How Dhar Mann Turned After-School Specials Into A Billion-View Business

Summary

Channels with Peter Kafka – Episode Summary

Episode: How Dhar Mann Turned After-School Specials Into A Billion-View Business
Host: Peter Kafka (Vox Media Podcast Network)
Guest: Dhar Mann
Date: June 3, 2026

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Episode Overview

Peter Kafka sits down with Dhar Mann, founder of Dhar Mann Studios, to explore how Mann built a digital storytelling empire generating 1.7 billion monthly views. Kafka digs into the unique production model, the DNA of the content, the effectiveness of “after-school special”-style moral storytelling for digital natives, and the future of audience-driven studios versus traditional Hollywood. The episode is a comprehensive case study in savvy digital media strategy, creative iteration, and adapting brand identity across platforms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dhar Mann’s Origin Story & Studio Growth

• Dhar Mann started in 2018 by making personal, low-budget videos inspired by his own struggles and the desire to help others.
• Videos were initially produced solo, with friends and family helping out. Scripts were drafted on napkins, filmed on iPhones.
• The operation now boasts a 125,000 sq ft Burbank studio, over 65 sets, and churns out five hours of premium scripted content weekly.
• Mann’s approach: create an ecosystem for continuous production, instant audience feedback, and global distribution.
• Quote:

  “Everything just began in my small studio apartment. And now fast forward to today, we put out about five hours of premium scripted content every single week.” (Dhar Mann, 04:38)

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Format & Audience: The Modern After-School Special?

• Stories are "microdramas" with strong moral messages, reminiscent of after-school specials—but built for today’s rapid-consumption platforms.
• Mann asserts that while the 7–14-year-old demographic is significant, his content has “a very diverse, multi-generational and multicultural audience” (05:42), varying with platform.
• Quote:

  “...We cater to a lot of different types of communities and we do actually have a pretty strong, strong adult demo as well, depending on the platform.” (Dhar Mann, 05:46)

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The Value of Positive Content

• Mann receives regular feedback from parents grateful for safe, positive entertainment their kids can watch unsupervised.
• He’s proud to create content where positivity and moral lessons “win” in a landscape dominated by negative or sensational material.
• Quote:

  “One of my favorite things is when a parent tells me, you know, ‘Dar, I worry so much about what my child watches. But when they watch Dhar Mann, that’s the one time I say, you can go ahead and watch.’” (Dhar Mann, 07:27)

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Signature Story Structure & Audience Hook

• Stories don’t follow traditional narrative arcs. On digital, you “start with the climax,” then turn to a resolution—rapid audience engagement is essential for platforms with instant swiping.
• The villain/comeuppance motif is common, as are redemption arcs and relatable characters.
• Quote:

  “Our storytelling is very similar in terms of a traditional drama with a positive moral lesson, but everything is accelerated to work in the digital world... we actually start with the climax, then we go to a turn resolution.” (Dhar Mann, 09:53)

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Iteration, Virality, and Learning by Doing

• Mann made his first 100 videos before one went viral; his inexperience led to cost-effective, high-volume experimentation.
• Rejected the traditional (costly) production model in favor of scrappy, audience-driven creativity.
• Monetization was a surprise outcome rather than the original intent.
• Quote:

  “The only reason that I was able to get to success is because I didn’t know what I was doing.” (Dhar Mann, 12:46)

• On early viral landscape:

  “You didn’t see any sort of full scripted storytelling that existed on digital. So to my knowledge, we were the first digital storytelling studio. But it happened all by accident.” (Dhar Mann, 13:14)

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Platform-Specific Production & Distribution Model

• Content is meticulously adapted for each major platform (YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok):
  • Original “TV-length” episodes (22 min) are resized (down to 7 min or 1 min clips) for various platforms.
  • There’s a “reversioning” team and A/B testing for versions, hooks, duration, pacing, and thumbnails—mirroring sophisticated digital advertising tactics.
• Quote:

  “We’ll actually create about 25 different versions of every video... and then based on that testing is the actual content that we’ll publish on that platform.” (Dhar Mann, 20:15)

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Speed, Cost, and Scalability

• Full TV-length (22 min) videos can be produced in 7–21 days; some can be done in a week.
  • More ambitious or branded projects (e.g., with Samsung or Fox) take 30–45 days—still much faster than Hollywood.
• Production is fully in-house: ideation, writing, casting, sets, shooting, editing, etc.
• Typical budget for a 22-minute episode: as low as $50,000—about 1/100th the cost of traditional TV production.
• Quote:

