Why Traditional Media Companies are Stuck Watching Creators Surge

Summary

Next in Media: Why Traditional Media Companies are Stuck Watching Creators Surge

Release Date: December 12, 2024

In this insightful episode of Next in Media, host Mike Shields engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Doug Shapiro, a media consultant and analyst from the Boston Consulting Group, renowned for his newsletter, The Mediator. The discussion delves into the escalating tension between traditional media institutions and the burgeoning creator economy, exploring whether established media giants are adequately prepared to navigate the seismic shifts in consumption habits and advertising economics driven by technology and data.

---

1. The Stagnant Growth of Traditional Media vs. the Explosive Rise of Creator Media

Doug Shapiro begins by contextualizing the current media landscape, highlighting a critical issue: the overall media business is not experiencing global growth when adjusted for inflation. He emphasizes that the media industry's core is monetizing attention and engagement, which paradoxically, isn't expanding.

"The total media business is not really growing on a global basis... the total pie is only growing 5%. So when you do the math on it, what you see is that creator media is roughly half of the growth, even though it's only about 10% of the total media pie."
[Doug Shapiro, 01:55]

Shapiro contrasts this with the creator economy, which he defines as encompassing everything outside corporate or institutional media. Creator media generated approximately $250 billion last year, growing at an impressive 25% annually over the prior four years, compared to traditional media's modest 5% growth. This surge means that creator media accounts for half of the total media growth, despite constituting only a tenth of the overall market.

---

2. The Volume Disparity: Creator Media Overwhelms Traditional Outputs

The conversation progresses to the sheer volume of content produced by creators versus traditional media entities. Shapiro provides striking statistics to illustrate this imbalance:

"Last year Hollywood put out about 15,000 hours of new TV and film, and there were 300 million hours uploaded to YouTube. That's 20,000 times as much."
[Doug Shapiro, 04:02]

This exponential increase in content volume naturally leads to a significant shift in consumption patterns. Approximately 25% of all video consumption now occurs on social platforms like YouTube and TikTok, siphoning attention and revenue away from conventional media outlets.

---

3. Institutional Media's Struggle to Adapt to the Creator Economy

Mike Shields probes whether traditional media companies have truly acknowledged the magnitude of the creator surge. Shapiro responds by identifying a cultural impasse within institutions like Hollywood. He argues that traditional media professionals often hold a cognitive dissonance regarding the value and appeal of creator-generated content.

"There's still this element of... there's a cultural impasse, right?... It's garbage. It's a huckster. They're self-promotional... Justine Bateman said recently... this isn't Hollywood. These are infomercial spokespeople."
[Doug Shapiro, 06:10]

Shapiro further explains that traditional media operates within a different market structure, with multiple revenue streams such as subscriptions and advertising, unlike the predominantly ad-supported creator economy. This structural divergence makes it challenging for conventional media to compete on the same terms, especially given the infinite competitive set that creators represent.

---

4. Evolving Consumer Definitions of Quality in Media Consumption

A pivotal segment of the discussion centers on how younger consumers perceive quality in media. Shapiro articulates that consumer preferences are shifting from traditional hallmarks of quality—like high production values and star-studded casts—to attributes such as authenticity, relatability, and digestibility.

"The definition of quality is changing... authenticity and relatability and digestibility and social currency and dopamine... You could ask is that demographic or is it generational? I think it's generational."
[Doug Shapiro, 11:46]

He draws parallels to the rise of Airbnb, illustrating how new entrants with different value propositions can redefine industry standards. Similarly, the advent of streaming platforms like Netflix altered consumer expectations around content delivery and binge-watching behavior.

---

5. Potential Strategies for Traditional Media to Harness the Creator Economy

When questioned about actionable strategies for traditional media companies, Shapiro expresses skepticism about the availability of straightforward solutions. However, he suggests that media conglomerates could:

• Enhance Talent Discovery: More effectively mine social platforms for emerging creators, akin to how the music industry scouts talent from venues and digital platforms.

  "There could be a much more concerted effort to do that in video as well... more actively bundle if you're already selling."
  [Doug Shapiro, 17:34]

• Embrace Equity Models: Revamp the Multi-Channel Network (MCN) model by owning equity in creators, thereby aligning incentives and fostering more meaningful partnerships.

