← The Media Odyssey
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Media Odyssey podcast. That is Marion Wrenn Sheth and that is Ivan Shapiro. In very, very hot New York City, we're getting the heat wave that Paris got last week. It's really unbearable here.
- [00:11]
B
I think you're the blitz, meaning that you're taking the heat wave wherever you're going. So stay put in New York. This is going to be the second episode where, you know, we're trying to tackle what coming. What is coming next for video.
- [00:42]
A
Yeah. And so we had a great episode about vertical video that we shot in Lisbon with Bogdan Nesbit from Holy Water and my Drama. And then today we've got a brand new vertical premium television studio that is picking up where Bogdan left off in Lisbon, which is. He said the genre has to expand. He talked about that live on stage and said that the five stories in the telenovela, softcore porn micro drama industry are not sustainable in and of themselves. This company that we've got today with the two of the founders is taking that seriously and expanding the whole format of vertical into truly premium television genres across the whole spectrum. Shall we bring them to the stage?
- [01:31]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [01:32]
A
Let's introduce Guy Hammeri and Lior Friedman, two founders of Roseberry, a vertical premium television studio. Guy, Lior, welcome to the pod.
- [01:40]
C
Hi guys. Thank you for having us.
- [01:43]
D
I'm with you in the super hot New York.
- [01:46]
C
London is a bit easier. London is a bit easier these days.
- [01:48]
A
I'm actually headed to Paris next week and it's only going to be 85 degrees, which I don't know what is Celsius. I don't do that.
- [01:54]
C
Let's hope France stays in the World Cup. So you have, so you have something to look forward to.
- [01:58]
A
Hey look, us is looking not terrible right now too.
- [02:01]
B
So I think going to the end. We're going to the end. Let's not say hope, hope, hope. Have you seen the games from the French team?
- [02:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. France looks very good. But Guy and Lior, can you jump in and let us know about the origin stories of Roseberry? What the concept you have around vertical premium television. Guy, you and I discussed this@Stream TV last month. This is a completely new look at the microdrama phenomenon through the lens of the future of television. Guy, tell us how you came to this, both career wise and kind of theoretically.
- [02:36]
D
So in a real nutshell, my career is producing television. So I've been doing this for 25 years. I've established my production company in Israel and I was the first producer to bring like huge formats into the industry in Israel. So I brought in Survivor, which became a huge hit. And right afterwards I started producing other big formats like the Bachelor and Amazing Grace and X Factor and Got Talent and Beauty and the Geek and many more. And we started producing our own original formats after working on so many big formats and put them on primetime and some of them, lucky for us, became traveling formats in multiple genres and then created like a big drama studio. Produced a couple of dozens of drama series, more on the premium side. Some of them became also rolled out as really nice tapes like Stisel that was on Netflix for many territories, but other titles as well, both remake and tapes. And I sold my business to Fremantle and so I became a part of, you know, a big indie and I've been doing that and was Fremantle chairman in Israel until the end of 24. Part of my role as a chairman was to look for new investments. And I think Israel as a place that is A, a big tech nation, B, a huge gaming and head tech industry. We're one of the first territories to recognize the growth of microdrama from China. Okay. You know the Sensor tower, which is like Nielsen for the gaming app, head tech industry, they saw the rose of microdrama and that's how I become aware because some of these companies reached out for me. But I think really early on I strongly felt that most of these companies, their approach is more of a head tech gaming approach and less of a TV content approach. And I felt that micro drama is just the first wave in many more to come. So instead of chasing microdrama, we've decided to be the first studio to chase other formats in what we call vertical tv. So that's the origins of the Rose of Rosebery. Lior, if you want to be complimentary to that.
- [05:01]
A
Well, and lior, you come from Amagi and a couple of other areas in the television digital stack. And what attracted you to this idea and this enterprise?