  “We can create content in the $50,000 range for sure.” (Dhar Mann, 23:54)

• And the audience is massive:

  “...we’re getting more views than the Game of Thrones finale every single day.” (Dhar Mann, 24:24)

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Branding & Identity: To Be or Not to Be On-Screen

• The “Dhar Mann” brand’s origin was a practical choice; name recognition now conveys moral, positive storytelling more than Mann as an on-screen persona.
• Data-driven decision: viewers tuned out when Mann did on-camera outros, so he stepped back to focus on operations and scale.
• Brand identity is supported by signature storytelling, set design, editing style, and the unmistakable “moral twist.”
• Not all new initiatives (e.g., "steamy" microdramas for Fox) will carry the Dhar Mann label—branding is tailored to the project’s fit.
• Quote:

  “Ours is actually not dependent on me. So we are the first studio... that doesn’t have the same level of key [person] risk.” (Dhar Mann, 28:58)

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Spinning Off and Platform Expansion

• Recent diversification: only 40% of revenue comes from core social (20% from YouTube), as studio moves into agency work, brand partnerships, SVOD, FAST channels, microdramas, etc.
• Samsung partnership: 24/7 channel on Samsung TV (100M+ households), with original series ("Unlikely Romances") branded as Dhar Mann.
• Expansion strategy: “We are trying to build the next Disney... We will have our Disney animations, we’ll have our Pixar, we’ll have our Star Wars, we’ll have our Marvels.” (Dhar Mann, 36:39)

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The Traditional vs. Creator Studio Divide

• Mann positions creator studios as the vanguard, able to onboard traditional media talent, iterate faster, and jump across platforms.
• He predicts the line between Hollywood and digital creators is “disappearing” and urges traditional creatives to look for emerging opportunities in agile, creator-led studios.
• Quote:

  “The line between traditional Hollywood and creators is disappearing... those that are the most agile, those willing to learn new skills... are the ones that will succeed the most.” (Dhar Mann, 37:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Positive Moral Content:

  “My child often doesn’t listen to the lessons that I try to teach them, but surprisingly, they’ll sit through a Dhar Mann video and somehow they learn the lessons through those videos.” (Dhar Mann, 06:33)

• On Brand Trust:

  “It’s similar to when a parent sends their kid to go watch a Disney movie. You can know that you’re gonna expect certain brand safety, guardrail and positivity that’s gonna be a good influence on your child instead of negative.” (Dhar Mann, 07:27)

• On Production Agility:

  “We have a turnkey studio where every single component that’s required for filmmaking is in house... our team is able to collaborate and it’s the same team working together very often, we’re able to really expedite that production process.” (Dhar Mann, 21:00)

• On ‘Dhar Mann Story’ DNA:

  “Anytime there’s any sort of story or video out there that’s like that... that’s moral-driven... this feels like a Dhar man story.” (Dhar Mann, 31:19)

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Important Timestamps

• [03:32] Mann describes origins and humble beginnings.
• [05:33] Clarifies demographic reach beyond children.
• [07:27] On parental trust and the positive role of his brand.
• [09:53] Breaks down unique, fast-paced story structure.
• [12:48] On making 100+ videos before seeing success.
• [17:34] Explanation of platform-specific production methods.
• [20:15] Discusses rigorous content testing across platforms.
• [22:44] Shares episode production costs.
• [24:34] Asserts massive audience size vs. traditional TV.
• [28:58] On brand independence from on-screen talent.
• [36:39] Outlining plans for diversified content “like Disney.”
• [37:33] Advice for traditional creators in a changing industry.

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Episode Tone and Language

The conversation is informal, candid, and data-driven. Kafka pushes for specifics, especially around business sustainability and production efficiency. Dhar Mann blends humility about his accidental business acumen with pride in creating universally accessible, positive content. The overall tone is optimistic and pragmatic, with a focus on adaptability.

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Summary

This episode provides a masterclass in digital-first studio building, agile production, and audience-driven iteration. Dhar Mann details how he invented and then scaled a new format for moral storytelling, sidestepping much of traditional Hollywood’s bureaucracy and economics. With a nimble, in-house production model and a brand defined by safe, “positive” values, Mann's studio continues to expand across platforms and genres, providing both a blueprint and a challenge to established media. The conversation is essential for anyone interested in new media empires, brand-building in the age of algorithms, and the evolving DNA of storytelling success.

Transcript

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[Peter Kafka]

From the Vox Media podcast network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka.

