← The Town with Matthew Belloni
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- [00:00]
Amy Poehler
Hi everyone, it's Amy Poehler and I'm launching a new podcast called Good Hang. In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice.
- [00:11]
Matt Bellany
Just be yourself and the guests will come.
- [00:13]
Amy Poehler
Don't be the celebrity that this is their like sixth thing they're doing.
- [00:16]
Matt Bellany
I love true crime and cooking podcasts. Is there any way you could combine the two?
- [00:22]
Amy Poehler
Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast, so join me for Good Hang. It's rough out there, we're just trying to lighten it up a little bit.
- [00:31]
Matt Bellany
This episode of the Town is brought to you by MAX Presenting Hacks for your Emmy consideration. Starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder, the new season picks up with Deborah Vance's late night show finally in production and Ava Daniels stepping in as head writer. To Deborah's dismay, their ever complicated relationship is pushed to new limits as they clash over creative direction and get entangled in blackmail and betrayal. Don't miss the series Slate says has never been better. Emmy eligible for Outstanding Comedy Series and all other categories now streaming on max. Today's episode is brought to you by Peacock presenting the Day of the Jackal for your Emmy consideration. Eddie Redmayne and Lashana lynch star in the original drama series Variety calls an exhilarating thriller. The series follows a lone assassin and an intelligence officer in a cat and mouse chase across Europe. The Day of the Jackal is streaming now only on Peacock. It is Wednesday, May 14th. Greetings from New York and the TV Upfronts. When I first started covering Hollywood almost two decades ago, the annual Upfronts here were dominated by CBS, which was the number one network, and lorded over the advertising buyers at the time. They used the upfronts, as we know, to figure out where to place their billions of dollars in ads every year. Cut to this year and CBS doesn't even do an upfront presentation here. It's kind of sad. These days there's a clear 800lb gorilla of the upfronts. And it's YouTube, which started doing its own presentation about a decade ago and now throws what it calls a brandcast event for all the ad buyers. I went today. Lady Gaga performed very nice. Remember, YouTube is the platform that CBS's owner tried to sue out of existence two decades ago. Now, YouTube generated about $36 billion in advertising last year for its owner Google, almost as much as Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal, and yes, CBS's owner Paramount combined. Which is funny because many of the people highlighted at the YouTube up front today I Couldn't pick out of a lineup. That's kind of the point. YouTube has niche ified television and turned it into an algorithmically specific medium. On a global scale, it's become by far the world's largest video platform. Even on connected televisions, YouTube dominates the monthly Nielsen gauge chart with about 12% of viewing on those TVs, about a third bigger than Netflix on TV. Fact that Netflix, of course, obsesses over, which we'll discuss. At the center of it all is Neil Mohan, who's been the CEO of YouTube since 2023. He was a longtime executive at the company before that. It's weird to say this about the biggest video platform on Earth, but YouTube has had a bit of a coming out in the past year or so. I feel like the traditional media has finally woken up to its power and scale. We'll talk about that as well as challenges from Netflix. TikTok Meta Some of the announcements they made today, like an exclusive NFL game, bunch of topics today, it's the most powerful person in global video. Neil Mohan and What's next for YouTube from the Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. Okay. We are here with Neil Mohan, who is the CEO of YouTube, a company that you have probably heard of if you were listening to this show. Welcome. Thanks for doing this.
- [03:39]
Amy Poehler
Thanks for having me, Matt. It's great to be here.
- [03:41]
Matt Bellany
I feel like your profile has been raised in the past year or so. Like, YouTube was always there and people in Hollywood kind of knew it was this dominant player. But I think, is it the Nielsen gauge that really hammered home the fact that you guys are not just a mobile company, that you're actually the biggest video site for televisions as well?
