← Channels with Peter Kafka
Channels with Peter Kafka
Janice Min on Hollywood’s Crisis; Reed Duchscher on the Creator Boom
01:07:43
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- [00:01]
Peter Kafka
When you think of someone with adhd, who comes to mind?
- [00:04]
Janice Min
Is it a woman in her 30s? Just this constant feeling of being too much, you know, too kinetic, too loud, all of the too anything and just really feeling like people got some kind of social rulebook that I never got.
- [00:19]
Peter Kafka
The Changing Face of adhd.
- [00:22]
Janice Min
That's this week on Explain It To Me New Episodes Sundays Wherever you get your podcasts
- [00:31]
Reid Duxer
AI can Fix Healthcare I'm Henry Blodgett and this week on my show Solutions, I had a fascinating conversation
- [00:38]
Peter Kafka
with Dr. Bob Wachter, author of A
- [00:41]
Reid Duxer
Giant How AI is Transforming Healthcare and what It Means for our future. Dr. Wachter was not expecting to be an AI optimist. What convinced him? Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:54]
Janice Min
To hear more this week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm taking you inside my sold out New York City book tour stop for my brand new book well Endowed. I sat down with the hilarious Heather McMahon for a night of laughs, real money talk and honest financial truths. We're getting into everything the book covers from how to actually build wealth, how to protect it, and how to stop leaving money on the table. Whether you've already grabbed your copy of well Endowed or you're still on the fence, this episode will show you exactly why everyone's talking about it. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF.
- [01:33]
Peter Kafka
From the Vox Media Podcast network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka. That's me. I'm also chief correspondent at Business Insider. Today we are getting two very different but overlapping looks at the state of Hollywood and entertainment and where things are going. First up, a chat with Janice Min, the CEO of the Ankler, the excellent entertainment trade pub she co founded about four years ago. I wanted to talk to her about her business and how the transformation from we have some newsletters to we have lots of products and lots of revenue streams is going. But I also wanted to talk to Janice to get a vibe check on Hollywood, which she has been covering for decades. So yes, we talk about the latest maneuvering with Paramount and Netflix and Warner's, but we're really talking about the way the people in her industry actually feel. Her answers are glum and bracing. You should listen to them. Then I talked to Reid Duxer, the founder of Knight Talent Agency, built specifically to work with the next generation of talent, all of which is coming from the Internet. Duxer is best known as the guy who helped turn Mr. Beast into a giant business and now he works with other big YouTube twitch names like Kai Sanat and Hasan Piker. This is partly a conversation about how to build a digital version of traditional talent agencies like caa. And those agencies, by the way, are doing their own digital work these days. And it's partly a conversation about how the digital platforms like YouTube and TikTok actually work. Which ones help you build an audience, which ones can help you turn that audience into money. So that's a lot in one free podcast. You're welcome. Let's get right to it. Here's me talking to the Ankler's Janice Minn. Janice Min, you're the CEO of the Ankler. Welcome back to the show.
- [03:18]
Janice Min
Thanks for having me, Peter.
- [03:20]
Peter Kafka
Two things I like to do on this podcast are talk to people who really know how Hollywood works and. And talk to people who are building their own indie media businesses. So we got both in one interview. Thanks for joining us.
- [03:32]
Janice Min
Oh, my God, my pleasure.
- [03:33]
Peter Kafka
We have news to discuss. I want to talk to you about how the Ankler's going, but I want to talk to you about the state of Hollywood this morning. We're recording this on Tuesday. We have news that, yes, Warner Brothers is formally going to entertain an offer from Paramount and that has to get done over the next week. And then Netflix can respond to the Paramount offer. If I had to make you bet right now, today, February 17th, who is Warner Brothers gonna go with eventually on this deal? Not who's gonna win the deal. Not who's gonna own Warner Brothers in a year. Cause that's a regulatory question we can't answer quite yet. But who do you think the Warner Brothers board is going to decide to sell to, Paramount or Netflix?
- [04:13]
Janice Min
Doesn't it really depend if Netflix decides they're going to step it up? And so far it seems like they will. But I think they've also proven you and I both know Netflix is also a pretty ruthless company. Season two isn't working out for it's not driving as many subscribers as Season 1. Your show is canceled. Reed Hastings, famous keeper test. You aren't performing well. You're out. And at some point, you look at the share price of their stock and shareholders are not loving this. They're not loving this pursuit of Warner Brothers. At some point, they will cut it off. And as much as it's been fun to, you know, quote unquote fun for them, I think, like, go take the picture of the of Greg Peters, Ted Serranos and David Zaslav walking on the Warner Brothers slot, I do think that even Ted testifying in Congress, in front of Congress last week beginning to feel not fun, less fun. And I feel like at some point they're a very pragmatic company. They will not end up in what I would call a Disney Fox situation where another bidder can bid them up to a point and at that point, and with Fox, it was Comcast and push them into a place where they overpay and the whole thing kind of never really can be justified to shareholders.
- [05:42]
Peter Kafka
Yeah, I was surprised at that Netflix hearing. It seemed, I mean, Ted Sanos has not done many of many of those. It seemed like he was a little bit under prepared. I mean he certainly had prepped for it. But there was a document that you could get on deadline.com from the Heritage foundation which said here's basically all the ways we're going to attack Netflix, which I could read. You didn't seem like he'd read it. But, but leaving that aside, there, there's a conventional wisdom, I think among the smart set, you were in the smart set that Netflix would really like this deal and that Paramount has to have this deal. Do you agree with that?
- [06:20]
Janice Min
I do agree with that. Because if you're David Ellison and you've assembled probably the most expensive leadership team in history and it's people who are unkind would say it's a little bit of a clown car of top executives. They are prepping to have Warner Brothers. David Ellison was not prepping to have the seventh biggest studio or seventh know, seventh biggest streamer. I mean, in the end, if he doesn't have that, you're kind of left holding the bag that nobody wanted and it's Paramount and. Oh God, like then what? Like how do you win?
- [06:54]
Peter Kafka
You are holding the thing that Sherry Redstone was desperately trying to get rid of.
- [06:58]
Janice Min
Well, that. Let's, let's just back up a little because I think that's important. Context here is, I mean this battle is so interesting to me because Warner Brothers is such a stinker. So much debt that they are being forced to sell basically. Right. They had no other outcome. Paramount was such a stinker that Sherry Redstone couldn't get the stink off of her fast enough. Right. And there was basically in the end one bidder. And that one bidder is now the one bidder for the year, one of two bidders for the other thing. And so I think when we, we get caught up in the excitement that these are huge prizes right now, but they're just these like debt stuffed, slow moving beasts that need to have Someone who has an emotional attachment to them in some ways for them to make sense as a buyer.
- [07:48]
Peter Kafka
And you should be concerned if there aren't other buyers. Are there bidders fighting you? I mean, I always say this about when Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bukus decide they're selling. You should be really taking that as a signal if those guys who at the time were running the media world, say, were topping out. And that was six years ago. The flip side is, well, maybe you just need a brave young man backed by his father's fortune, the fourth or fifth largest fortune, depending on the count it. To turn things around. So maybe that will happen. The other vibe check I wanted to get from you is how the town thinks about this, because I still feel, again from the other coast is that Hollywood is more concerned about Netflix buying Warner Brothers than they are the Ellisons buying Warner Brothers. And I know there's an argument for category C, which is no one should buy Warner Brothers and it should be left alone. That seems unlikely. If you poll people in your neighborhood at lunch, what is the least bad outcome people are rooting for?