[Interviewer]

That is me.

[Peter Kafka]

I'm also chief correspondent at Business Insider. Been talking to a lot of bosses on this show last few weeks. Before that, a lot of creators.

[Interviewer]

Today we are doing both.

[Peter Kafka]

Dhar mann started making YouTube videos in 2018 and today he's running an empire that spans multiple platforms, generating 1.7 billion views a month. If you were asking who is Dhar Mann and is that really his name? That likely means you don't spend much time with 10 year olds because Dhar Mann's videos are very big with that demo. Unlike other video stars kids love, Dhar Mann isn't doing stunts or pranks. Actually, he's really not appearing in his shows at all. These are narratives with a positive moral lesson. If you're very old, you might think of them as after school specials for the Internet era. Man has built an assembly line that can make these things in days and he says he can now make a 22 minute show, what we used to call a sitcom for $50,000 a pop. I don't know if that model is going to work for everyone, but it definitely works for him. Next up, trying to extend that model

[Interviewer]

for non Dhar Mann branded projects like

[Peter Kafka]

a bunch of microdramas he's making for fox. Which reminds me that we have to talk about microdramas on this show sooner or later.

[Interviewer]

But not today.

[Peter Kafka]

For now, here's me talking to Dhar Mann.

[Interviewer]

I'm here with Dharman, who is a person, I think if you have a, I don't know, Dar, what would you say? An 8 year old son, 10 year old son, you've been very exposed to and maybe if you don't have someone in that demographic you may not have heard about, but you're a giant. Tell us who you are.

[Dhar Mann]

Thank you. I am a content creator. I run one of the largest digital studios in the world. I started off not with the intention of trying to create a company or build a studio. I was really just starting off with a mission to try to help people that were going through some kind of tough time in their life. And so I was able to achieve that mission by basically telling my personal story of my struggles and how I was able to overcome them. I eventually built a community around people that were interested in also trying to figure out how to get over tough times that they were going through. And I sort of ended up as a scripted storyteller by accident just by asking friends and family members to be in videos while I shot with an iPhone and I would write little scripts on napkins because I had no filmmaking background. Everything just began in my small studio apartment. And now fast forward to today and we put out about five hours of premium scripted content every single week. We have about 125,000 square foot studio in Burbank with 65 plus sets. And we built an infrastructure that supports continuous production with real time feedback and global distribution.

[Interviewer]

So you are running your own studio with your name on it. My perception of it, it is primary. Maybe today we call them micro dramas because that's a trendy name to call them. But these have been short stories aimed at a young audience. Again, I'm guessing eight to ten, you tell me. And I think sometimes they're described as sort of like a modern version of the After School Special. I think that's usually meant in derogatory way. But these are dramas that are easy young people to understand that have some kind of moral lesson that entertains them. And you crank these things out. You said five hours a week. They're episodic. You're not the star of them. Correct?

[Dhar Mann]

Correct. I'm behind the scenes. So I started off as writing and producing and now more so I'm showrunning and just trying to figure out how to continue scaling the studio. Just for clarification, although we do have a sizable 7 to 14 year old audience, we actually have a very diverse, multi generational and multicultural audience. It just depends on the platform. So we're one of the most scaled creators across all platforms. We average, you know, about 1.7 billion views a month long form. So as you can imagine, we cater to a lot of different types of communities and we do actually have a pretty strong, strong adult demo as well, depending on the platform.

[Interviewer]

How do you feel about that idea of your work being described as after school specials and sort of aimed at a younger audience? I could imagine some people bristling at that, other people saying, that's great. I would love to be that big and that popular and have a brand that means something.

[Dhar Mann]

You know, as a father myself, I think I'm so proud to be able to put out content that inspires young people. You know, I meet so many parents that come up to me and they say, darling, my child often doesn't listen to the lessons that I try to teach them, but surprisingly, they'll sit through a Dhar Mann video and somehow they learn the lessons through those videos. And so now watching videos together has become a dinnertime tradition for us. And now I'm actually able to bond with my teenager in a way that I was never able to before. So it actually makes me really proud to know that the videos are resonating and especially that positive content is winning. Because as you can imagine, in the world that we live in, there's just a place plethora of negative content. And when I was starting out, people

[Interviewer]

tend to respond to a lot of negative inputs. I mean, people click on things they like, but they love clicking on things they hate as well.

