skit on a loop starting at midnight tonight. Thank you for saying it was great. And we are really happy to be in partnership with you and we're really happy to have you on the pod.

Rich Bloom: Thank you so much for having me. It was great. And I'll be watching Skit tomorrow.

Evan Shapiro: Okay, good. Good. Marion, that was a great conversation. I think this is this is, you rarely see that kind of ingenuity allowed, having worked, having been an innovator inside a big corporate ecosystem, it's very difficult, as Rich said, to just get the resources.

Marion Ranchet: Absolutely.

Evan Shapiro: To get the attention, to get the backing. So I and I look at Tubi and I watch the moves that they make, and I just, I feel like they're not just onto something here. I think they're really giving themselves the best opportunity for success and create a leadership position in the ecosystem too.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. It's not just for show, right?

Evan Shapiro: It's not pretend. Most of them, it's just pretend. And I feel like Tubi

Marion Ranchet: Some are pretending, [00:46:00] some are trying, but as I said before, right? Is it a vertical as in, I'm licensing content, I'm, or are you really shaping your organization so that this is very much an integral part of the way that you do business.

And I think there's gonna be, to the question of the week, there's gonna be two types of companies, those who, yeah, they do it, and the Netflix and others are doing that. But this will remain a small portion of their overall business. And there's others who are gonna be fast and innovative and they're gonna take that spot.

And it seems Tubi, is yeah, is he's on, they're on the right track. I love that you said good that others are not so crazy about it,

Evan Shapiro: But everybody else makes a mistake. Yeah, right?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Absolutely. That's the value of being amongst the first right. So no, that was interesting.

And what I loved, and that's something that Tubi does, I interviewed Tubi UK, their MD a couple of months ago, and these guys are sharing data and that number on that 55% in terms of the Gen Z, millennial [00:47:00] demo or the retention points.

All of those things are fascinating. We're not hearing anything. We've have, we've had very little data on the performance of Beasts on Amazon. We've just had that one big click baby number and that's it. And we need numbers to understand whether that this merge of the two worlds is

Evan Shapiro: But to a certain extent the Mr. Beast example is the opposite of what Tubi is doing. And to, I understand why they did it, but on the other hand, that's also maybe the opposite of what you should be doing with creators. A hundred million dollars on one game show, Jiminy Crickets. That is, or Jiminy Donaldson. That is a very risky number.

Anyway I, we will watch and learn and do watch Skit, staring to at midnight, 12:01 tomorrow. Please watch as much of it you as you can so my daughter can become independently wealthy and leave me alone, frankly. And if you live in New York City, the entire cast of Skit is doing a standup show as part of New York Comedy Festival. The link is in the bio for all the information. It's gonna be a hilarious standup show starring the [00:48:00] entire cast of Skit. So if you're in New York, please click the link and come see the show and watch Skit.

Thank you very much for listening or watching The Media Odyssey Podcast. That is Marion Ranchet,

Marion Ranchet: And that is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: We'll see you next time.

Marion Ranchet: See you next week guys.