- [05:14]
C
Yeah, so I'm also a bigger screen. There's a big screen, there's a bigger screen and now there's the screen we're all focused on. I started in the medium sized screen, the TV actually originally as a news anchor and then in the evolution of things got into the business development side of media, as you said with Amagi, but really focused on how to monetize and commercialize television in a proper way. And I think one of the biggest shifts you're seeing is how eyeballs are really moving in droves into the phone. You don't need any research company for it. Just Go to the subway or go to the tube, you're in London and see that people were reading a book or opening a Kindle or maybe looking at their phones horizontally. And now they're only looking at it like that. And I think that shift is very clear. You can see it happen everywhere. And I think right now consumers, Evan, you say it haven't itch to scratch. They're getting I think a very high calorie, low taste experience from the vertical landscape. Meaning, and nothing against it, sometimes we all want some gummy bears or a fast food burger. Right, that's fine. So you either have user generated content on one side or this new upcoming, again trailblazing genre called microdrama that is providing you with that dopamine hit that has really proven that people are willing to pay for consuming content on vertical. You're getting both ends of the spectrum. But the middle class is kind of missing an outlet for them to actually consume content. And I think that's, that's the white space that we, we saw has an opportunity by actually providing a long term sustainable entertainment experience to those consumers. They want a TV like behavior outside of the sofa or the living room. And that's exactly the mission statement that we had when we did this. And I think in terms of like when you look at a business from a business development mindset, there's a big market out there right now that I think a lot of people are missing because of that specific user behavior. When you're only looking at that specific angle of only watching user generated content, only watching micro dramas, there's so much more in between when we're on the tube or commuting to work, when we're waiting in line for the doctor, when we're on the toilet or again, I'm not the first one to bring that into the conversation. But yeah, today that's true. That's true.
- [07:38]
D
I think another important issue with bringing other genres into again what we call vertical television is to be very distinguished because today other genres on tv, like even reality shows and obviously scripted drama of any genre and even documentary, they use social media or they use the mobile to do promotional content and not long form content. Okay. And I think the big shift is who is the first one to bring any genre of entertainment content into fully be watched on mobile. And that's our mission. And I think microdrama helped prove that it's a possibility. It helped prove that you can watch a 90 minute series. But I think two years, two years and a half like into that we see the limitations as well. Okay. And we see that the limitations are around mainly behavior. There is less retention. Leaning into the freemium model has its prices, which is mainly retention and engagement. Going to the weekly subscriber also has its prices. And I think what we are, our mission is to work on different behaviors in vertical mobile. And I think there is no. We can't argue that people will consume entertainment in their mobile. It will happen. I think it's all about who is going to do it in its best shape. And what we are mainly offering is to be start to end studio that offers solution how to bring other genres into vertical television.
- [09:23]
B
And so this takes the shape of a platform. That platform is an app, a mobile app called Epis. Is that coming from Episodes? Where is this coming from?
- [09:33]
D
Yeah, yeah, it's a short for Episodes. I mean the beginning of our journey was really all about producing. So, you know, we all understand that again, micro drama is one specific genre. You talked about this with Bogdan and I think he described it in a brilliant way. What is working for micro drama? I think again the proof was can other genres work in.
- [09:56]
A
In. In.
- [09:57]
D
In, you know, in this vertical format. So the first thing we've done is produced originals actually. So we produced true crime and we've produced dating reality and we've produced other genres of scripted in vertical. So we needed to do it in a good price point. We shot it in the U.S. you know, so it's fully Americanized. And we saw the outcome and the outcome was really good actually. And we did. And we A B tested that and we saw that people are reacting and people are spending time and people are willing to pay. And after gaining the confidence, basically what we wanted to achieve is volume. And we took these products and these finish, let's call it finish tape for a second if we're in the TV language and, and took it to the big indies. So we started with Fremantle Bunny Jail 3 Media A&E in the US and showed them the outcome and they were really thrilled because they felt now it's a way for them to participate in the vertical game because they did see the rows of microdrama. And then what we did is basically found a methodology of how to take horizontal long form and turn it into vertical short form. And again, in the technology world of today, it's amazing how you can do things vice versa than you used to do. So we manually edited these products that these companies gave us in order to get it back to them in its best shape. Again, we come from the craft of Television. So we've done it with our best editors until we've reached an outcome that we felt that it's in its best shape, showed it to these indies and they really liked the outcome and then started doing it in scale. Only after doing it in scale, we started automizing the process into an AI 12 step machine that we call Reds Network.
- [11:49]
A
12 step.
- [11:50]
D
12 step. Exactly.
- [11:51]
C
12 step.
- [11:52]
A
Getting over an addiction to one format over another.