[Dhar Mann]

One of my favorite things is when a parent tells me, you know, dar, I worry so much about what my child watches. But when they watch Dhar Mann, that's the one time I say, you can go ahead and watch. You know, I don't need to oversee what you're watching. It's similar to when a parent sends their kid to go watch a Disney movie. You can know that you're gonna expect certain brand safety, guardrail and positivity that's gonna be a good influence on your child instead of negative.

[Interviewer]

And how do you describe what you make if someone has never heard of you and they say, what is a Dhar Mann Video. And you just wanna explain it in plain English.

[Dhar Mann]

I'm a storyteller, so I'll give you a very quick story. I used to feed homeless people when I lived in downtown la. Every Tuesday night with my wife. And one night when I was out, I saw this homeless person who had his eyes closed. And I wasn't sure if he was sleeping, if he was awake. I decided to put a in front of him. And then I walked away. And a business person in a suit comes up to me and says, hey, look around. Look at how many homeless people are all over this block. Do you know how many homeless people there are in downtown LA or all over the state or all over the country? Do you really think that your work is making any difference? And that hit me, and I thought, huh, maybe this doesn't make any difference. Maybe I should stop.

[Interviewer]

You didn't ask, hey, why are you walking up to me and asking why I'm giving food to a homeless person?

[Dhar Mann]

And you know, in that moment, that homeless person who I had just put that meal in front of came up to me and said, excuse me, sir, I had closed my eyes because I was praying to God that I did not go to bed hungry tonight. And when I opened my eyes, I saw food sitting in front of me. So I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I looked at the businessman and I said, you know, it mattered to that person. Right? So with our stories, they start with the moral. They start with some sort of a lesson.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. You just described what seems to be a very Dhar man type story, right? Where, like, the villain would be the businessman.

[Dhar Mann]

It's not always who gets a comeuppance,

[Interviewer]

but, yeah, often, right. You go and you have the sort of. The way you describe these in the thumbnails, it's often, you know, girl gets shamed, rich kid learns lesson. There's always kind of like kind of a villain that you kind of want to see get punched. Metaphorically, Right?

[Dhar Mann]

And there's usually a redemption arc as well. And as you can imagine, whereas traditional media, you get a lot more time to engage a viewer because those audience behaviors are a lot different. If someone's going to the movie theaters, you have a lot more time to get them interested in what they're going to see and hook them before they decide that they're going to get up off their seat and walk out of the theater. But on social media, we're constantly at the mercy of just swipe. Right. The easier it is on the platform to get to the next video, the faster you have to try to engage the viewer. And so our storytelling is very similar in terms of a traditional drama with a positive moral lesson, but everything is accelerated to work in the digital world where our story structure is slightly different. Whereas we don't start with inciting, incident, rising, action, climax, we actually start with the climax climax and then we go to a turn resolution. And so the story framework is a little bit different, but it's the same principles of storytelling as traditional.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Let's talk a bit about the nuts and bolts of how you got to this model. I want to talk about, let's stay with the storytelling element. This idea of, like, oh, we've figured out how to compress a story and we're actually lopping off parts that people thought were traditionally important for a narrative. And oftentimes are we're gonna go without those. How long did it take you to get to that style? How many times did you have to sort of refine it and get to that place?

[Dhar Mann]

It took me about 100 videos before I finally got one to go viral. And if I had approached things as traditional filmmakers would, where I was on a budget, I was doing everything, you know, out of my studio apartment. I had, you know, less than $1,000 in my bank account when I started. I still remember going to Best Buy and buying a box, a set of, and my webcam, and that was half the money in my bank account. I started out very scrappy. And so I was a one person team in the beginning that was just talking to camera, trying to tell moral lessons. And if I had approached filmmaking the way that is traditionally done, if I had the knowledge of doing so, or if I looked it up, I would have hired a writer to create a script. I would have rented expensive gear, rented expensive locations, casted actors. I would have maxed out every single credit card or line of credit that I could get. I would have spent all my money on one film. And then, you know, with the likelihood that that one film would not work, which it wouldn't, because I had such a learning curve ahead of me, I would have basically been bankrupt. The only reason that I was able to get to success is because I didn't know what I was doing. And I started off as scrappy as possible with me just talking to camera about my own life lessons.

[Interviewer]

When did you start?

[Dhar Mann]

I started in 2018, as of. So it'll be eight years in nine days.

[Interviewer]

So 2018. It's not like YouTube and digital media are a new thing at this point, was there a model you were using? I wanna replicate so and so's success. I like the way this person makes videos. I wanna be the next so and so.