  "A revised MCN model where you actually own some of the equity... it's an opportunity."
  [Doug Shapiro, 18:48]

• Integrate Social Distribution: Explore distributing content through social snippets or adopting Quibi-style short-form offerings to align more closely with current consumption trends.

  "Could you ever start distributing content in snippets... short form drama networks."
  [Doug Shapiro, 18:12]

Despite these suggestions, Shapiro reiterates the challenges posed by the fundamental differences between traditional and creator-driven media ecosystems.

---

6. The Dopamine Effect: Algorithmic Media vs. Traditional Long-Form Content

A significant part of the dialogue addresses the psychological impact of modern short-form content, particularly its ability to optimize dopamine responses compared to traditional media. Shapiro explains that algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok employ variable rewards and high signal liquidity, creating addictive consumption patterns that are difficult for long-form narratives to replicate.

"There's such a structural advantage that short form video has... it's really hard to compete with that when you're talking about any kind of long form narrative content."
[Doug Shapiro, 21:20]

This dynamic not only affects viewer engagement but also poses ethical questions about media companies potentially contributing to addictive behaviors, a concern traditionally relegated to industries like gambling and vaping.

---

7. The Art vs. Commerce Dichotomy in Traditional Media

Shapiro concludes by highlighting an intrinsic tension within traditional media: the balance between artistic integrity and commercial viability. He argues that Hollywood's entrenched belief in art as a primary value can hinder the acceptance and integration of overtly commercial creator content.

"There's always been in entertainment a tension between art and commerce... It's very hard for them to embrace this, such an explicitly commercial part of the Business."
[Doug Shapiro, 23:24]

This reluctance to fully embrace the commercial aspects of the creator economy prevents traditional media from effectively harnessing its potential, further exacerbating the struggle to remain relevant in an evolving digital landscape.

---

8. The Future Landscape: Blurring Lines and Emerging Opportunities

In the final moments of the conversation, Shapiro speculates on the future convergence between traditional media and creator-driven content. He anticipates a blurring of lines as creators increasingly professionalize, potentially evolving into legitimate media entities with their own production infrastructures.

"There's a very large middle space here of small production teams... there's tons of space for that."
[Doug Shapiro, 27:53]

Additionally, the rise of generative AI is poised to further empower both creators and traditional media talent, enabling greater creative control and equity ownership. This technological advancement could catalyze a more seamless integration between established media companies and the dynamic creator economy.

---

Conclusion

The episode of Next in Media featuring Doug Shapiro offers a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing traditional media in the wake of the creator economy's explosive growth. Shapiro underscores the necessity for traditional media companies to adapt strategically—through enhanced talent discovery, embracing equity models, and integrating more closely with social distribution channels—to remain competitive. As consumer preferences continue to evolve and technology advances, the lines between traditional media and creator-driven content are likely to become increasingly fluid, presenting both risks and avenues for innovation within the media landscape.

---

For more insights and discussions on the evolving media landscape, subscribe to Next in Media and stay informed about what's next in creator media.

Transcript

[Mike Shields]

Looking to get more out of your YouTube advertising? With view Planner, you can buy with total confidence and clarity. View Planner is a verified YouTube brand suitability and contextual targeting partner in the YouTube measurement program. Recognized by Google as a trusted and independent leader in driving and measuring performance on YouTube, their advanced technology gives you a clear edge. Only with View Planner we're talking custom curated contextual collections, exclusive content strategies, transparent reporting, and AI driven optimization to deliver real results. Don't let your budget go to waste. Partner with View Planner. Experience the difference. Visit viewplanner.com now to unlock your full advertising potential on YouTube. That's V U E P L-A-N-N-E-R.com this week on Nexting Creator Media, I spoke with Doug Shapiro. He's an analyst with the Boston Consulting Group who authors the excellent newsletter the Mediator. Doug and I talked about the growing tension between institutional media and creators and whether these large traditional companies are really equipped to react to all the changes we're seeing in terms of consumption habits and ad economics. Let's get started.

[Doug Shapiro]

Foreign.

[Mike Shields]

Welcome to Next in Creator Media. I'm Mike Shields and I'm here with Doug Shapiro. He is a media consultant, part time advisor to Boston Consulting and also the author of their very good substack the Mediator. Hey Doug, thanks for being here.