- [11:55]
D
The addiction is how to make money in vertical for you, how to gain, you know, more profits from the same IP from addiction.
- [12:05]
A
Yeah, well, I mean but let, let's zoom out here for, for one second because you're getting into some of the sausage making here to a certain extent. First of all, Marin, do you remember when Jordan Schwarzenberger was on the pod, he's the sideman manager and he said all this usage of video on social platforms and most of it's terrible that there's all this consumption happening and still there's all this white space for good premium quality content, tremendous amount of white space. And that's really where I think this theory comes from. You marry that with the data that we released recently, ESHAP did that shows that in America at least 2 to 1 people use their phones, 60% over, 30% phone to TV for video consumption. Not just mobile, just that, not media consumption, all consumption. And then we've released other data that shows that TikTok is actually crushing it and driving new consumption behavior. So Vertical is now a premium video experience, but there's not enough premium content to get there. Guy and lior what you've built here is a new age multidimensional, multi platform syndication model for premium content in Vertical. You made deals already launched with deals with all three Banijay, Fremantle, A and E to syndicate their existing massive format libraries like True Crime and Dating Reality and all this other kind of stuff into Vertical, starting with Epies, testing it out, see how it did there, improving as you went. And now you're expanding the release of epis. That's kind of the news that we're here to discuss today. Epies is growing its own platform, but then the partners rev share on on episode and then turn around and have that content to syndicate anywhere else they want. And you're also developing a major global flywheel for syndication in Vertical as well. Am I assessing what we just discussed correctly in an encapsulated form?
- [14:11]
C
Yeah, I think that's the fun part about mobile. Right? Because the ability to experiment and immediately extract data from users and understand what Behavior looks like, I think is the key thing that in the old traditional TV world was such a long cycle until you actually get user data. If you get any data at all, not to mention those black boxes that you just distribute into and all you get is a check at the end here you have the ability to reach a user level granularity of data that I think is what this industry really is after. I mean there's clearly revenue that's to be made here. But I think on top of that is the ability to perfect the craft as Guy said before, by actually bringing that user behavior and the data to finally know what really people are looking for. So yeah, it's not the around the sofa family viewing that maybe gets that, you know, the top CPMs that you get from a proper awareness brand out there. But you're getting a one to one intimate relationship podcast like you know, very similar to this podcast like relationship with the consumer. Most of the time with their headphones in, they're invested in the screen. We're bringing all the right tools as part of the storytelling to manifest or to bring all those stories directly in the eyes of the consumer in the most compelling way, in the way that TV storytelling can provide. True storytelling, true to the media.
- [15:32]
A
You have data that shows that consumers will follow narrative story arcs from traditional television, very traditional television in the mobile format, in micro episodes, the way that they have micro dramas and they do vlogs to a certain extent. We actually have a good case study of this to share with the audience here today. You have taken and Guy, I don't want to sleep on this. It's not just a pure AI driven process here.
- [15:56]
D
Yeah.
- [15:56]
A
Or television experience. Your television expertise is really educating the editing and reformatting of these series. In this case, we're talking about a classic long run television, I guess drama called Neighbors from Australia that launched two major careers that I'm aware of. Margot Robbie and Kylie Minogue. We actually have a clip of an episode from Neighbors that you have reformatted for Fremantle for syndication in Vertical. Is that correct?
- [16:28]
C
True.
- [16:28]
D
Yeah. I think we can watch the clip and discuss it.
- [16:31]
A
Yeah, let's take a look at it.
- [16:32]
B
Yeah.
- [16:37]
E
Thanks for walking me home.
- [16:39]
C
Thanks for walking me.
- [16:42]
E
How cute was Zeke and Sunny?
- [16:44]
D
What was the longest kiss?
- [16:45]
E
Yeah, it took him long enough. Wait, wait. What if we want this?
- [16:55]
C
I do want this.
- [16:58]
E
Do you? Yes. But this time we do it right. Take it slow. Okay. Remember when I wanted to jump you and you knew needed time?
- [17:10]
F
Okay.
- [17:11]
C
Okay.
- [17:13]
E
Right.
- [17:15]
C
Slow, slow.
- [17:19]
E
Good night.