- [08:56]
Janice Min
Boy, I mean, it's really like a. I think for most people, it's sort of a Sophie's Choice. I mean, there are no. There are sort of two potential bad outcomes here. I think people on the plus side, for David Ellison, people love, you know, he loves movies like that. That's sort of the. The.
- [09:17]
Peter Kafka
I love movies. You guys make movies. I'm gonna make more movies. Obviously. You should work with me.
- [09:22]
Janice Min
No, I know. And it's a little simplistic. It's like, me love movies. You love movies. I mean, it's not like a sophisticated business argument. But what they like in that is that, you know, everyone here has dollar signs spinning in their eyes. Like, you know, everyone's looking for the next deal for themselves. So they like that. That could perhaps indicate that David Ellison will pay and maybe even overpay for what you are making. And that's exciting that it'll create a big buyer in the market. I think the FL of that is, remember Los Angeles, Hollywood is. Is not a particularly pro Trump industry. I don't think they like a lot of the things that they are seeing happening in. At Paramount right now. I mean, just was it yesterday the. The situation that happened with Stephen Colbert and the repress. The Senate Representative James Talarico.
- [10:16]
Peter Kafka
James Talarico running for Senate. Yep, yep.
- [10:19]
Janice Min
And having that guest, potentially, it sounds like, be censored off the show. They certainly don't like what' necessarily happening With CBS News. Fundamentally though, people here, it does come down to your bottom line. The industry is struggling. People are having a hard time having the careers they had 10 years ago. So people like the idea of a, of a, of a buyer with deep pockets. Even if his daddy's money or whatever, a buyer pockets.
- [10:46]
Peter Kafka
And they don't believe the Ted Sarandos argument, which is, yes, we know we've been saying that movies should move out of theaters and into home and streaming and that's what makes sense. But now that we own a movie company, we've changed our idea on that and we think big movies should go to the theaters. And by the way, no one ever talks about this, but we're going to leave HBO alone for the most part is sort of the signal. So everyone who loves hbo, don't worry about it, we're not going to touch it. Everyone comes over there. That, that does not seem like a resonant argument.
- [11:17]
Janice Min
Yeah, what's so funny? And you know this like Netflix was sort of the, you know, had been demonized for the first, its first 10 years in LA for having changed the economics of how people make money. Right. It's now, it was now cost plus deals instead of any back end and it kind of generally depressed the market overall for what you could make. You know, you could selling a show. A 25 episode season at CBS used to be the gold standard and then now it became a 20% over budget deal at Netflix. And but the fact is they won. And I think people after, you know, after all the studios realized like, oh, it's about profits and not about subscriber numbers. And now they hide all those numbers. Netflix won, they make a ton of money, they're the biggest buyer in town. And so I think people generally like Netflix now. I mean I think they recognize that there was a disruption coming to the industry and if not Netflix, someone else would have come in and have done it. And I think what people like about the leadership team is they actually seem to like movies and television. Right. They're not, they're not in the Jeff Bezos business of needing to sell you goods off this and do this. You know, things that are, that are ancillary or that are larger actually than their entertainment ambitions. They just love entertainment. So I do think people like that. I, I also think people like the idea of, in the Netflix plan of the other part, the discovery, the unsexy part, the cable television, the CNN of Warner, others having its own life too. And I think we can't overstate how important that is, I think there's, for people who are really invested in the news here, the thought of CNN falling, you know, under Barry Weiss, that's not great. Yeah.
- [13:10]
Peter Kafka
So just to underline this, I think people who listen to the show get it, but. But Paramount wants to buy the whole thing, or at least that's the whole thing. And Netflix wants to buy the studio and HBO and cnn. And the remaining parts of Warner Brothers would be its own standalone company. Who knows what becomes of those assets once that thing is spun off? You know, if you're concerned about the future of CNN today under Warner Brothers or tomorrow under Paramount, we've got no idea what its life is going to be like once it's a standalone company.
- [13:38]
Janice Min
Yeah. And, you know, I think that we're so used to at this point, sort of, I think for 10 years now, we've been like, you know, it's the boy who cried wolf, Democracy's dying. And, you know, all these comments and. But I think people are actually starting to get a little shaken by what they're seeing now. And some of it became very personal to Hollywood. Jimmy Kimmel, you know, some of some shows that aren't getting made anymore because they be. They're too, quote, unquote, complicated in this moment. So I think when that kind of turn to, I guess, censorship, you know, has become very apparent, I think that becomes scary. And it will limit ultimately those sort of decisions, limit the creative funnel for people, because there are decisions being made that will never be put in a PowerPoint but or be said in a meeting that, like, no, we're not going to do your kind of show. Like, because, you know, for reasons X, Y and Z.
- [14:39]
Peter Kafka
Right. We don't need to say out loud why we're not going to do it. We're just not taking on that show.
- [14:43]
Janice Min
And, you know, and that's why we're going to have Rush Hour 4. Right. Directed by Brett Ratner, because Trump has personally made that request. I, I do think there is a lot of unease that we're having. Ted Sarandos and David Ellison have to go repeatedly to the White House, kiss the Ring, have these meetings. We're looking at a process that is not certainly far beyond an era when, you know, Jeff Bukus sold Warner Brothers to att.
- [15:12]
Peter Kafka
Speaking of an unease, constant stream of stories about AI and Hollywood, and a lot of it is literally about someone tweeted this thing out. How do you feel about it? It's. Was it Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise and an AI generated video? ByteDance has their own version of Sora and they're getting takedown requests. How much. How much of the AI is going to doom our business discussion is actually happening versus being written about.
- [15:43]
Janice Min
Yeah. So I've said before, I think that the thing with AI right now in Hollywood, everyone's lying just a little bit, right? Studios are lying about how much they're using it. The companies are lying.
- [15:57]
Peter Kafka
I mean, they're using it more or less using it.
- [15:59]
Janice Min
More companies are lying about the capability of their products. And I think for creative people, they're lying about the fact that they're not using it. I dare you to find a screenwriter who is staring at a blank page and not talking to Claude or ChatGPT at the same time. That said, I think what we're seeing right now, and we did a piece, one of our writers, Eric Barmak, who writes about AI, did a piece about how Hollywood basically has stopped Sora 2 in its tracks. And if you look at the download numbers of Sora 2, the engagement with Sora 2, like, it fell off a cliff in the fourth quarter, what's the thesis?
- [16:40]
Peter Kafka
How did Hollywood stop? And it's in its tracks.
- [16:43]
Janice Min
Hollywood mobilized around copyright with lawyers. If you recall, when Sora 2 came out, they did like, oh, our bad. You have to opt in to not have your copyrighted material used. And so they were able to whether it was going to be user behavior regardless, or if the studios actually played a role in this. I do think it's probably a combination of both. But as one of the people Eric spoke to was very clear, like, we're just in this age of, like, novelty Internet products, like that came up and people played with it and they're like, okay, you know, up the ante. For me, someone else, like, it just didn't quite catch on.
- [17:25]
Peter Kafka
Yeah, I played with Sora so much that I got rate limited multiple times, which was very embarrassing. And I loved it. But to me, it seemed quite evident that it's a novelty app. And unless people were going to do amazing things with it, there was no need to use it. Once you'd made your fifth video of your coworker eating something funny.