[Doug Shapiro]

Yeah, thanks for having me. Mike.

[Mike Shields]

I've been looking forward to talking to you because you've been writing some really intriguing stuff and we're sort of mind melding a lot. But you are someone who spent a lot of time in and around traditional media companies and you've been talking about recently talked about this tension between I'm often talking about how do brands figure out this creator space. Can you talk about this tension that you've seen between corporate media and creator media and that the fact that it's a zero sum game and I'm not always sure that people in the traditional media industry see it that way.

[Doug Shapiro]

Yeah, all that's accurate. A good representation of certainly the last couple of pieces I've written. As a starting point, I think it's important to understand that the total media business is not really growing on a global basis. It's not growing on a real basis, meaning adjusted for inflation. And the reason for that is because fundamentally the media business is about monetizing attention and engagement and attention isn't really growing anymore. So if you look at the time spent with media certainly in the West, I think there's some interesting activate data which shows that the average U.S. adult is spending more than 75% of their waking hours with media. I mean, it depends on how you count the multitasking, but a lot of time. And if you look at a time series of time spent with media, what you could see is that it grew like in the kind of 08 to 2013 period as mobile usage and penetration picked up and then the kind of flatline, then there was a bump around Covid and it's been pretty stagnant since. So there's just not that many hours in the day. And so anyway, if time spent with media isn't growing, it's hard for the whole pie to grow. And as a result, when you look at the growth of creator media, and the way I define that by the way, is corporate media or institutional media and everything else. So I'm calling creator media basically everything else. And it's growing much, much faster than the total pie by my Math, it's about $250 billion last year and growing grew about 25% annually over the prior four years. And the total pie is only growing 5%. So when you do the math on it, what you see is that creator media is roughly half of the growth, even though it's only, you know, about 10% of the total media pie. And that's 250 billion relative to 2.5 trillion globally. It's still half the growth.

[Mike Shields]

And in terms of consumption, it is taking away from something else at this point.

[Doug Shapiro]

Yeah. So if you kind of start with the way I think about it is the volume of creator media is multiples or in some cases orders of magnitude larger than the volume of corporate media. Right. And that's just because of the sheer volume of people, tens of millions of creators around the world making stuff. Right. So if you look at YouTube as an example, last year Hollywood by my math put out about 15,000 hours of new TV and film and, and there were 300 million hours uploaded to YouTube. And that's, that's an old number by the way. I bet it's higher now. That's 20,000 times as much. So if you go like, you know, you look at music, you look at gaming, like you can see, and it's pretty intuitive. There's just like start with volume, there's vastly more volume. You go next from volume to consumption. And not surprisingly, a lot of that creator content doesn't actually get consumed. So again, by my math, in video at least what I calculate is about 25% now of all video consumption is social, video is YouTube, TikTok reels, you know, whatever. So you kind of let, you know you're laddering down from volume, massive consumption a little bit less and monetization even less than that because as I said earlier, total creator economy revenue is probably about a tenth. So yeah, all of that because of the, if you start with the presumption that it's a zero sum game, all of that basically has to come at the expense. Certainly the consumption and the monetization has to come at the expense of traditional institutional media.

[Mike Shields]

And in the institutional media world are they, it's not like they don't know that the creators are a big thing or this is happening. They've been in and out of trying to work with that world for a little while, but have they come to, to grips with that shift that you're talking about and especially for younger generations that it's not just extra stuff they do on the side, it's becoming, you know, it's a primary form of entertainment. Has that shift happened? There's a lot of that stuff doesn't count as much as our stuff.