- [17:31]
B
Just wanna tell you right now,
- [17:46]
C
For
- [17:47]
A
those of you who are on audio only, we just played a clip of Neighbors that runs in vertical. However, for those of you who want to see the comparison between the vertical syndicated product that Roseberry created next to the original horizontal version on television, go to our YouTube channel right now and take a look at it because it's pretty interesting. You were describing how these two compare. You've basically taken out a plot line from an episode of Neighbors featuring Margot Robbie smartly.
- [18:15]
C
That helps. That helps for sure.
- [18:17]
A
And talk about kind of the art and science mixture of pulling out that for a vertical format.
- [18:23]
C
So let's talk about first of all the verticalizing or what we call repurposing for a second and then we'll talk about how we present this and the programming part, which I think is also interesting. Right. So you saw here, of course, there's a cropping of the frame from horizontal into vertical. There's technology that does that today to a very high degree, but it still requires, I will say still human craft. As part of this, there is focusing on the right subject matters within a specific episode. I think there's probably like five or six storylines at every any given point in any type of soap opera. Not all of them are maybe fit for the vertical viewer because some of them are just there to paint a nice picture for the TV consumer. Right. You want to give the right stories that actually drive the plot and drive the story. Right. So we're going to be focusing on that. Sometimes you also don't want to have frames with too many participants or too many characters in them, because that's not something that will fly necessarily with the vertical consumer because you can't really tell the details within a big frame. So all of that's happening as part of this, call it AI First Human Creative Powered workflow. But on top of that, there's also 5,000 of what we just saw. And if you need 5,000 of it, there's no way to condense it into one, I don't know, 5,000 micro episode long. Micro. That's not the plan here. Right. So the idea is really to create and start building on this habit that we mentioned before of getting those vertical consumers acclimated to actually consuming content on their mobile devices on a day by day basis. So if the daytime soap actually helped build or create the infrastructure for what we know today as television, I think there's also an opportunity to do this with the vertical TV landscape. And I think doing this with known IP that people already know to some degree and love and have feelings and fandom towards, but also new audiences that have never been exposed to it, but still can relate to the storytelling and can actually follow along different storylines.
- [20:18]
A
The Gilmore Girls found a whole new audience on Netflix. Right? Suits found a whole new audience on Netflix. This is a different way to find all new audiences who are not necessarily spending a tremendous amount of time in front of the television set, but even when they are, they're finding the content in vertical first. You also introduced a paywall at a critical moment in the plot there. And Guy, this gets to another aspect of this which is you're testing these things in real time and then going back to the editing process and adapting the syndication and editing of the series based on real time behavior of the consumers that you're testing, correct?
- [20:56]
D
Yeah. I think again what is encouraging about Neighbors is to see and what we saw is 18 years old. And I think to see something that is 18 years old. And I think we all saw the outcome and I think the outcome is compelling and we know that it's working. So I think for me it's an optimistic statement to see that. And I think this ip, as you say, Evan, can find new audiences through mobile. And I think it helps the ip, it revives the ip, it gives the IP more legacy life. And I think this is an important thing that again, vertical television can do for ip. In regarding to that, I think this is the role of epis, okay? Because as a studio, as a vertical television studio, our mission was again to prove that other genres can work in vertical television. And in order to do so, we needed our own service because part of what we are providing is brand safe content. Safe two part of this ip. And I think we needed an environment to prove a different behavior because we're chasing a different behavior. We're chasing retention and we're chasing engagement. So the metrics that we're working on are a bit different. And this is why I think EPIS is a super important tool for us as a way of distribution. It's not going to be our only mean of distribution, but it's a critical mean of distribution because this is our way to prove the data and to see other behaviors of consumers in vertical television.
- [22:32]
B
And you've actually mentioned we've been speaking a lot about licensed content and clearly there's a lot of content that is fit for vertical tv. It is. TV just needs to be fit for vertical tv. But you've mentioned at the top that you were looking into producing your own content and you actually have an exclusive look At a trailer that you're doing for a piece of content you're putting out there. Are we talking factual? What are we talking about?