- [17:42]
Janice Min
Right. It's interesting. Eric also made the point that Hollywood, when you think about the Disney Store II deal that was announced, and there's part of me that believes that was announced the time it was because Disney's looking at the battle going on for Warner Brothers and saying, wait, wait, wait, we need a headline too. I mean, I think that sometimes these announcements are that cynically constructed, but Eric makes the point that Hollywood typically comes into new technology at the wrong time. And he mentioned, of course, Fox in MySpace and, you know, AOL and Time Warner famously. And so I think we viewed it as the time as like, ooh, Disney's getting in on something. But it could also be interpreted as, oh, Sora too needs this. They need some kind of boost from one of the biggest entertainment players in the world.
- [18:33]
Peter Kafka
And in terms of job loss today or near term, clearly AI is being used in visual effects then that was already a challenged industry to begin with. Is anyone making the positive case or like this actually could help our business in some way. We just haven't identified it yet.
- [18:52]
Janice Min
So I have been. People have been sending me. I have a friend who's been sending me LinkedIn posts that are showing up in his feed. And it is so grim. It's people largely who have worked in VFX and they are putting on LinkedIn like this full on bleed out like, I will be homeless beginning next Thursday if I don't have work. And they work. They had had a career in the VFX industry and they're not being. It doesn't appear they're being hyperbolic and. And so jobs are being lost. It is true. And I think the case that people are making where, oh, well, actually it's all gonna be a silver lining, is that production will become less expensive, enabling more people to make creative endeavors they would like to make. And you see like, you know, like Amazon Studios, they now have someone, Albert Chang, who used to be on the, you know, proper film and TV side, as one might call it, the traditional film and TV side, now working on enabling AI assisted production. I mean, and that's just a name we know who's doing this. I guarantee at every single studio, every single streamer, they are all completely doing this. And I, we. When you look at the Oscar race this year, for example, if you recall last year with the Brutalist and Adrien Brody's voice was made more Hungarian accented through some. One of the pla, through some technology. And this year it is crickets. And even the Academy, the most precious legacy protecting institution in Hollywood, has not come out in a really firm way about AI and they basically have a don't ask, don't tell policy. And you can guarantee. Well, I wouldn't put money in it, but I would say with some certainty that every single Best Picture nominee has used AI in its production process. It just, you just can't. You can't not use that.
- [20:54]
Peter Kafka
Like you've Also used computers and Google,
- [20:56]
Janice Min
like obviously, you know, like once you used Microsoft Word and that was amazing. And so it's the evolution of technology and that means the disappearance of a category of jobs.
- [21:07]
Peter Kafka
What is the story, someone like me in New York is missing about your town or your industry? What is, what is the story? No one is quite telling correctly right today.
- [21:17]
Janice Min
So I think that, I think, you know, you live in New York and, and you've had the worst winter of your life and you look at LA and you think it's sunny and amazing and people are happy, people are having a hard time here. And when you look at the unemployment rate of Los Angeles, it is I believe, 35% higher, maybe 33.5% higher than the national average. So you are seeing sort of, I mean, I think this makes me sound like a MAGA person and I am very much not. But you're seeing sort of a city that is so big and sprawling with a kind of rudderless feeling where, well, who's going to stop this? Like you have an industry that is disappearing and you have, but you have, yet you have leadership in the, in these, in this industry that's like, well, but you know, filming in Bulgaria is a lot cheaper or Budapest. So forget, you know, I'm not like, who, who am I to try to save jobs in Los Angeles? So I think there's an essential conflict here between the workers who are kind of dreamy, who love this place, who moved here, were able to have middle class incomes, buy homes. And you're seeing this sort of like you're, you know, there is definitely a Detroit vibe that is underway if things don't course correct. And you know, I was talking to the CEO of a big PR firm in New York the other day and he said like, his firm is very much looking at, you know, they're looking at Los Angeles and thinking the floor is falling out this year because no other industry has come in to bolster it. So it's like, remember when Silicon beach was going to be a thing and tech companies were going to move in? That never happened. And turns out it's very hard to
- [23:07]
Peter Kafka
replicate Silicon Valley anywhere but Silicon Valley. Everyone's tried it.
- [23:10]
Janice Min
Correct.
- [23:11]
Peter Kafka
But yeah, no Detroit vibes. That's a very stark way of putting it. Just as an aside, the Journal, I thought did a very nice piece about sort of the hollowing out of middle class work in Hollywood maybe a year ago.
- [23:23]
Janice Min
And I think they called it, they called it a horror movie. Hollywood makes horror movies now.
- [23:28]
Peter Kafka
It's living one the comments under it were astounding because it's the Wall Street Journal. So you, to, to, to register, to, to make a comment, I think you have to be a subscriber. And the delight people had in watching in their minds Hollywood get its just deserves. And clearly it's a lot of MAGA and political sort of oriented stuff. But the idea that you would celebrate a town's struggles is, was I, I shouldn't be shocked, but I was still shocked to see it.
- [23:58]
Janice Min
Well, I mean even, even people I know, right? Like when you hear what writers were making and who were on a hit show and you compare, it's everything's a comp, right? So then people can't help but compare themselves. So if you're a journalist and you saw what Hollywood writers were making, you know, you're like, oh, just desserts, you know. And if you look at the Palisades burning down and people today are like, well they're rich, who cares? They can figure that out. And this is sort of the coarsening of our conversation overall in the world. But also this, you can't fight this culture war and not have an end result at some point. And that's where we are. And I think what I also want to say about Hollywood right now, I think you're seeing this paralysis. So Hollywood used to be like a place that had a lot of protests, spoke out, was always, you know, fighting the so called man. And it is pretty much crickets now because everyone is scared. And I was so kind of struck by the fact when you saw the Grammys and you have these musicians who are, you know, getting up on stage, Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, like just really sticking it to the president and ice and the administration. And you compare that with the Golden Globes where it was like, oh my God, sponsored by polymarket. No one's saying anything. It felt sort of like this hellish LA landscape of what and the ratings are down of what Hollywood is becoming. And when you think about how to capture young people, it is very often, you know, who are the pipeline for everything. When you think about young people, you know, they love this culture of rebellion and revolt and speaking out. And Holly, you know, and I worry also about Hollywood containing itself so much to the point that it kind of stops speaking to the audience. You're seeing that with the creator economy coming in. You're seeing that with people like Ben Meiselas of Midas Touc her coming in and just saying things in a way that Hollywood is still continuing to have a very controlled Conversation. And, you know, it's something when, like, the loudest voice in the room on this issue is Jane Fonda, who's in her 80s. Right. And who you would very much expect to be at the forefront of this. And just, I think that, you know, fear is just a. Fear is a very unhealthy attribute in any environment.
- [26:21]
Peter Kafka
Oh, man, you speak truth. I want to find a slick way of turning this into a positive podcast, but you're speaking truth. Let's talk about something positive, which is you building a business. The Angler. How many years into it are you?
- [26:37]
Janice Min
Four. We just had our fourth birthday, and
- [26:39]
Peter Kafka
I think right after you launched, you came and talked to me on what was then called Recode Media. We got a new origin story. You and Richard Rushfield were the oldest people in Y Combinator.
- [26:52]
Janice Min
Oh, my God. Yeah. Still, I think we still probably hold the record.
- [26:56]
Peter Kafka
You got advice from Marc Andreessen about how to build your own business. So you're four years in. How is it going?
- [27:01]
Janice Min
It's going extremely well. I think probably some of the things I would think about this year around the business, and we've expanded a lot. We have great, great journalists working for us. Um, and I think when we started, it was like, everyone was like, oh, my God, newsletters. It's so exciting. This is the future. And I think we're probably seeing the. We're probably in peak newsletter right now. Like, you know, oh, God, everyone has a newsletter. American Eagle has a newsletter on substack. Yay. I mean, like this.
- [27:33]
Peter Kafka
It's like saying you had an app in 2009.