[Doug Shapiro]

Yeah, there's a couple of answers there. I think as you said, there is still a cultural impasse that if you think about Hollywood, it is, it's self selecting for people who think they have great taste. Like you only go into Hollywood if you think you have, have your finger on the pulse of what other people will enjoy, right. So you're already, you know, have a collection of people who think that those are the people who congregate there. And now you're actually ascending in your career every step you move up the ladder, it only further reinforces that view. So by the time you're at the top of the pyramid of Hollywood, like, you know, you're already predisposed to think that you have this, you unique perspective and you've had many opportunities for that to be reinforced along the way. And so I think there's a certain degree of cognitive dissonance with accepting the fact that some kids in their garage and somebody on a skateboard with a handheld or somebody with a drone or whatever is making something that is actually compelling. So I think there's still this view plus the creator economy just because it's just this complete scrum of people like you know, there's no, there's no entry requirements in there. Is that you, you know, you have some kind of, some less than tasteful stuff happens and you know, there's, there's certainly people who are range is super wide and so there's plenty of stuff to point to to Say, you know, those. That's. It's garbage. You know, that's. That person's a huckster. They're self promotional. They're, you know what. They're. What Justine Bateman said recently is about the creator, a list that Hollywood Reporter put out. I think she said, this isn't Hollywood. These are infomercial spokespeople. Right? So there's still that element of. There's a cultural impasse, right? I think that's one thing. The second thing is I think you just need to be realistic about the challenges, that it's just a very different animal, right? It's a different market structure, sort of like an infinite competitive set. And if you grew up with a handful of competitors in movie studios or music labels or video game publishers, and now you're competing with an infinite army of creators. I've made this joke a few times that in traditional media there's still this kind of Game of Thrones analogy that it's the Lannisters versus the Starks versus the Sea Snake versus whatever, but the army of the Dead is a mass at the wall, you know. And so there's still this kind of myopic view. But, you know, so it's a. It's just a very different market structure. It's very different monetization. Obviously, you know, the traditional media business have dual or tri revenue streams. Like they have transactional subscription advertising supported. You know, the creator economy is mostly ad supported. It doesn't monetize as highly per unit of consumption, unit of time. Right. It's just not as profitable for the effort. There's a different balance of power because there's just so much power in the big gatekeepers. Right? And there's a different audience that wants a different thing. So, like, when you add it all up, it's just a really hard thing to do. And as you said, they've tried. Obviously, everybody in traditional media is aware of it. They use it as a marketing channel. They use it sometimes for franchise development. You'll see the Talking Dead or. Or the Walking Dead, Red Machete, or, you know, you have like, you know, you'll have like adjunct programming that's meant to. Which I guess is a. Is an extension of marketing. You have some talent development, some efforts to cross people over. You have a D'Amelios, you have Lilly Singh. You know, you have some of that stuff which has been, you know, if you're not careful and it's not authentic to the creator's brand, it doesn't always work. So there's kind of a mixed, kind of a mixed track record there. You know, you look at Beast Games, which is a big swing, and we'll.

[Mike Shields]

See how it goes coming up next week. It's sort of the latest, biggest example of. And I wouldn't, I mean, we're calling, in this case it's Amazon, not, you know, old school media company, but big media, trying to bring these worlds together.

[Doug Shapiro]

Yeah. So I think it's, you know, to be. So I think going through it, you know, number one, there's a cultural impasse. And just number two, it's a very different business and it's really hard to do. So there's a little bit of like, it is what it is. And I don't think it's. If you were to say, oh, well, here's. And maybe this is the next question. What should the big media companies do? I don't think there's a lot of like, easy, obvious answers. It's not like there's. These people are not stupid.

[Mike Shields]

Right.

[Doug Shapiro]

You know, they're not leaving a big opportunity untouched just because of, you know, pride or myopia or whatever. It's just, it's just a different animal and it's very, it's challenging.

[Mike Shields]

All right, I want, I am going to ask that question in a second, but hold that thought because I just want to dig into something else you've written recently. I think it was back in August you just talked about. It's not only that the dynamics of the business and the consumption patterns are so different, but this, this younger consumer, you know, I think it, it seems faddish where they don't care so much about professionalism. They favor this authenticity in their content and they like that, like dopamine per minute viewing experience. Can you talk about that? Because that is a big difference. And I think people might hope that that is just a product of youth or at the moment, but that could fundamentally change what people expect from media and look for. Right?