[Dhar Mann]

At the time there were certainly like podcast clips that were going viral on Facebook. You would see people that had different style of almost like poetry to communicate different life. And sometimes you'd see some sort of stock footage that was mixed in, but you didn't see any sort of full scripted storytelling that existed on digital. So to my knowledge we were the first digital storytelling studio. But it happened all by accident. Again, it wasn't like I had a goal and I thought that this was gonna be a way to build a business and make money because I didn't even know that at that time you could actually make money from having viral as known. Back then people still thought that the only way that influencers and creators got money was through brand partnerships. I didn't know that it could be meaningful in terms of just the adsense revenue that you get from the platforms.

[Peter Kafka]

We'll be right back with Dhar Mann. But first, a word from a sponsor.

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I think parenting is the most important job in the world and the one that has the most impact on your world and the world.

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[Ben Shapiro Segment Narrator]

In the span of a decade, Ben Shapiro built the Daily Wire into a conservative media empire. He produced hit podcasts that bit at liberal excesses and documentaries and lectures about the founders, the genders, the gospels. He peddled polos, hats, candles, provided a home for deplatformed conservative stars like Matt Walsh and minted stars like Candace Owens. Let's put a pin in that. The Daily Wire even has kids programming a judgmental puppet named Zoodles Zoodles, who shares Shapiro's load bearing eyebrows. This year, though, the empire showed signs of collapse. The Daily Wire's YouTube videos are down from millions of views to the low five figures, Web traffic is plummeting, and recently Shapiro laid off 13% of his employees. Asked by the Washington Post what had happened, Shapiro accused other conservatives of click whoring by embracing radical Islam, theorizing about the evils of Winston Churchill, and mocking the widow of Charlie Kirk. The kid still got it on Today explained. The fall of Ben Shapiro Today explained. Drops every weekday afternoon.

[Peter Kafka]

And we're back.

[Interviewer]

So I feel like, especially in la, over the years I've gone into a gazillion different studio spaces that were created by digital upstarts. Sometimes it's YouTube, but all the way down to really small operators. And the idea was we're going to change the way content is made and we could do it more efficiently. And we're going to own the studio and we've got a model that works. And most of that stuff has not worked over time. So I'm trying to figure out what makes your version of it sustainable. So maybe you can just walk us through how an individual video gets made. How long is an individual video?

[Dhar Mann]

So we have different divisions within the company now. You know, we do short form content as a lot of creators do, and those videos are like the TikTok length videos that you see that are going to be 30 to 60 seconds. Our next shortest division is Facebook. We gear everything towards what platform we're trying to optimize for. So Facebook, we've seen success for videos that are between 3 to about 12 minutes long depending on the algorithm changes that are taking place in any given month. But right now that's the sweet spot for YouTube. All of our content is about TV length episodes. So that's about 22 minutes. And then, you know, in our first.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. And that's the stuff I've been mostly exposed to is the idea that you're making one piece of content and then slicing it different into different shapes for different platforms.

[Dhar Mann]

That is true, but we typically have a platform in mind that the content is being created for first. But we're very fortunate in the fact that we are universal storytellers. You know, the things that we hit on are universal truths. Like the kindness you put out into the world always comes back to you. What happens in the dark always comes to light. Or back to my example earlier, you may not be able to change the world, but you can change the world for one person. These are universal stories and truths. So we're able to succeed cross platform and on a global scale. So the same type of stories are actually succeeding all over, whether that's YouTube or Facebook or Snapchat or Spotify.

[Interviewer]

Right. Just what I was trying to get to was do you start from scratch when you make a Snapchat or Facebook video, I'm assuming you're taking the 22 minute YouTube video and cutting it to a size that works for Facebook.

[Dhar Mann]

The original content we're making is primarily for YouTube and Facebook and that's because

[Interviewer]

biggest audience and biggest revenue.

[Dhar Mann]

Exactly. So we have two primary long form divisions. One that focuses for digital, so one that focuses on YouTube first content which skews to a younger audience and then one that focuses on Facebook first audience, which skews to an older audience. But that content is distributed across all platforms. And to your point, we'll take a 22 minute YouTube video and we'll cut it down to seven minutes to make it work for Facebook. Or we'll cut it down to one minute clips to make it work on TikTok. So we actually have a whole reversioning team and everything is, you know, it's a quite sophisticated process where everything goes through a rigorous testing process. So we're not just shooting in the dark. Like we'll actually create about 25 different versions of every video. We'll run tests on Facebook to see which version performs better. Whether that's testing for different hooks or different durations or different pacing. And then based on that testing is the actual content that we'll publish on that platform.