- [27:35]
Janice Min
Yes, exactly. Like, not so exciting. Or maybe saying you had a MySpace when Rupert Murdoch got a MySpace. And so then we, you know, so I think you'll see us like we're doing. We are really thinking this, how we expand out. We've succeeded in what most people are now trying to do, which is build this, you know, robust newsletter audience.
- [28:01]
Peter Kafka
Yeah. So walk me through the business. So last year, you said you guys were looking at $10 million and was going to be divided up between third from subscriptions, third from events, third from media sponsorships. How did that pan out, and what are you projecting for this year?
- [28:17]
Janice Min
Let's see. I panned out. I would not. I would not dare to predict this year yet. We have our budget, and I hope we make it. I think we're. We're looking some of it. Like, again, all. A lot of it depends on what shakes out with this. With this Warner Brothers situation, because now it's not that you only have, you know, remember, we have two. We are supported by sponsorship, too. So you have three big sponsorship players locked up. Right. And that makes spending really cautious, both in them, in terms of them buying movies and shows.
- [28:50]
Peter Kafka
The sponsorships, that's to spell it up. That is the studios promoting their stuff to your readers.
- [28:55]
Janice Min
All in television. Yep.
- [28:57]
Peter Kafka
Generally around awards.
- [28:59]
Janice Min
Generally around awards. So that, you know, we're, we're being very cautious about how that is going to play out for us this year. So we are very mindful of building our, you know, thinking about entertainment's very different from when you and I first spoke about the Angler. Like, entertainment is not film and television. And I'm very mindful of never turning this into, you know, what I call Colonial Williamsburg. Like pretending that that's still the main driving force of all entertainment. Like we, we have, we see many inputs now into the entertainment industry, whether that's, you know, creator economy. And Natalie Jarvey, who I know, you know, does a like and subscribe, which is an excellent creator economy newsletter for us today. She's even writing about sort of the shift in television where television's now going to be video podcast, Basically, that costs $5,000 an episode. Like, like these changes are coming fast and furious. And we are, we are definitely staying ahead of the curve. Micro dramas. There, there's a portion of our audience that absolutely hates every time we talk about that.
- [30:03]
Peter Kafka
I have a question. That's something my colleagues at Business Insider write about all the time. And I know that this is one of those things that's big in Asia and people assume or believe or hope that will happen here. And sometimes those things translate and they move across the ocean and sometimes they don't. Are there Americans consuming microdramas in meaningful numbers?
- [30:23]
Janice Min
Okay, there are Americans consuming microdramas. It's mostly women and, you know, all the crazy, like, you know, billionaire werewolf romance. Like, it's all crazy. And so it really, I think one of the tests for Hollywood is does Hollywood over professionalize them where they lose the essence that makes them sticky to, to the audience. And, you know, TikTok's in this in microdramas now. Buzzfeed, which, you know, why not? Right? And so that'll be one of the big tests. But also for us, like, we realize I'm very mindful that nobody reads anymore. No one has any attention. Like Richard Rushfield today has a newsletter coming about the goldfish. Everyone's a goldfish now. Like, no one can remember a thing. And so, you know, we've made A big move into video. We hired Jennifer Lasky to run video for us as our executive producer. You know, we kind of ignored social or didn't, didn't put our. Didn't make that a huge focus. We realize now that obviously we'll double down much more into social and events.
- [31:27]
Peter Kafka
Spell out why it's important for you to be in social. Right. Your audience, I assume, is mostly professional. Right. Or. Or prosumer. Right. People who have a. Yeah. Who are willing to pay to learn more about what's happening in Hollywood. So, yeah. Why does it matter that you're on social media?
- [31:41]
Janice Min
I. I just feel, and I'm sure there's lots of data to bear it out. Like the social platforms haven't collapsed. Right. Like, I think that was, there was a period of time where people thought like, oh, it's coming. Oh my God, like X is dead, when in fact X is actually on the, you know, swinging upwards and things like that that maybe people don't like to hear but are actually true. And Instagram is a huge driver to news outlets now, which I. You've probably found yourself. And so I just, I feel like we are constantly competing in like everyone's, everyone's just living in a feed now. You're in the. You know, your whole life is one feed. And you know, it's Epstein. It's puppies, it's rescued animals, or at least mine is. And, and then more Epstein. And like people, that is, you know,
- [32:29]
Peter Kafka
even though you're reaching professional, sober adults, you still want to show up in feeds because not everyone has heard of you and maybe not everyone's subscribing to you. You need to be there.
- [32:37]
Janice Min
It's building the funnel, right. Like you want to just build the funnel and eventually get everyone to convert into paid. Right. I think also, like, when you, when we think about our subscribers, I mean, when Paramount goes and lays off 3,000 people, we will see that in our subscriber roles. Right? And so it's. So we have to. These are resources we have to constantly replenish. So the other thing, and I just want to go back to events, you know, we're this small but mighty presence and we have been leaned on. We're programming at NAB show again for them this year on a business of entertainment track. We'll be programming with a partner at Cannes Film Festival at Cannes Lion. And so we like that we can retain these high level relationships here, the credibility with an industry and be able to frankly, you know, monetize those for us on someone on Bigger stages.
- [33:32]
Peter Kafka
If you were starting. Last question. If you were starting this business today instead of four or five years ago, would you start it again as a newsletter slash substack product? Or would you say, you know what? We've. The newsletter time is over. It was a fine MVP time, but we need to do something else instead?
- [33:51]
Janice Min
Let's. That's a really good question, Peter. I would absolutely start with a newsletter product because it is still like, you know, for example, like, California Post is out here, right? I don't. I don't go to a newsstand and buy the California Post. You can't even find a newsstand in Los Angeles. But I am getting the page Six Hollywood newsletter, which is pretty good, right? So suddenly that's like in my. In my life, right? And so it is, you know, and I've just spent some time slagging newsletters. But it is a very direct way to reach an audience where an audience decides right away I like you or I don't. Right? And you probably do the same thing I do. Like, you've fallen out of love with a lot of newsletters, so you just hit delete, delete, delete, delete. Like. Like deleting probably 250 newsletters a day that you used to open and. And that. So I think when you can find a connection with an audience where they're not doing that, like, that's huge. And it does mean something. It means something to know your audience and understand what they're responding to and make them feel, I don't know, warmly towards you, I guess.
- [34:56]
Peter Kafka
Makes sense. Janice, man, I feel warmly towards you via the Internet. Thanks for doing this. We will get together in real life soon.
- [35:03]
Janice Min
I look forward to it.
- [35:05]
Peter Kafka
Thanks again to Janice Min. And if you like that one, I suggest you go back and listen to the one we did back in October 22nd where Janice talks a lot about the glory days of print magazines. Yep, they had glory days. In a minute, I'll be talking with Reed Duxer, the digital talent agent. But first, a word from our sponsor. Yo, Harvey, Zoe group selfie. Ooh, nice. New iPhone 17. Drew ski. Let's do a triangle formation. I'm in front with a center stage front camera. Everyone fits in the shot.
- [35:36]
Janice Min
The guy to T mobile.
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Peter Kafka
But switching takes forever.
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Reid Duxer
Not anymore.
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Janice Min
Now you can switch to T mobile in just 15 minutes.
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Peter Kafka
Focus, people. Nail your pose and you get a
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Janice Min
new iPhone 17 on them.
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Peter Kafka
No way.
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Janice Min
Yes way.
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Peter Kafka
No way. Yes way.