- [22:58]
D
So we have produced up to now in four different genres. So the first one was true crime, actually, but like true crime in the way you see it on every streamer or HBO in the US we went back to a cold case in Texas, for example, which we reopened, and I think we came into an amazing result. We shot a dating reality format, which is the clip that we're going to see soon. We've also shot different genres of scripted. Okay, so our attempt for premium scripted and also our attempt for soap. Soap that doesn't fall for micro drama, different type of soap operas, but in a soapy storytelling. So I think that that is the fourth genre that we've tried and we're going into different spaces of unscripted really soon. The way we produce original is either again as a studio, either by ourselves, or we go into co production with partners, where our role is to serve as the studio. As a studio that helps anyone that wants to go into vertical. We give them the tools and the guidance of how to do so. So we've already done it with several of partners and we're negotiating other several of partners. So I think again, this is another unique thing that we do as a studio.
- [24:23]
A
So if you look at the soap opera genre with Neighbors, this one is a dating reality show. What's it called?
- [24:29]
D
Don't Fall for Beautiful Liars. It's a good recommendation for anyone, by the way.
- [24:34]
A
Yeah. And it works really well as a compelling piece of vertical tv while you're on a bus or on the toilet as opposed to sitting on your couch or in your bed.
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F
One bachelorette. Three smokin hot perfect men. One wild weekend to find her perfect match.
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C
I just want to let you know
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D
that I'm here for love.
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F
But there's a catch.
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C
I'm here for love.
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A
I'm here for love.
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F
Only one of them is here for true love.
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C
They hold our hearts.
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F
Two are liars.
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E
You are playing a game. You're doing a really good job with
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F
one goal to win the cash prize.
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E
I hope the person I pick does not swindle me.
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F
They'll say anything.
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C
Absolutely divine.
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F
Do everything.
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E
He's like. All the things that a girl could
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F
ever want to win her heart.
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E
I honestly think they're both like liars.
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F
If she chooses wrong.
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E
You just scare me. Are you lying to me?
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F
She'll lose the money.
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E
I don't know who I trust right now.
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F
And to be left with a broken heart.
- [25:32]
E
I think I just picked two liars.
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F
Will she fall for beautiful liars?
- [25:42]
B
Okay, I have no way of knowing who were the two liars and who was the true love. So we're going to have to watch and, and find out. Guys, when, when I listen to, to you guys, what I think fas what I think is fascinating. Number one, clearly you want to stay clear of micro dramas. You want to build. You, you believe that it is about building, you know, vertical TV. Not just again those five editorial arcs. You just want to bring TV to a vertical ecosystem. There's that B2C play. I want to spend a second on epis because I've played with the app. And so at the top you mentioned that Israel is a technology and a gaming ecosystem. Part of your leadership team actually is coming from that space. When I use the app, when you sign up, you get some sort of tokens, like 70 tokens so you can get started watching content using those. That gamified element, is it really needed? You could have just gone ad supported or just so why that gamified element to it look.
- [26:46]
D
So I think by the way, it's a great point. I think as you say, part of our leadership team comes from mobile, comes from gaming, comes from head tech. A lot of our investors are coming from the biggest companies in that field, which gives us a lot of advantage, a lot of data, a lot of resources. But I think it's an interesting question and to be really honest with you, I'm not sure it's going to stay, I think part of the maturity of this industry, let's call it again, vertical television industry will be getting rid of these tokens in a way. I think it's easy to go into that direction because that's where gaming is coming from. Right. It's coming from the freemium model. I think for us to play with that model was crucial because we wanted to compare ourselves to a different behavior. Right. So we know there is a micro drama behavior. We wanted to reach other metrics and other KPIs again leaning a lot more towards retention engagement. How much time do you spend? Do you go from show to show? Do you watch true crime series? And then you go into a dating reality, do you watch Neighbors? And you go into an original kind of like an SVOD play. And I think we're chasing different metrics but we needed to start with something that looks like the other so we can compare. Okay. And we're still in the A B testing phase.