[Doug Shapiro]

Yeah. I mean, something that I write about often is this idea of a changing consumer definition of quality. And I think a big problem in any domain is that if you've been in it for a long time, you tend to get kind of anchored to a definition of quality. And in the TV business, and I experienced this when I was a Turner, I remember running this big project and we had a lot of senior executives there and it came around to this question of whether quality was changing. And for them, quality is really defined by an HBO show, very high production values, brand name, showrunner, household Name actors, et cetera. But one of the things that happens, particularly when disruption occurs, one of the things that happens is that new entrants will come in with new attributes, new features, and if those resonate with consumers, they will change the definition of quality. I've used this example before. It just always strikes me as a good one, which is Airbnb. When Airbnb emerged, it just seemed like a horrible idea to the idea that you're going to. If someone's a house, you're going to sleep on their couch. What are you talking about? Are you going to use their bathroom? And it's just like, what are you talking about? Right? But in the process, as Airbnb has grown and matured and become entrenched in society, it's changing the definition of lodging because it's introduced all these new attributes, like having a full working kitchen or being in a quaint neighborhood, or having a driveway or room to entertain, all these things. And so if there's a lot of people now where, when they're traveling, their first stop, that is luxury, or the first place they go, they go to Airbnb. Com, they don't go to Marriott or Hilton and Pilton, they don't go to Bonvoy or whatever. And so that's what's happening in media, too, that, you know, the advent of Netflix introduced new attributes of quality. Like, all of a sudden, like, product mattered, right? Like the UI UX mattered, being ad free mattered, you know, how. How many episodes were stacked? You know, I remember when people would say, well, I won't start a show unless I know all the seasons available. Like, that didn't exist when we had four networks that you flicked on your, you know, on your. On your tv and then with creator, with social video. The same thing is that now you have attributes like authenticity and relatability and digestibility and social currency and, you know, low friction and all this other stuff, and dopamine, like you said, dopamine. And so, you know, the way I think about quality, and I should have said this first, is that if you think about it not as a value judgment, but as revealed preference as what people actually choose when given a choice, then it's very clear that the definition of quality is changing. So if you come home and you slump on the couch and the remote is within arm's reach, and Netflix and Max and Disney and the whole world awaits you on that remote. But you pick up your phone and. And you start flicking through, you know, reels for 20 minutes, you have just said, that reels is higher quality in this moment you see this need state this, whatever this context. And so you know, you could ask is that demographic or is it generational? You know, meaning if it's generational then it's going to change. You know, people are going to grow up and have house, you know, these kids will all suddenly be watching, you know, Lester Holt on the NBC Nightly News or whatever or anyway, point being I don't think this is, you know, it's the same thing with like there was a long time when, when people thought no one was gonna cut off their light, their wireline phone for wireless, right. Because the quality was lower because it might drop calls and you know, and sometimes it's staticky and all that. And you know we've seen what's happened to, to wireline phone penetration in the United States. So I don't think this is a fad. It's quite sustainable. And once the definition of quality starts to shift, I don't, I don't, it's not, I don't, I don't see what the case is for it to shift back in a dramatic way Now.

[Mike Shields]

Okay, here's, so here's the really hard question, right? What do traditional media companies do about this? If anything because you're like, like they're, the time is getting taken away from them, especially younger gen demographics. They are often youtuber tick tock centric or they go back and forth and don't think it's a big trade down. It's not as though the traditional media companies they tried this 10 years ago. They bought Maker studio, Disney World Banker Studios and full screen. And like you mentioned, Lilly Singh had a show on NBC, she was a YouTuber. They've tried stuff, it hasn't worked. It's not clear to me what they do now. You know, do they try and bring more creators to television like Beast Games, do they try and make their UIs a little bit more tiktoky? Like what the hell do they do? If there's an answer I like well.

[Doug Shapiro]

As I said before, I don't think there are easy answers. I think that it's hard to have a big enough funnel to catch all these people, right? But I think that they, they could do a better job. Or if you, if you use music as an analogy, the A and R business forever was you'd send some ANR rep to a smoky bar at 3am and they discover some discover act and now it's become a data mining exercise. You see who's trend on YouTube and SoundCloud and all that. So I think there could be a much more concerted effort to do that in video as well. To be really mining social for emerging stars. I think that's one thing. And then trying to cross them over in authentic ways. Not everyone could be Mr. Beast, right? You know, it's, it's.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah, we, we use him all the time as an example and he's so unique that maybe we shouldn't.