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Reid Duxer
Guys, switch to T mobile and get iPhone 17 on us. And right now we'll Pay off your old phone up to 800 bucks.
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Peter Kafka
I'm grabbing my phone and switching to T mobile right now. Get back Harvey. We're taking a let's go again y'. All. With 24 monthly bill credits finance agreement 256 gigabytes, $830 eligible. Trade in example iPhone 13 and new qualifying line $60 plus per month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees for well qualified customers plus tax and 35 device connection charge credit to end and balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel contact US$800 via virtual prepaid card. Card typically takes 15 days after rebate submission. No cash access and Card expires in 6 months. Check out in 15 minutes per line. Visit t mobile.com My day kicks off with a refreshing Celsius energy drink. Then straight to the gym, pre K pickup back home to meal prep. Time for my fire station shift. One more Celsius. Gotta keep the lights on when the three alarm hits. I'm ready. Celsius Live Fit. Go grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now@celsius.com your
- [36:50]
Reid Duxer
little one grew 3 inches overnight.
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Peter Kafka
Adorable.
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Reid Duxer
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- [37:18]
Peter Kafka
See website for details. I'm here with Reed Ducksher. He is the founder and CEO of Knight, which is a management company that manages some of the biggest names on the Internet. Reid is probably best known as the guy who helped Mr. Beast become Mr. Beast. He's no longer working with him. He is working with lots of other high profile creators. Kai Sanat, Hasan Piker, among others. Welcome to the show.
- [37:48]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, thanks for having me on. Longtime listener. Excited we could finally do this.
- [37:51]
Peter Kafka
Yeah, it's always good to talk to someone who actually does this stuff for a living. I want to talk to you about. You just raised a bunch of money. I want to talk to you about your business and I want to talk to you about sort of the state of the Internet for creators these days. But let's do the very quick tour of how you got here. You wanted to be a sports agent working with NFL players. How did you end up working with YouTubers and live streamers instead of.
- [38:15]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, the abbreviated version Is that I did want to be an NFL sports agent. So when I graduated college, I started representing my friends. Some of them went on to play in the Canadian football league, some of them went on to play in the NFL. And instead of getting certified as a contract Advisor with the NFL, I ended up stumbling upon YouTube in 2014. There's this creator named Dude Perfect that was making videos early on. Now everyone kind of knows who they are, but in 2013, 2014, they were starting off their careers.
- [38:43]
Peter Kafka
They were some of YouTube's favorite creators back then. They were like the guys, they did stunts and they were family friendly and they could put them in front of advertisers. I remember they were, would always trot them out in front of their brand cast things.
- [38:56]
Reid Duxer
Yeah. Still to this day, I mean they're one of the darlings of YouTube, I would say their top five channel on the ecosystem. They've also raised a substantial amount of capital. But that got my start in the creator ecosystem. I left that sports agency, moved to Dallas, Texas, started Knight in 2015 and I've been doing it ever since. At that time, I didn't really know what this would turn into. I think the interesting thing for me was that I thought creators would continue to build companies and production companies on top of YouTube. And if I could be part of that paradigm shift, I could sit in a pretty interesting position and I couldn't get into the mail rooms at Utica wme like I'm from a farm in North Dakota. I have no connection to this Hollywood city at all. And so the only real option I had was just to do it myself.
- [39:43]
Peter Kafka
And, and what did you see an obvious connection parallel between a, a high profile athlete and a YouTuber streamer? Are there sort of obvious things that, that connect them? Are they radically different or did you get enough exposure to, to sports agency to even make that connection?
- [40:00]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, I would say the creators are much more entrepreneurial in nature. They've start, they've had to start their own businesses, whether that was in their basement making YouTube videos or just picking up a camera and filming something. And so the mindset is very different. They've had to do everything themselves. You know, I think athletes are, they're equally challenging to work with. It's just very different. You know, I liked gravitating towards individuals that wanted to build businesses. Wanted and you know, Mr. Beast being a really good example of that. You know, I think that's the fundamental difference. If you're playing in the NFL, you're in season really eight months out of the year. And then if you go on to play in the super bowl or deep into the playoffs, your off season is only two and a half months. And in those two and a half months, they don't want to do anything but focus on the next season. So it's very challenging to get anything done. For my year and a half, when I worked as a sports agent, I
- [40:51]
Peter Kafka
was thinking from the outside, oh, these are both sort of groups of people that have kind of a timer on their career. Right. You can only be in the NFL for X number of years, probably three or four years on average. You know, someone like Tom Brady who goes to 40 is really an anomaly. And I would think for Internet creators there would be a similar sort of like, there's a limited amount of time where I'm going to be able to make money, meaningful money doing this, and I've got to go, go, go.
- [41:19]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment, but that we are seeing a lot of creators now that I believe will have long careers. Like you mentioned, Hasan Piker early on, I would imagine Hasan will be making maybe he won't Twitch stream 10 years from now, but he'll have some sort of his own show talking about politics for probably the next 35 years.
- [41:40]
Peter Kafka
So I want to zoom out and talk about the state of the Internet broadly for creators. You talked to my colleagues at Business Insider and you said there might not be a next Mr. Beast. We're moving to a niche world. Why do you think there won't be another Mr. Beast? Some singular person that dominates a ton of attention, at least from one segment of the audience?
- [42:02]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, I think there's a few things that I've seen shift over the last couple of years. One is that the platforms don't want to incentivize people to break through. Like the algorithms on TikTok and YouTube and Instagram now put you in this little lane of content that they know you care about and they keep feeding you that content. Where pre Covid we would go on TikTok and a lot of people would see Addison Ray videos, Charli d' Amelio videos, Kaby lane videos. It was getting fed to the whole ecosystem of consumer that was on TikTok. Now if you go on TikTok, you see your very like, small lane of content that interests you. For me, like my for you page is a lot of podcast clips, sports clips and different things. I don't see anything outside of that. And so that's one challenge with these creators really breaking through. I Think the platforms would rather have the middle tier of creators with 5 to 10 million followers. They would rather have that enormous than have a few people break through. And then I think.
- [43:04]
Peter Kafka
So you think this is intentional on, on the part of the platforms to sort of not have hugely powerful creators? I mean, I understand wanting to carve up their, you know, how to, how to tune an algorithm. So it gives me exactly what I want and you exactly what I want. That's what all the platforms want to do. That's different than saying we don't want another Jimmy Donaldson, Mr. Beast, where he's got enormous power. But that seems to be what you're suggesting.
- [43:28]
Reid Duxer
I'm suggesting both, I think that you want the algorithms to be as, as good as possible at keeping high session time. And so if you feed people exactly what they want, the session time goes up. But then I think the other situation, you know, we've seen adpocalypses Happen, we've seen PewDiePie affect the advertising rate of all of YouTube by saying something and then at and T and these people pull out of the ads on YouTube. That is like an existential threat that I don't think they want happening. And when you have individuals that have a lot of power and leverage over platforms, those things can happen. And so I think them pushing down and widening out is really what I've seen over the last two years. And you know, Mr. Beast does have a lot of power over the YouTube platform. He can demand certain products get made and certain things happen. You know, I think it could happen in the future that someone breaks out through YouTube shorts. I just think it's going to be way more rare than it has been in the past.
- [44:20]
Peter Kafka
Let's talk about how the individual platforms are going to need to go through each one. But, but if, if you're work, someone you're working with, where are you telling them to go? Which platform are you telling them to go make money on, which platform are you telling them to go find an audience on? And those should be the same. But I think they're probably not.