- [04:02]
Amy Poehler
I do think that that played a role in it. But I always say that our success on TV screens is really, it's kind of like this overnight success that's been many, many years in the making. And I'd argue that actually that journey in terms of our engagement on living room screens started actually even before COVID and obviously had a pop, just like everything else during COVID But it's been kind of an ongoing march. And I think Nielsen, the Nielsen gage, obviously sort of made that clear in terms of how big we are on TV screens. But it's been something that certainly I've been interested in and people who watch YouTube very closely have been experiencing for a few years now.
- [04:44]
Matt Bellany
I mean, you're basically the most powerful person in video.
- [04:49]
Amy Poehler
I mean, I like to think about YouTube in a way you like to.
- [04:53]
Matt Bellany
Think of yourself as the most powerful person. Why not? You could walk out of here and you could turn off Mr. Beast.
- [05:00]
Amy Poehler
I think that our job really is everybody that works at YouTube. Our goal is really one thing is to build the world's best stage. And so that's the way that I think about myself, as opposed to, you know, who's powerful or not. And what I mean by that is that when you come to YouTube, you as a viewer, as a fan, should get the best viewing experience possible. And Mr. Beast, Jimmy and all of his peers should get the best stage. But what you as a viewer are there for is not watching the stage. It's to watch Jimmy watch Mr. Beast and all the other creators like him on that stage. So our job is to build the world's best stage. And that's what I think my responsibility is.
- [05:40]
Matt Bellany
And we'll get to that in some of the bigger creators. But do you. Do you feel like you have become a target? I feel that YouTube is sort of like a common enemy among the tech platforms and the creative platforms in Hollywood, because if you talk to people like Netflix is pretty overtly going after you guys, and, you know, Spotify now is kind of competing with you on the podcast front, and even some of their biggest creators are also on YouTube. You're kind of the. The gatekeeper that everyone has to deal with, and it kind of puts a target on your back.
- [06:15]
Amy Poehler
You know, I've been in this business for a very long time. I worked with YouTube before either I or YouTube were part of Google. And so I've seen this whole journey.
- [06:25]
Matt Bellany
From the Viacom lawsuit. That's how old I am.
- [06:28]
Amy Poehler
Okay. Yeah. So you've been following it very closely for a while too. And what I would say is it has always been an incredibly dynamic and competitive space. And if nothing else, it's really picked up pace in the last few years. To your point, however, a lot of when I'm down in Hollywood and meeting with partners and engaging with them, it's really more about what can YouTube and the partner do together on YouTube to grow their audience, to build on their IP.
- [07:01]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, Netflix criticizes, but they're also one of your biggest clients in terms of how they use YouTube to promote their own content.
- [07:07]
Amy Poehler
Yeah, they have a very large channel on our platform. And I also think that back to your kind of first question around audiences and where they're consuming these services, there's room for multiple services to be successful. What we do at YouTube is very specific to YouTube. I think we have an incredibly unique value proposition to, you know, the 2 billion fans that come to YouTube every single day. But that doesn't mean that there's only room for one player out there. It's incredibly dynamic and there's lots and lots of services for us as fans to choose from.
- [07:42]
Matt Bellany
But if you had to identify one biggest competitor, the company that keeps you up at night, what would that be? Is it TikTok or is it television? Netflix, something like that?
- [07:53]
Amy Poehler
I would really say that it's, you know, we're really in our own lane. That's the way I think about it. We're not social media, we're not, you know, so, you know, you don't come to YouTube primarily to connect with your friends or social graph or what have you. But we're not traditional television either. We are sort of in our own lane. And I think our vision really is to be the world's biggest video watching, sharing and creating platform. And that's what YouTube is and that's where all our resources are focused. And so whether that means 15 second short to a 15 minute sort of canonical sort of vlog on YouTube to a 15 hour live stream or anything in between, if it's about video or audio, then, then we want YouTube to be the best place for you to come and enjoy that.
- [08:40]
Matt Bellany
The Netflix question. Ted Sarando, CEO of Netflix, said there's a difference between killing time and spending time. Obviously that was a knock at social media, but also a knock at YouTube.