[Interviewer]

Same as a digital advertiser trying out different fonts and taglines and stock art to see which one gets the best response.

[Dhar Mann]

Exactly. And we'll do that for thumbnails as well.

[Interviewer]

So Walk me through a 22 minute video. How long from ideation to the finished edit does that take? How many people touch it? And what's your budget for a piece like that?

[Dhar Mann]

Yeah, great question. So, you know, whereas traditional filmmaking can take years to bring about a TV length episode for us, we're able to iterate within 21 days. And so from the very first start of a script, we can go to screen in the matter of three weeks. And that is our longest degree division. So right now we're able to operate on a seven day cadence for our Facebook division. And if for some reason there's some sort of thing happening within culture or some collaboration opportunity or some brand partnership opportunity, we can actually squeeze and compress those timelines even more. The reason for that is because we have a turnkey studio where every single component that's required for filmmaking is in house. And so whether that's ideation or writing or producers or casting or set deck or set building, an art team, stunt choreography, studio, teachers, directors, shooters, editors, gaffers, you name it, we have everything in house. And because our team is able to collaborate and it's the same team working together very often, we're able to really expedite that production process. So anywhere between 7 to 21 days per TV length episode, I would say for our divisions, where we are going for longer content or higher quality, such as our partnerships with Samsung or Fox, where we're going into original content for fast channels or vertical drama films, those projects can take about 30 to 45 days still on a much faster timeline than what you're traditionally used to.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I want to talk to you about the Samsung and Fox stuff in a second. But sticking with the core of your business, which is, I'm assuming is these 22 minute YouTube videos, give me a ballpark of what an episode costs you to produce.

[Dhar Mann]

Yeah, so just to clarify, I would say actually YouTube is now not the core of our business. You know, our business has diversified quite a bit in the past year, especially as we brought on folks from traditional media such as, you know, our CEO Sean Atkins, who used to be the president of mtv.

[Canva Sponsor]

So

[Dhar Mann]

our business is quite diversified in the sense that about 40% of our revenue now comes from social, about 20% comes from YouTube. We have an in house agency, we have a brand partnerships division, we have svod, we have fast, we have vertical dramas. But yeah, to answer your question, it depends on the ambition of the project. And so for us, it's hard to say exactly what that budget is, but I would say we operate at about 1/100 the of whatever traditional media is.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, that's where I wanted to get at. Right. Because we're still in a world where a Fox sitcom. I think their budgets are still in the $2 million an episode range and they're trying to figure out how to get that down. I mean, are you talking 50,000, 100,000? Much less than that for an episode.

[Dhar Mann]

We can certainly create content at that budget. It really depends on what the project is. And what excites me about these different platforms that we're partnering with or us being able to take on brand. Brand partnerships is they're able to allow us to have much more ambitious storytelling. So we're able to go with bigger budgets. But to answer your question, we can create content in the $50,000 range for sure.

[Interviewer]

For a 22 minute. What you think is the sort of equivalent of 22 minutes of television. You can do it for 50,000 bucks on YouTube. It serves your audience and they're happy with it. They're not saying, oh, this seems like a YouTube show. This is just a show they like.

[Dhar Mann]

It's certainly possible and I think the numbers certainly speak for themselves. Sure, we could invest more in bigger scenes and more actors and bigger production and more expensive gear, but at the end of the day, we still are averaging, what is it, over 40 million daily long form views. And just for perspective, that means we're getting more views than the Game of Thrones finale every single day. And on a weekly basis, we're getting about two times the super bowl audience. So to some degree the numbers speak for themselves in terms of the audience interest in that content.

[Peter Kafka]

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[Peter Kafka]

And we're back.

[Interviewer]

Talk to me about branding and why these things are called Dhar Mann shows and why you're not in it. And how do you think about sort of people knowing what a Dhar Mann video versus clicking on a thumbnail and having no idea that it's a Dhar Mann video? And if those brands mean different things on different platforms? Like do you expect the Samsung audience to know who you are in the way that a YouTube audience may not even know who you are, but they know what a Dhar Mann video is?