- [44:37]
Reid Duxer
They were much different a year and a half ago. Now everyone has short form content which really acts as the, the top of the spear in distribution because everyone is,
- [44:46]
Peter Kafka
everyone is doing TikTok.
- [44:48]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, well, no, I mean it in terms of short form content is easy to get. High amount of impressions on. It gets fed to a lot of people. Things can go viral. It doesn't matter if you have two followers or 200,000 followers. A video that is good and has high Retention can go viral on TikTok. And so I think for me we would always tell people, like, use TikTok as a discoverability mechanism. But now we have reels and YouTube shorts and everyone, every platform has copied that short form meta. And so I think discoverability is actually really good across every social platform. But where you make money is substantially different. I think YouTube is still the gold standard for monetizing a creator's career.
- [45:28]
Peter Kafka
And I've talked about this a bunch, but spell it out. I mean, there's one very obvious reason, right, is that they actually share ad revenue.
- [45:34]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, well, and long form videos, because you can run multiple ad units within a 14 minute video, you actually can go on your side of the dashboard and you can place ads wherever you want them. It doesn't mean your fill rate is going to be 100%, but you can place ads every minute, every two minutes, every three.
- [45:50]
Peter Kafka
They're giving you an opportunity to make a lot, to make money, period. And they're also going to share the money that you make with you, which still doesn't really happen on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, I mean they, they'll all have sort of like, you know, little programs that hinted, but no one, no one is routinely sharing half of every dollar they make in ad revenue with the creators except for YouTube.
- [46:13]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, and I don't want to glaze them too hard, but YouTube has been at the forefront of allowing creators to make money for the last decade and all their alternative monetization things that they come out with are in that favor of the creator. Like they to me have been very creator first in how they've just handled the platform and the products they launch. Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat has not figured that out. And also none of them have really figured out long form video. Facebook, Watch, they tried igtv, they tried. It just, it hasn't worked as well as YouTube has done it.
- [46:47]
Peter Kafka
So YouTube is, YouTube in particular is really pushing people to make longer stuff that fits in with the fact that people are consuming tons of YouTube on TV. That's very conscious on the part of what the platform wants. But they're also pushing with, with their TikTok clone, right. YouTube shorts. So how does, how does it work if you're trying to make money or find people on YouTube and on the one hand they're pushing you to do long stuff, on the other hand they really much want you to feed YouTube shorts.
- [47:14]
Reid Duxer
You have to have a balance as a creator. And I do mean it when I tell Creators. This, like short form YouTube shorts is a good discoverability metric of getting your content seen by a wide variety of people. When you make long form videos, you have to have a high click through rate and a high retention for that video to get seen as well. But it's harder to break through with a long form video. It's much easier to break through the noise of the short form video. But they just don't monetize remotely as well as the long form videos. And so, you know, YouTube has always pushed creators to make long videos. They make more money because of the revenue split. YouTube now has 13% of connected TV viewership. That's by design. They've been pushing that for a long time. And I saw this on the back end of all the data on YouTube three years ago where connected TV viewership for creators that were making 15 plus minute videos that were made for a TV audience, their viewership on connected TVs was just slowly creeping up over the years. And now some of those creators, 30 to 40% of their their viewership is on a connected TV.
- [48:18]
Peter Kafka
So. But how do you balance that? Right. If you're making something that's supposed to be 15 or 20 minutes long, I guess you could always hope that you can find something that could be turned into a YouTube short clip. But it seems like they're really different products.
- [48:32]
Reid Duxer
Two native videos. What you post is a long form video. Maybe if you're Theo Vaughn or a podcast, there may be clips that you can post out from that long form video. But the majority of creators, they have to have two different strategies. You make a long form video and then you have all your creative ideas that make native short form videos.
- [48:50]
Peter Kafka
That sounds exhausting.
- [48:52]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, it's a hard career. I don't know, it's not for everyone.
- [48:55]
Peter Kafka
I've talked to people, I think you've talked about this as well. Sort of a thought that maybe people should be spending less time making short form video. I guess presumably because it, there's, it's just harder to make money doing that. And you know we mentioned Hassan Piker and Kai Sanat as two of your big, two of your big clients. Those are people who are full time Twitch live streamers. They are making content for 6, 7, 8 hours at a popular. But very few people can actually do that successfully. I'm trying to figure out how. You can't tell everyone, go be a Twitch live streamer, can you?
- [49:34]
Reid Duxer
No, it's very hard. To be on live eight hours a day like Hasan or Asmin is very challenging. I think that the difference with like a Kai or a Hasan or an Asmin is the Internet creates the clips for them. And so when you go on TikTok and YouTube shorts, you'll see a lot of Kai or Hasan content that is just organically clipped by the, let's just say the ecosystem of the Internet.
- [49:58]
Peter Kafka
So literally there's people, they're fans or they want to make money or both, or they say, I'm going to take this free content that Hasan Pikers made, I'm going to edit it myself and turn that into a clip that could, that could at least generate attention for Hasan Piker and maybe money for me.
- [50:11]
Reid Duxer
Yeah. And we don't take those down. You know, I think if, if they're directly ripped off of the stream, we've usually let them be up. Like we, we are better off allowing the Internet to make amazing videos re clipped of the content that Kai and Hasan are making on Twitch than us to put in a ton of effort to do it. And it's worked in the favor of Kai. I mean, a lot of people see him for the first time through a clip that we didn't make. It was just the Internet doing it.
- [50:36]
Peter Kafka
It's the Internet doing free labor and promotion for you.
- [50:38]
Reid Duxer
Yeah. And well, they do make money. You can monetize short form clips. The relative RPM or CPM of those videos is way lower than on a long form video. But these clippers are making a decent amount of money just by re clipping content.
- [50:54]
Peter Kafka
And so are there any platforms that people are overlooking today that you think are sort of sneakily interesting for an aspiring creator?
- [51:03]
Reid Duxer
I still think Twitch is so underutilized and monetized. I understand that the difficulty of live streaming and being on. And I think there's a lot of cons about Twitch where if you're not live, you can't gain viewership. It is very much a. When you're on and you're live, you can have viewers, and when you're gone, it's gone. It's not like YouTube where you get residual viewership from a video on demand, but I still feel like Twitch needs to continue to expand into other offerings outside of gaming and irl. And I don't think a lot of creators take advantage of it. We're thankfully now seeing people like Justin Bieber and other celebrities stream on Twitch and we're seeing the Internet organically clip that content of them. I just still feel like there's a lot of ground to be gained on Twitch. It's not as noisy as all the other platforms are.
- [51:52]
Peter Kafka
Yeah. I did an interview with Dan Clancy who runs Twitch last year and one of the takeaways or one of the perceptions I got was maybe just live streaming. People who want to consume live streams are always going to be sort of a relatively niche audience. People who want to spend their time that way. And the fact that during the pandemic you saw Facebook and YouTube sort of go after Twitch and try to build their own livestream, businesses basically have walked away from it, maybe is an indicator that this stuff just doesn't have that huge of an audience.
- [52:23]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, you're probably right. The audience is 14 to 25 year olds and it hasn't grown. But. But if you just go back in time, YouTube 10 years ago is predominantly kids and they've done a good job of widening out the content verticals. Where you have outdoor channels, you have fishing channels, you have makeup and hair, hair care channels. Like it's widened out. My parents now can go on YouTube and find content that they enjoy live is a little more challenging. I just think that Twitch still very much is like only an ecosystem of IRL and gaming channels and they need to figure out how they widen out. And they also, they bleed a lot of viewers over to YouTube because if you're Hassan, your stream is then posted on YouTube. It's not posted on Twitch as a video on demand. Right. And so they lose a lot of those viewers just bleeding out because there's no VOD mechanism.