- [08:52]
Amy Poehler
You know, I wouldn't feel free to go after him. You know, I can't presume to know what was in Ted's head when he said that. But the way I think about it is, first of all, as I said, there's room for multiple services out there. What we do at YouTube I think is pretty unique to YouTube shot killing time. We are the world's. Again, I am in no place to judge how people spend their time. What 2 billion people do, they come to YouTube and I think that they are pretty satisfied with the product and the service that they get, primarily because what they love when they come to YouTube is to connect with their favorite creators. The biggest creators in the world, the Mr. Beast of the world to a creator who just started yesterday. And everyone in the in between. Those 2 billion viewers connect with millions and millions of creators. We are the world's largest original and largest creator economy. And that's what we're really proud of. And it's powered off of this enormous fandom that exists on YouTube. YouTube is the epicenter of culture. Our creators set culture and whatever you want to call that, watching time or viewing time or what have you. It's a place where billions of people are connecting to the culture every single day. And that's what YouTube powers.
- [10:09]
Matt Bellany
I agree with you. But some of your top creators, Ms. Rachel Cocomelon, Mr. Beast, all of them have sought other platforms when they wanted to do something beyond YouTube, bigger than YouTube, arguably. Are there still things that YouTube cannot do for creators?
- [10:28]
Amy Poehler
Well, the first thing I would say is you'd have to ask them whether they sought those platforms or those other platforms sought them.
- [10:34]
Matt Bellany
Well, I think it's mutual. I mean, they're happy to take the money. And Mr. Beast has said there are things that he wanted to do via Beast games that he couldn't do on YouTube and he needed the hundred million or whatever Amazon was willing to pay to fund that.
- [10:49]
Amy Poehler
Yeah. What I would tell you there, Matt, is when I meet with these creators, and obviously I have relationships with many of these creators, what they tell me over and over is all of the success off of YouTube, you know, you're mentioning one form of it. Lots of creators will write a book. Lots of creators will. Or sell chocolate or other products. All of that is a derivative of their YouTube success. And so, you know, I'll just tell you a quick story. When you walk into Mr. Beast's offices in North Carolina and he's building, you know, one of the biggest sound stages in North America there based off of his success on YouTube, you see his, like, five pillars of success. The very first one is YouTube first, because Jimmy understands that the font of all of that success, all of those opportunities, derives from his success on YouTube. And we at YouTube are incredibly proud of that. And so, just unequivocally, the success of our YouTubers off of YouTube is something that I applaud and I welcome, because.
- [11:52]
Matt Bellany
Even if he's getting up on stage at the Amazon up front to talk about how great his new Amazon show.
- [11:57]
Amy Poehler
Is, like I said, for him, everything starts with YouTube. It's YouTube first.
- [12:01]
Matt Bellany
I think they want it all. They want to be big on YouTube and then perhaps crossover.
- [12:06]
Amy Poehler
They do. But the fundamental thing that they all recognize is that it starts and stops with YouTube, and that's the essence of it. The other thing that I'll just say that just in terms of the arrangement that they have with YouTube relative to other platforms is very different. And they recognize that it's the place where they can actually be truly entrepreneurial in a creative sense, but also in a business sense. Because there are no notes. You own your ip. If you are any of these creators, you can upload or take down that video anytime that you want. And importantly, you share in all the upside. YouTube generally pays out more than half of its revenue to these creators. And so the incentives are not. There's no place where the incentives are more aligned than they are on YouTube. And that's why one of the things, when you walk the halls of YouTube in our offices, you hear that term creator and creator economy probably 100 times a day.
- [12:59]
Matt Bellany
Have you guys considered investing in some of these studios that your big creators are building? I mean, it would seem like a logical thing. We, we made you, we allow, not made you, but we gave you the platform to be able to build the compound in North Carolina or these dude perfect guys who have their compound in Texas. Why not say, you know what, if you're going to be a big YouTube creator, let us invest in your companies that you build off our platform.