- [28:15]
A
Yeah, there's a, there's a maturation that comes to any new platform. And this is basically, I've been calling it the cabalization of vertical. And so another piece of research we did was we asked people where their favorite places to watch video were, their top places to watch video. Bed was number one, living room was number two. Number three was a mixture of at work online, as Lior mentioned, or on the toilet, as Lior mentioned first. And for Gen Z on the toilet is number three, by the way. But there is this kind of in the next couple of years, you've already got Netflix going vertical, Disney going vertical, Paramount going vertical. Peacock just ordered six new vertical reality TV shows. There's going to be a demand for premium vertical boats, original and syndication. And it seems like Roseberry is building the Flywheel to distribute to all of those platforms. Understanding if someone's going to pay for an episode also helps. I think Netflix and Disney understand. All right, well, is this an additive thing to our subscription package or is this primarily an advertising based thing? But also look at Neighbors for a second or this other reality show. Think about one brand owning that across TikTok and Instagram and Shorts and how powerful that might be too. Marian, I'm interested in your thoughts around if you, if you reimagine vertical as the early days of cable or pay TV and the expansion of svod. Really do you see a similar thing that I'm seeing, which is there's going to be a rush towards this new format on all these platforms?
- [29:51]
B
Well, I think the guys have mentioned it, right? Whoever is going to be working with you guys, they're going to have their content on epis, but you're giving that content, you know, as well for them to syndicate somewhere else. The idea being that you need to be everywhere, you need to be on social as much as possible. And I see the appeal for streamers and others to actually have a vertical component within their ecosystem. Everyone is in the business of increasing time spent, right? And so yes, in some cases you want to spend an hour and a half watching something. In other cases you just want to have a lean back kind of, you know, just chilling for a few minutes on, on the go. So yeah, everyone is going to be in on it. One thing though is that I'm looking at Disney, Netflix and others. I'm not sure how much of the consumption of those platforms is actually happening on the mobile.
- [30:42]
A
So I think it's not much right now. Not much today, but now with their new vertical speed and if they actually program Those platforms, that's the key. You're exactly right. That's exactly the argument for, for it, which is Netflix is losing time to TikTok and Instagram. On the toilet, on the bus, in the waiting room. This, if they really do, if they premium verticalize a lot of their premium content and bring on more vertical content from companies like Roseberry, they have an opportunity to at least compete for that time.
- [31:14]
D
I fully adopt Evan's approach on the cable side. I really think that mobile will replace what cable was. And I think our journey, I think, you know, I think, I think there is no reason why you can have a movie channel, okay, on mobile, that you can see movies while you're driving on the subway to work or on a train, our ride to wherever you want to go, or you're waiting in a doctor's line. And plus series and plus true crime. I think it's a vision to have cable inside your mobile. And I think if you can create scale and if you can create a lot of content, then people will seek that because they can get a lot of content for you. And I think this is our mission, this is what we do. And I think in a very short period of time we were able to do deals with big distributors that has big catalogs. And as I said, what we're chasing is these metrics that can prove that you want to consume a lot of different genres and you can do it in a behavior that reminds cable. It's not cable like we remember it on tv, you know, in the living room. It's cable mobile behavior.
- [32:21]
A
It's for a different time of the day.
- [32:23]
D
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [32:24]
C
Three months ago, I think we had a big question mark over whether or not people would want to consume other genres on mobile. I think having a first party app that gives us first party data that
- [32:34]
A
we can now prove that they absolutely do.
- [32:38]
C
People are downloading, people are viewing, people are paying, people are subscribing, and people are returning to watch content on their mobile. This is an important thing for our industry to know. Right. So there is a world out there of users that their engagement with the entertainment industry starts and ends with what I just described. Downloading an app, watching content, paying for it, subscribing and returning. And I think that's the opportunity that we are all seeing. The data that we have right now proves that they're doing it in very high numbers. Paywall conversion, for example, in top performing shows of over 50%, 70% of them subscribers. Subscribers spend over an hour per session on some days so these are really important data points for future programmers, future producers and people that want to get into a space where they see growth, they're seeing consumption, they're seeing the merchandising and commercialization opportunities of what you can do with your ip. That's an area that's ripe for kind of new entrants and people that want to bring in IP into that type of experience.