- [53:12]
Peter Kafka
So you think Twitch ought to build their own YouTube essentially, or some version.
- [53:16]
Reid Duxer
You need to build some type of platform that allows people to watch the stream clip or the stream VODs. And right now you can do it. It's just they do a. It's really hard to find. Like if you're a fan of Hasan, there's no for you page that says, hey, this is his stream from yesterday. You should watch it.
- [53:33]
Peter Kafka
Do you think that's a, do you think that is a technology slash competence question or you think it's a strategy question for them?
- [53:40]
Reid Duxer
I think it's a strategy question. I think they're like, let's just continue to win live streaming. We have a built in community of people who care about live streaming. Why try and compete with YouTube? I just think that Twitch is a company has been pretty flat in terms of revenue and viewership over the last five years. They're going to have to do something to continue to grow or else this business is just, to me just continues to be flat.
- [54:03]
Peter Kafka
Flat but still useful for your clients who are successful at. It's those two things can exist at the same time.
- [54:10]
Reid Duxer
Yeah.
- [54:10]
Peter Kafka
Let's talk about your business a little bit. How many folks, how many folks are you repping today?
- [54:15]
Reid Duxer
The company manages around 275 talent, mostly Internet native, some athletes, some musicians, but very deeply embedded in YouTube and Twitch.
- [54:24]
Peter Kafka
And how many employees do you need to manage all that?
- [54:27]
Reid Duxer
We have 130 full time people right now.
- [54:30]
Peter Kafka
Wow. So it's almost two to one.
- [54:32]
Reid Duxer
Yeah. And that's across the podcast network, the management company and the experiential marketing agency that we bought. But the large concentration of people here on the management business.
- [54:43]
Peter Kafka
So when someone signs with Knight, what is the main thing you are providing for them?
- [54:48]
Reid Duxer
We've done a really good job of helping them build a larger production entity so they can make better videos, usually a higher amount of videos on a monthly basis if they want to. The, the monetization usually happens by brand deals and we've just done that. There's really no entertainment services. I think that most of our clients think YouTube is the end game. Like a lot. I think the early days of YouTube, everyone wanted to be a Hollywood actor or actress. It doesn't feel like that anymore. A lot of the YouTubers, like if
- [55:17]
Peter Kafka
you're big on YouTube, you stay on YouTube and you're like, I control my
- [55:20]
Reid Duxer
IP, I control all my assets. I have creative freedom and control. Why do I want to go chase hbo, Amazon?
- [55:28]
Peter Kafka
The fact, the fact that Markiplier had the number one or not the number one, had a huge hit movie a couple weeks ago, did much better than Melania, was really the first time we've seen a YouTuber sort of cross over that way. Does that mean there's more to come or does that just show you? Look, YouTube's been around for 20 years. Is the first time you've ever seen a YouTube star have a hit movie. That should tell you that this is going to continue.
- [55:55]
Reid Duxer
The third time. So the first time was Talk to Me by Rockaraka. It was distributed by A24. It was two YouTubers that lived in Australia that directed and wrote Talk to Me. Obviously went on to go to Sundance. 824 got it and I think it did 94 million in box office on a $3 million budget. That was the first time.
- [56:13]
Peter Kafka
Thank you for the fact.
- [56:13]
Reid Duxer
The second time was Sam and Colby, who's a client of ours. They distributed a YouTube documentary in Cinemark last year on like a $50,000 budget. Ended up doing three point. It was like 3.9 over the weekend in the box office. So it did incredibly well for them. And then now Iron Lung with Markiplier, which was a project that he really built out in the open. All his fans knew he was doing it. He had been talking about it for a long time. He brought them along the journey and it performed really well. I don't think that's going to stop. It's just, you know, this is. It's very challenging to make films and for YouTubers, this is very new for them. I think it'll happen more. I just don't know how many creators are going to play in that game
- [56:54]
Peter Kafka
and want to be in that game.
- [56:56]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, or even want to be in it. You know, I think it's like it's challenging. It's difficult to get the theaters heads around it. Some of them will independently distribute, but a lot of times you have to go get a deal done with Sony or a 24, whoever that is. They just post videos on YouTube and continue to make money. So, you know, actually no, I forgot about one. Ryan's World. Ryan's Toys review actually tried to do a film in theaters and it did not perform well. So I think there's been four. I don't anticipate this happening that often, but I do think creators like Markiplier that have big brands will figure out how to continue to utilize the theatrical system.
- [57:30]
Peter Kafka
Yeah, and there were other attempts to sort of like bring someone from YouTube to Nickelodeon or you know, give them a late night NBC talk show. Just the audience at that time was not moving over to those platforms. But there does seem to be now at least some track record to say you can at least get them to a movie theater.
- [57:47]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, Lilly Singh didn't have a lot of luck with the show crossing over. We're now seeing Netflix with Mark Rober and Salish Matter and a few others that I know they're going to announce. Like that's going to happen more. So let's see, like how some of this does. Beast Games I think has been widely successful for Amazon. I just don't know how many creators out there care enough to go do shows with streaming services.
- [58:12]
Peter Kafka
We'll be right back with Reduxer. But first a word from our sponsor. Want consistent color for every job? Milo's Pro Rewards members get a 20% paint discount on future purchases after paint annual qualifying spend reaches $3,000 plus order eligible in stock paint and paint supplies by 2pm for free. Same day delivery by 8pm Improving is easy. At Lowe's, exclude spray paint and mistints more exclusions. Terms and conditions apply. Subject to change details@lowes.com terms same day delivery valid in select zip codes subject to driver availability details@lowes.com samedaydelivery hey, Kara Swisher here. I want to let you know that Vox Media is returning to south by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcast. Join us from March 13th through the 15th for live tapings of Today Explained Teffy Talks, Prof. G Markets, and of course, your two favorite podcasts, Pivot and On with Kara Swisher. The stage will also feature sessions from Brene Brown and Adam Grant, Marques Brownlee, Keith Lee, Vivian Tu and Robin Arzon. It's all part of the Vox Media Podcast stage at south by Southwest, presented by Odoo. Visit voxmedia.comsxsw to pre register and get your special discount on your innovation badge. That's voxmedia.comsxsw to register. Really, you should register. We sell out and we hope to see you there.
- [59:45]
Reid Duxer
This is what President Trump had to say about why the United States is at war with Iran.
- [59:49]
Peter Kafka
We saw it repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it. Again, they wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it, they didn't know what was happening.
- [60:02]
Reid Duxer
Not the best explanation for a war of choice, sir. I'm personally a do my own research kind of guy, but let's ask AI why We're at War with Iran Chat the United States attacked Iran in 2026 because it claimed Iran posed an imminent threat, particularly due to Iran's advancing nuclear program and missile capabilities and aim to reduce Iran's ability to project power in the region.
- [60:29]
Peter Kafka
Wow. That.
- [60:30]
Reid Duxer
That was a better explanation. Thanks Chat Fitting that AI was more clear than the President of the United States because it turns out the United States is using AI to fight the war in Iran. The future of war is AI and that future is now. Here you can find out whether or not you should be freaking out over in the Today Explained feed.