[Doug Shapiro]

Yeah, we shouldn't. And you know, but you look at Whistle, you look dude, perfect. And you look at, you know, good, good golf and you know, there's, there's definitely stars that could cross over. So I think that's one thing. You know, there's also a question about could you lean into social distribution more? You know, could you ever think about social as a downstream window? You know, would you actually start distributing content in snippets in, you know, Quibi style snippets? You're seeing this growth of these, you know, short form drama networks.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah, you know, it's very big in, in Asia, but this.

[Doug Shapiro]

In Asia. Yeah.

[Mike Shields]

Crazy soap opera kind of things.

[Doug Shapiro]

Exactly. Yeah. I think Paramount did a stunt where When Mean Girls 2 came out, they basically put out Mean Girl, the first Mean Girls on TikTok in little snippets. You know, is that a big business? No, that's still probably another form of marketing. Is there a lot, I mean, you know, is that a lot of monetization? I don't know. The biggest swing would be things like rolling up influencer marketing agencies or pushing.

[Mike Shields]

I was going to ask you about that. Is there almost a renewed MCN play where that model didn't really work, but is there some alternative where they get to roll up 5 really 10 really important influencers in a particular category and sell them and use them as the farm team?

[Doug Shapiro]

I think there's an argument that the MCN should come back probably in a new form. One of the biggest challenges with the MCNS was that it was an agency business and they didn't own any equity in the talent. So as soon as anyone hit it, they were like they had all the bargaining power. So I think a revised Amsan model where you actually own some of the equity. I know there's people trying to do that where you own some of the equity and creators. I think it's an opportunity. But the question is, could you more actively bundle if you're already selling? I mean, you know, that brand dollars are moving away from traditional tv, you're already selling bundles of traditional linear Inventory and now digital inventory. And is there an opportunity to bundle in influencer marketing? I mean, there, you know, there is already branded content to varying degrees. But does that solve the problem? So if you start out where the point of the recent piece that I wrote, which I think was called the relentless inevitable march of the creator economy, then none of this is going to solve the problem. I think it's just a degree of inevitability about this. Hence the title of that piece is just a question of how do you harness it? If you're a traditional media company, how do you harness it as best you can?

[Mike Shields]

Earlier this year, Publicis bought Influential, which is like a social media agency network of sorts. I would, I wouldn't have thought of this, but what if a big media company had made that kind of acquisition with that? I mean, that's kind of like not their game. But that would have been an interesting way to both bring the marketing services thing to bear and also get closer to that talent. I wonder if that, something like that makes sense.

[Doug Shapiro]

Those are the kinds of Boulder bets that I think they need to be thinking about.

[Mike Shields]

It disturbed me a little bit having three young, not young, three boys that are already getting like sucked into these worlds. This addiction to dopamine that we may be creating with this generation or two, whether or not that's actually good for people, I don't know. But can the traditional media companies find a way to tap into that? Is that just totally unique to algorithmic media? What do you. Can anything be done about that?

[Doug Shapiro]

It's again, difficult. It's difficult to compete just because, you know, a lot of what drives dopamine is, is variable rewards. You know, this is why people sit at slot machines, just keep pulling. And, you know, there's all these studies about, you know, rats generate a lot more dopamine. Or pigeons, when, when, you know, they tap the lever and the. There's sort of like a randomness to. When the pellets come out, you have variable rewards because you don't know what you're going to get. You have a much faster payoff because these things, you know, you can tell. I forget what the stat is. But the, the average real or short, I think is only watched for. I forget what it was like eight seconds, six seconds, it's something ridiculous. So like you, you're making a decision really quickly whether this is worth your time or not. And then you have the algorithm, and the algorithm has a massive amount of signal. I think Scott Galloway talks about signal liquidity. You think about the signal Liquidity on Netflix and how many choices you're making versus the signal liquidity in TikTok and how many choices you're making per hour. And again, it's orders of magnitude more. So between the variable rewards, the speed of payoff, and just the algorithmic signal liquidity, there's such an structural advantage that short form video has such a structural advantage in terms of optimizing dopamine. It's really hard to compete with that when you're talking about any kind of long form narrative content where you have to like, have plot development and character development and build a different sport than.

[Mike Shields]

Making NCIS or even having a streaming app. Yeah, it's a completely different game.