- [33:42]
B
And I think there's one thing you've mentioned, like I don't like the word cable because it doesn't. Well, it's very us, so it doesn't ring the bell. But let me say that where I agree, I think there's room for both, right. I think there's a moment in time where in the day to events point or just need stage where we're gonna have, we're gonna want to have just a cinematic, very big screen, you know, TV experience. There's moments where we're gonna go mobile. I think where it is very interesting and it hasn't been said, but I think it contributes to the big numbers we're seeing within your ecosystem in terms of the potential is that if you look at Netflix and others, Netflix has over 300 million subscribers. They're talking about a TAM that is like 10 times bigger than that. How are they going to get there? They're not going to get there with the product they have right now, which is expensive and very TV centric, especially in Asia, Africa, countries that are mobile centric. So what I love about the verticalization of tv, putting micro dramas aside, which I don't like and I don't believe in, with the token and everything, that's where I think you guys and others are going to make, you know, amazing moves and you're going to bring premium TV to places where we couldn't do that before. Right. Because again, the price was a challenge, the device was, was an obstacle, etc. Etc.
- [35:01]
A
So yeah, what's ironic is since COVID which is when Quibi launched and failed, right now remembering though Quibi was primarily a hundred thousand dollar, it took us
- [35:13]
C
30 minutes to say the word Quibi. I love that.
- [35:15]
A
Right, right. But since COVID consumer behavior because of TikTok in particular has shifted so dramatically and reels has helped and shorts has helped, but TikTok was the primary driver. It has moved so much video attention time to the phone to the point where it is most of our video attention diet. And there is a tremendous amount of white space there for premium content, not vlogging, not direct to phone content that has its place, right? But think about this. And this is for all the naysayers out there and all the people who think about television in a completely different way than it's actually being used by the consumer. The only way I watch Saturday Night Live is on Sunday morning. I'm sorry to say this on the fucking toilet. Sketch by sketch by sketch by sketch by sketch in three minute increments. They even break the news into three different pieces. And I watch it all, even if I don't like it. I watch it all because I'm a consumer of that show and I want to be able to critique it when it's not good. And so how many listeners or viewers of this podcast do that same thing? I'm going to go with the majority and in the same place too, by the way. So I think that most of our industry is, is not assessing the accurate usage of time of our consumers. And they're missing hu a huge. This is where the growth comes from anyway. That's my own point of view.
- [36:48]
D
I agree. I think, I think this is why we are here. I think we believe this is a new path for growth, okay? A new path for growth for IP and big libraries. Because think I always say there is, right? Evan, we talked about the 10,000 hour rule for 10,000 a year. That's $100 million in your revenue. So even if you make on one hour 10,000, you monetize it for $10,000 a year. That's not a huge number, right? That's not like an impossible number to reach. And I think, I don't think that 100% of their catalogs will be fit for what they call. We all understand that, okay?
- [37:27]
A
Disney released High school musical in 10 minute increments on TikTok. They didn't monetize it at all. It got millions and millions of times.
- [37:38]
D
And I think in order to support this behavior, you need to be a studio. You need to be a start to end studio in knowing how to create your own ip, knowing how to co produce and knowing how to be the studio for other storytellers, producers, directors, writers. I think it's important. And thirdly, which is the scale is what we do, what we call repurposing, which is taking the catalogs. And I think for anyone that holds a huge library, that's a game they need to play. They need to play the 10,000 for 10,000 because they can get a new $100 million a year at least in potential.
- [38:14]
B
That is what Red Snapper is doing, right? This is what Because I wanted to ask you. Because that's the thing, the scale, the volume of content. There's a lot of amazing content out there waiting to be repurposed. Reversion, however we want to call it. So how does Red Snapper work? Right, because you mentioned at the top at the beginning, when you needed to convince people to go for it, you went with a traditional video editor. Then what made Red Snapper applicable to then do this at scale?