[Dhar Mann]

Great question. So the reason it's called Dharman Studios is because again, I didn't start off with the goal of trying to create a studio or a company. I started off with the goal of just trying to help people. And in the beginning I was just talking to camera as a one person team trying to get people. It just was me. And at some point as I started receiving income from Facebook, I realized that, oh okay, well I need to have a company because when it would ask you what's your company name? I didn't want it to say Darman. So I was like, oh well, why not just put Studios at the end? And I think my logic at that time was Walt Disney put studios at the end of his name. So I would love to say that I had the foresight that this was going to become what it is today, but I certainly didn't. And the decision to not have me on camera started as a simply data analytics decision. So when I would look at the retention graphs because of my original videos, we'd have like a scripted show and then at the end, I would pop on and give some sort of a moral lesson that says, here's what this video is teaching us. And whenever I would see our retention graphs, as soon as I would come on at the end, as soon as

[Interviewer]

you pop on screen, everyone clicks off.

[Dhar Mann]

Ironically, if I'm in the beginning, almost like the Wonderful World of Disney where Walt would start off a show, we don't see drops in retention if I'm to start.

[Interviewer]

But just because I know you're getting off screen soon.

[Dhar Mann]

Exactly, that's why. And as I thought about it, I was like, this is actually quite a superpower because while most creators businesses are talent led or talent based, I should say, ours is actually not dependent on me. So we are the first studio that's really the first creator studio at scale that doesn't have the same level of key.

[Interviewer]

And that's intentional.

[Dhar Mann]

And that's intentional. It happened by accident to start with, right? In the sense that I wasn't trying to get myself off of screen. I was just listening to the audience. And that listening to the audience has never really stopped. That's always core in our DNA. And that what makes us so different than I think how traditional media operates is we're able to get instant feedback from our audience and iterate around that feedback loop constantly. But as I started seeing what the data was suggesting, and then as I realized that, hey, I could be on screen talent and do one film a week, or I could write and do four films a week, right? Or if I could find writers, then I could probably oversee 12 films a week. And if I could hire showrunners, then I could oversee 24 productions a week. Right? So as I started thinking on a bigger scale, I just basically started hiring the necessary people that allow allowed storytelling to continue to exist without me. But there's still a certain Dhar Mannish DNA that's in every one of our stories. Just to give you an example, I'll get tagged in movies or stories on social media where if there's some like, have you seen that Selena scene where she goes into a designer store and then she wants to get a nice dress?

[Interviewer]

And then the shaking my head sadly, but no, I do not know what you're talking about.

[Dhar Mann]

So Selena is one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She walks into this fancy store, the salesperson judges her and says, hey, you're not gonna be able to afford anything because Selena is dressed down. And then as Selena's leaving now, hundreds of fans rush up to her and the salesperson is like, wait a second, who are you? Right. So the whole point of it is don't judge a book by its cover. So anytime there's any sort of story or video out there that's like that, that's moral driven.

[Interviewer]

Ultimately, it's a very Dhar Mann story.

[Dhar Mann]

And they'll be like, this feels like a Dhar man story. This feels so I would say our brand and DNA is the moral storytelling. But there are certain sort of brand trademarks that also are easy to identify. So for instance, even though I'm not in the shows, the fact that our sets are like, if we have influencers come in to use our sets for one of their videos, all the comments are going to be like, you're at Dhar Mann Studios. You're at Dhar Mann Studios because they recognize our sex. Also our way of storytelling in terms of our format, you know, follows a certain arc that is also identifiable. Our retention, our score, our way of editing everything. Our everything is a brand element that our community is so engaged that they're able to identify.

[Interviewer]

And so that branding is important to you. You think it does move from platform to platform? Because what I was sort of getting at is you have a huge audience, but there's also a huge audience audience that doesn't know who you are. They're like me five years ago, when my kids say they're watching a Dhar Mann video, I'm like, what is that? Is that a person? Is that. And as you move to more platforms, you do more deals. Is your. Is the hope my brand will move from platform to platform? I have enough fans that they are going to sort of move around and proselytize on my behalf, or I'm making stuff that I expect people to click on if they've never heard of me and they're coming to me for the very first time time.

[Dhar Mann]

I think if you can succeed on digital, that's one of the hardest places to succeed, right? Because there are no gatekeepers. It's a direct relationship with your audience. There's no one within a platform that's going to say, hey, I'm going to push you to the top of our most interesting or new and noteworthy. You're really at the mercy of the audience and their interest. So I would say anyone who can succeed on digital has a much more likelihood of succeeding elsewhere. Second, we're actually fortunate enough to get some early data that that indicates that our content is successful in other platforms. So one could argue YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Spotify, all these are different platforms with their own audiences and us versus international. And we've been able to succeed in all of these different platforms and all of these different audiences. But now as we for instance, our very first partnership to go into the fast channel space was with Samsung. We are the first creator to partner with Samsung to create an original series for them. It started off with us just having our existing catalog as A24.7 on Samsung TV where we reach over 100 million households. And just from the early data that we've gotten, it's been a very successful two way partnership.