[Doug Shapiro]

It's a completely different game. Yeah. I think it kind of, you know, look, we have gambling and vaping and porn and, you know, we got a lot of things that there's a lot of industries that exist to capitalize on. Human frailty.

[Mike Shields]

Really that might be what the entertainment industry is good at. I don't know.

[Doug Shapiro]

I mean, you know, I think the entertainment industry would, would say that's, that's not the case. I think the entertainment industry would say. I, I think the, you know, ultimately what you're getting at is I think there is and always has been in entertainment a tension between art and commerce. And I think in Hollywood there's a lot of people who believe very strongly in the art of it, or at least there's a pretense that it's art. There's a lot of trappings of art, and there's still a lot of dismissiveness of people who do things that are kind of, you know, baldly commercial. Right. You know, Robert Dairo does some, you know, I mean, you could see that in the culture. Right? Like some, some actor, ch. You know, Ryan Gosling chooses to work at scale for some like, project he really believes in as opposed to doing, you know, a superhero movie. And everyone loves him because he's an artist. Right. And what we're talking about is more overtly commercial. It's really. And, and so anyway, I think that's another problem. And you know, you helped me kind of just talking through it, you helped me refine it. But I think that's also a big, that's at the heart of the tension in traditional media is that because it still wants so much of it, or so many of the people who are involved still want to believe it's an art form that it's very hard for them to embrace this, such an explicitly commercial part of the Business. So yeah, it's, you know, like, like I said before, there's just, there are no easy answers here.

[Mike Shields]

Last question in the creator, you know you mentioned you have your, you have your definition of it and everyone, people will quibble with how many creators there are you're starting to see. You mentioned obviously Mr. Beast is in his own league, dude. Perfect. Others who are getting the funding and becoming semi professional to very professional organizations or operations. How big do you think that can get? And are we going to see, is that a handful? Is that 20? Are we going to see a bunch of these stars become production companies or legitimate media entities over time?

[Doug Shapiro]

I think that's hard to say. I think it's going to get very blurry in the middle. You already have a lot of big directors and showrunners have their own production businesses, you know and, and Will Smith has his and J.J. abrams as is and there's Agbo and there's, you know, there's James Cameron, like, you know, they all, there's Plan B or whatever the Brad Pitt thing is. It's very common for traditional talent to try to take more control of, you know, to kind of integrate up the stack in a way. Right. To take more control over the creative process to own more of the equity effect. So that starts to bleed into these creators who were, you know, one person shops and then start to professionalize, add some kind of infrastructure around themselves. And so at some point in the middle there they start to intersect. You know I, I don't know what Mr. Beast annual budget is, but I'm sure it's, it's converging on, it's probably converging on the annual budget of, of some of these, you know, some of these brand name Hollywood production studios. And to go further, I think that we haven't talked at all about generative AI and it's actually very hard to have a conversation and not talk about it.

[Mike Shields]

Yeah, I don't know how we did that so far. Yeah, we haven't got, yeah, that's only going to increase the output here from somebody output.

[Doug Shapiro]

But it's also, I going to think, I think it's going to empower more traditional talent to start to move away from Hollywood and think about, well, instead of making a show and going to streamer X and saying hey, you know, can I get a couple points on this? And they say, well sure, you know, here's the points. If it goes one season, two seasons, three seasons, four seasons and then you know, they cancel it after two because it's going to be too expensive. You know, they lose, you know, they lose creative control. You're going to see, I think, more traditional talent kind of move into that middle space of more equity ownership, more control.

[Mike Shields]

Right. So I think that they becoming creators, while it's great, I think there's going.

[Doug Shapiro]

To be a room for. I think there's going to be a very large middle space here of small production teams, whether they came from the head of the curve and. Or whether they come from the bottom of the curve and move up. I think there's, I think there's tons of space for that.

[Mike Shields]

All right, Doug, Great stuff. Awesome conversation, everyone. Check out the mediator. Thank you so much for your time here. Let's talk again.

[Doug Shapiro]

Yeah, it's a deal. Thanks, Mike.

[Mike Shields]

Thanks again to my guests this week, the mediators, Doug Shapiro, and my partners at ViewPlanner. If you like this episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time for more on what's next in creator media. Thanks for listening.