- [38:47]
D
Yeah. So this is our tech platform again. We started manually when we first received content. We edited manually. We just did the craft work of editing and how it's going to be in its best shape and how it's going to perform in its best shape on vertical mobile. Okay. And that's what we've done after doing a few. We've created a mythology which turned into Red snapper. Basically it's 12 steps for recovery, as Evan said. But I will point out the significant four. So the first one, we saw it a little bit in Neighbors, is the trimming that happens when you turn horizontal into vertical. What do you focus on? Right? And then you also trim and the pace needs to be in a different pace once we consume a vertical. Secondly, and it's part of the trimming is graphics. Okay. So when you're on your subway or waiting for the doctor or you're in practice of your son soccer game and you want to see something, you're not in full attention like you are sitting in cinema. So you need graphics to help you. Who did the $200 million go to? Her like. So we do a lot of graphics that helps the storytelling. And I think the last one that I will mention is music. Okay, so music is a huge issue, right? In two ways. The first one is music rights, which can cost a fortune because you cannot just move music from one place to another without paying. So we needed to pull off the music and we needed to do it quick. And secondly, regarding the music is the pace because the under music helps the pace of the content. So it's one thing when you have an episode which is a minute and a half long than a series that has, it's a 45 minute episode. So the music that we put underneath really helped the pace of, of the content as well. So I mean that's a few to mention. The other side of Red Snapper is putting this content on epis, receiving the data and then after receiving the data, doing the corrections that you can do in content. Which is, which is amazing because let's say, you know, you have a problem in episode three and it's on a streamer. Nobody's going to reshoot the episode. Okay. But if we found a problem in episode five, we can go back and re edit it. So our way to maximize and put the content in its best shape and then ready lior will talk about it, how to distribute it in its best shape. This is a very powerful tool and it's very unique for mobile.
- [41:18]
C
Yeah, I think the mobile side really helps us also in a way kind of rethink of the whole what we call windowing strategy because all of a sudden you have the ability to basically reproductize or re commercialize different types of IP for different types of audiences in multiple ways. So the way we do this is we first of all learn who the audience is at any given point in time. And that's something you can only do when you have first party data. So that's why we have our app. But then on top of that that allows us to then inform secondary windows that we can then build on other platforms to say okay now is I don't know, ex holiday in the specific territory and there's content that could be relevant there or there's, or there are other elements that we can bring into or let's say a customer user base in a specific territory is overly indexed on one particular genre. That's things that we can only learn through having our own first party global platform. So that allows us to then inform a secondary marketplace that we're working with other vertical apps on and that allows us to really I think then accelerate the growth and the types of behaviors that we're talking about. This constant repetitive routine behavior that we want to get from consumers and from viewers when it comes to them frequenting vertical television experience. I think no disrespect to any of the experiences that exist today. They're very much like a one night stand. We think there's an opportunity here to have long. I mean, hey, we think there's an opportunity at least for a long term
- [42:49]
A
relationship, you know, or a long term polygamy anyway. Yeah, no, I mean I think it's. And, and what you've built here is a true flywheel of syndication of vertical premium television. Both originals that you're going to create and co produce, but also the syndication of high volume premium content from libraries that deserves to be resurfaced, remonetized and to find new audiences. And you have this front end app that enables you to ab test and continually judge the market. It's a really Smart construct. You're basically kind of like Lionsgate for the vertical premium television economy to a certain extent. And it's, It's. I find it to be incredibly intuitive to what's actually happening there. It'll be fun to watch and track how your success grows over the next couple of years.
- [43:37]
B
Thanks for coming, guys. That was awesome. For anyone listening or watching, go check out epis wherever you get your mobile apps.
- [43:46]
A
Thanks so much to Guy and to Lior for being on the episode. Marion thoughts on the future of the vertical premium television economy.
- [43:55]
B
Yeah, when I heard the first news, I actually wrote about it and I said, damn, this one, I may have to change my mind. But I'm not 100% changing my mind because I think they're coming from a very different angle from what we've seen so far.
- [44:08]
A
Correct.
- [44:09]
B
So to me, these are TV guys.
- [44:10]
A
Micro dramas.
- [44:12]
B
Yeah, these are not micro dramas. It's TV guys, you know, doing a good mix of content and tech with a bit of AI, you know, to spice it up. So I'm, you know, excited for them. Excited.
- [44:23]
A
What's interesting, after my drama came in and introduced some new techniques and some new ideas to the vertical drama or microdrama ecosystem, they got a major investment from Fox. So I wonder if after Roseberry gets involved with Freemantle and A E and all these other companies, if they might be seeing investment from some strategic large media companies out there. Anyway, this has been a fascinating conversation. I could talk about it all day, as evidenced by my run on sentences. But thank you very much for coming to the Media Odyssey podcast. That is Marianne Ranchette.
- [44:53]
B
And that is Ivan Chaparro. We'll see you next time.
- [44:55]
A
We'll see you next time,
- [44:58]
D
Sam.