[Interviewer]

That Samsung platform is sneakily giant does not get talked a lot about on shows like this. When I talk to people they say no, that's a real thing. People are really consuming a lot of

[Dhar Mann]

stuff and I'm getting so many people that now have discovered me through Samsung and now that we're going to start our brand new series that airs next month in June. You know, the series is called Unlikely Romances. And so what does a Dhar Mann story have? You know, there's a lot of conflict, there is irony, there's some sort of a twist and is moral lesson. Right. Unlikely Romances was inspired by my own love story. I'm an Indian Sikh man who grew up in a very conservative family and married married a Hispanic girl that follows a Christian faith. Very different upbringings and cultures and that was hard for certain people to accept. So the whole idea was love doesn't always follow the rules.

[Interviewer]

And is that branded as a Dhar Mann production?

[Dhar Mann]

Correct. So that is very much.

[Interviewer]

I still expect that that brand moves from platform to platform.

[Dhar Mann]

Exactly. But there are times where you, if we want to go beyond, let's say the morality based storytelling or with our partnership with Fox where they want US to produce 40 vertical films for them as anyone who knows the space, the microdramas, anyone who knows the space, those are more steamy romances. And so one of the early indicators again because we are so audience first driven, I don't decide that we're going to go into this opportunity just because it seems interesting. I start with what is our audience want to see. And so we started polling our audience on Facebook and saying are you interested in microdramas? And we found that over 75% of our audience was already watching microdramas. And on average our follower on Facebook was spending $5 a month on that platform. So to me that was an indication that our audience wants us to move into microdramas. And as we had different discussions with all the top microdrama players. Some were very much like, no, we have have to go into steamy romance. We have to have these very intimate scenes. And that didn't feel like quite a fit for our brand. But with Fox, we were able to come up with an agreement where some would be steamy romances and those would not be branded Dhar Mann and others. They'd be more so like PG13, I would say. And those would be branded Dhar Mann. And so it just depends on the type of content as to whether the name would be there. But I wouldn't say that we're only limited to morality based dramas. How I see it is as if we are trying to build the next Disney. We will have our Disney animations, we'll have our Pixar, we'll have our Star wars, we'll have our Marvels. Different. Yeah, exactly.

[Interviewer]

Last question for you. You are based in la, correct? Tons of stories. And I've done some about just the relentless sort of negative outlook in the traditional Hollywood industry. TVs, movie production's way down, production's moving out, People are worried about losing their jobs to AI that they're training a. You are here presenting a different story, saying, look, I'm growing really fast, I'm making a ton of stuff. Is what you're doing a realistic sort of option for a meaningful number of people who grown up learning how to make traditional Hollywood content, Making television shows, making movies? Or is there some skill set that's particular to you that isn't available to somebody else?

[Dhar Mann]

Absolutely. I would say that that Hollywood and traditional media is not disappearing. The line between traditional Hollywood and creators is disappearing. And we found tremendous success when we actually bring those two worlds together. Such as before I started hiring folks that came from the traditional world, 95% of our revenue two years ago depended on YouTube and Facebook. And now between those two platforms combined, less than 40% is dependent on it because we were able to build a studio that thinks even beyond digital. And so I would say there's so many opportunities for people that come from traditional media that have tremendous experience that creators such as myself are looking for. So you just kind of have to see where the rising opportunities are. Whether that's a creator led studio, whether that's microdom dramas, it's always just shifting from one place to the next versus disappearing. And those that are the most agile, those that are willing to learn new skills and consider new opportunities, are the ones that will succeed the most.

[Interviewer]

Dhar Mann.

[Maria Sharapova]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What's the best way? Should I say call you, Dar. Do I call you Mr. Man? Dhar Mann? Great to see you.

[Dhar Mann]

You can call me Dar. Thanks, Peter. I really appreciate it.

[Interviewer]

Thanks for your time. This is great.

[Dhar Mann]

This is awesome. Thank you.

[Peter Kafka]

Thanks again to Dhar Mann for joining us. Thanks to Charlotte Silver for producing and editing. Thanks to our advertisers to keep this thing chugging along. Thanks to you guys for listening.

[Interviewer]

See you soon.