- [60:55]
Peter Kafka
And we're back. So from afar I was assuming that your core business is generating helping these folks generate revenue, which means essentially going out and securing ad deals for them or helping them steer through which ad deals they should or shouldn't take. Is that a fair summary of the core of what you guys do is
- [61:13]
Reid Duxer
as a core talent is at the center. Talent management is the center of our business. We have a venture studio that co founded Feastables with Mr. Beast, co founded Tone with Kai Sanat reespin with Halle Berry. And so we've had a lot of success in the venture studio. And that was always kind of the thought is like, if you can represent the kids that have built distribution on the Internet, you can eventually build products and services with them. And our packaging business wasn't distributing and putting and packaging movies and films. Our packaging business was building companies and owning equity. And so I think you have the management company, you have the venture studio and then we have our brand arm that has experiential and a few other things. And so I think like for me we've always just been like, how do we continue to be at the center of Internet culture? I think it's a place where we want to live. We don't really chase Hollywood. We kind of just chase like what we want to be in the crevices of the Internet.
- [62:04]
Peter Kafka
But Hollywood wants it really. The agencies, the Hollywood agencies, the CAS and William Morrison that you couldn't get into the mailroom of, they are in this business now. You're competing against them. Are they your primary competition when you're, when you're trying to keep Kai Sinat or the next Kai or sign the next Kaiser, Not.
- [62:20]
Reid Duxer
I mean we work with the agencies. Like Kai, you know, has an agent helps on the acting side because Kai does want to get into acting eventually. So I would say the agencies have been helpful. They're helpful on the music touring side, they're helpful on the comedy touring side. For us, you know, I just think it's a. Representing a digital creator is a different muscle. You know, I think it's something that they're trying to get used to of like how do we provide value? You know, there's some manage.
- [62:45]
Peter Kafka
What is, what is different about it? It seems like it's repping, repping someone who's a popular YouTuber and someone who's an up and coming actor. Essentially they should be dealing with the same, the same issues.
- [62:56]
Reid Duxer
No, I think there's employees at play. They have production managers, they have editors. You need to help them hire. I don't know what Timothee Chalamet's team looks like, but I would imagine he just has an assistant. Whereas we have a lot of creators that have 30, 40, 50 employees. And so you kind of have to help them build that infrastructure. Also how you find talent is just fundamentally very different. When you walk through our office, everyone has high screen time. They're like doom scrolling on their phones looking for the next people. When you walk into a traditional management company in Hollywood, they're reading scripts. It's just a, it's a very different mindset. Like we're like be products of the Internet. They are products of the Hollywood system that has existed for 75 years. You know, I think they're, they're both figuring out how to coexist now, but the agencies have just been a little late to the game.
- [63:40]
Peter Kafka
And how do you handle that tension? I was talking about at the beginning the idea that like I'm an up and coming YouTuber or Twitch streamer. I'd like to say that I'm going to build this business for a decade, but it just doesn't seem feasible that I'm going to be doing this in my 30s or however old I'll be then how do you balance helping someone sort of build as long a career as they can with maximizing what they can bring?
- [64:03]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge for a lot of these creators, especially the ones that started in YouTube making content that was predominantly for kids and family, is as, as you get older, you either have to age up with your audience and I think someone like Logan Paul has done that very well where he's fully aged up as he's gotten older and his audience has followed him. But you have a lot of creators who choose to continue making kids content and they just hope that every Couple of years New 7, 8, 9 year olds come into the system and find out who they are. That's been a big challenge for a lot of our creators, is like, do you age up or do you consistently make the same amount of content? But we've now like, I mean, typical gamer. As a good example, he was one of the first clients I ever signed. Eleven years ago he was a really small live streamer on Twitch and YouTube but now is still one of the biggest Fortnite creators in the world. And he has created his own uefn, which is a UGC map building company within Fortnite. And so his business is still making content, but he has one of the biggest Fortnite map building companies in the world right now. And so we figured out how to like build separate businesses for them where the majority of their revenue isn't just predominantly from content. And he's a good example of that. And I think, you know, the next 15 years, I would imagine he'll continue to push harder and harder into UGC video game content.
- [65:23]
Peter Kafka
And then, and then on your end, how do you handle the tension of I'm going to help build your business, build equity for you, help you diversify and at some Point you're going to turn around and go, well, thanks for helping build this business. I'm going to take it now and go on my own. Which is essentially what Jimmy Donaldson, Mr. Beast did a couple of years ago. It's built into your business risk, right?
- [65:43]
Reid Duxer
It's a little bit of the blessing and the curse is like if we do a very good job and the companies get large enough, usually we get replaced by an internal team. I don't know how many people Jimmy has now, but I think it's closing in on 400. And so a manager's job is much different. When I met Mr. Beast, it was just him and his mother. And then I came in as the manager. When I stopped managing him, he had 325 full time people. So the job was just very different. And even for me, like we still did the brand deals but a lot of our focus was on feastables. We had like built this chocolate company and so him and I had transitioned to just focusing on that business. But yeah, if we do a good job, you almost take yourself out.
- [66:27]
Peter Kafka
So that would be a good problem to have.
- [66:31]
Reid Duxer
I just think it's part of the problem that exists if you help someone build a lot of infrastructure and teams. We haven't really seen a lot of people do it. There's like very few at this point. Jimmy is an anomaly in this industry. I'm not sure. I don't want to say someone will never come up through the system because I think when Jimmy and I started building this thing, everyone said there would never be another PewDiePie or someone of that magnitude. And we proved them wrong pretty quickly. And so I would imagine someone will eventually knock off Jimmy, but it probably won't be from getting popular making YouTube long form videos. It'll be some other mechanism.
- [67:04]
Peter Kafka
Let's end this with one project, one prediction for 2026. You can pick a piece of talent, you can pick a platform. What's a trend surprise prediction you think we're going to see this year?
- [67:15]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, I mean I hear a lot of talk about AI, so I'll stick there. I don't 2026. I don't think AI fundamentally changes any way that we make watch content. I don't think AI movies are coming anytime soon. I don't think AI animation is coming anytime soon. I know this is a big worry of this town especially. I'm. I am just still such a bear and I'm not optimistic about anything going on in AI as it relates to content and media.
- [67:43]
Peter Kafka
Do you think that's because the AI isn't good enough to make it now.
- [67:47]
Reid Duxer
Not even close.
- [67:48]
Peter Kafka
Do you, do you, can you see okay, it's me, me, my business and my client's business is fine now, but maybe three years, five years from now, that's when we have to worry about it. Yeah.
- [67:59]
Reid Duxer
I think adoption takes way longer than people think. Who knows how good this is going to get over the next two to three years. I have very low likelihood that this is going to affect what we do. I think animation maybe will be the first and hopefully the animation studios figure out how to utilize the platforms that allow them to make things cheaper. But I think I see a lot of this doom and gloom of AI in content and media, and I just don't feel that at all. I think we're still so far away.
- [68:27]
Peter Kafka
I think humans still want to watch humans.
- [68:29]
Reid Duxer
Yeah, humans still want to watch human content. I I There's so many AI channels on YouTube right now and people just don't watch them. They still want to watch this on talk about politics. They don't care about this AI influencer. Talking about the news.
- [68:44]
Peter Kafka
I'm taking that as, as positive news for 2026.
- [68:47]
Reid Duxer
I think it's positive. I think people are freaking out about something that's not that big of a threat. And you know, OpenAI launched Sora. It's gone. It's gone. It didn't work. It was an experiment. I don't think it's coming back.
- [68:59]
Peter Kafka
We're gonna leave it there. Reed, this is great.
- [69:02]
Reid Duxer
Yeah. Awesome talking to you.
- [69:05]
Peter Kafka
Thanks again to Reed Duckser for the chat. Thanks again to Janice Min for her chat. Thanks to Charlotte Silver for her excellent, timely production work. Thanks to you guys for listening. See you.
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