- [13:27]
Amy Poehler
The way I think about it is the best way for us to invest in them in a way that really fuels their next stage of growth is for us to actually invest in what we do best, which is to build, investing deeply in the technology to make it so that these creators continue to grow. So just to give you a very concrete example, Matt, you take someone like dude perfect or Mr. Beast, one of the things now, given their success on YouTube and given how large of a platform YouTube gives them, that's a barrier to their future growth is language. Well, what if we invested at YouTube in technology that automatically translated all of their videos into every other language in the world and did that almost instantaneously using AI that's the way that I think about investment as opposed to just dollars into their studio. And so the benefit of that is that Mr. Beast, but now all other creators have eliminate the barrier of language to reaching new audiences. And so that's a way to not just grow their business by 10% or 50%. That's a way to 10x or 100x their business. And so that's how I think about our vision for investing.
- [14:39]
Matt Bellany
All right, so you guys just announced NFL game coming exclusively to YouTube. What can you do in the sports world that will make the broadcast uniquely YouTube? Or is that even the goal?
- [14:53]
Amy Poehler
Actually, that is in some sense fundamentally the goal. And one of the lens that I look through in terms of deciding who to partner with in terms of sports leagues or what have you, and also which specific products that is sport to work with is precisely that question, what is the unique value that YouTube can bring to the table.
- [15:13]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Cause I watched the baseball games that you guys had and it felt different. It felt the announcers were younger, it felt a little looser. Are you gonna do that with football?
- [15:21]
Amy Poehler
Yeah, in a nutshell, yes. And I'll just give you. I'll give you a few examples. So, as you know, we have been partners with the. We've been partners with the NFL for a very long time, all the way.
- [15:30]
Matt Bellany
Back to 2015 for clips and such.
- [15:32]
Amy Poehler
Yeah. And they've had a channel on our platform. They have tens of millions of fans that consume their content on our platform on a regular basis. So there's three things that I think we can do. The first is we can just create just more accessibility for these sports. Right. Two billion people come to YouTube. There's hundreds of millions of sports fans on YouTube every single day. That is an audience waiting for the NFL. So that's point number one. The second is fundamentally, to your point, technology innovation. So one of the features, for example, that fans were the most excited about with Sunday ticket coming to YouTube was multiview. And how do we bring technical and technological product innovation to the sports experience? How can we reimagine the sports experience? And the third, and probably the most important is the one you're alluding to, which is how do we bring this incredibly vibrant creator ecosystem to the table? Almost looking at it from the standpoint of if this sport exists this way, how is the next generation of fan gonna wanna consume this sport? And so one small example of that that we've been doing with the NFL, but we've been doing for a while, actually with some of the big soccer leagues in Brazil, is this concept of watch with what if you could actually watch the game alongside your favorite creator? Not the creator just commenting on the game, but as if you were just sitting on the couch with your favorite creator. And it turns out that that's not just a fan win in terms of engagement. And it's super fun and it's very YouTubey and very young, but it actually grows the audience too, because that creator brings their fans to the table. And so all three of these things are the reasons why we partner in sports. And I'm super excited about this Brazil game on September 5th. But our goal is going to be to make it this very only on YouTube type experience. And to the NFL's credit, they're very excited about that.
- [17:29]
Matt Bellany
I asked a bunch of Hollywood people to give me their gripes about YouTube. And one of the things that came up interestingly was, why did you just ask for gripes? Because that's what's interesting, not how much you love YouTube. I know why they love it. You can give them a big audience for their trailers. But they said you're actually the most conservative of all the site, of all the social platforms on content and content restrictions, especially for trailers. Why is that?
- [17:57]
Amy Poehler
Well, I can't speak to how we compare relative to other platforms. I will say that we have a set of community guidelines. We're very transparent about it. We are. We take pride in the fact that we are an open platform. We really do stand for free expression, freedom of speech. It's literally in our mission statement, give everyone a voice. However, that doesn't mean that we haven't had rules of the road. We've had them since the very early days. They're called our community guidelines. And I feel like the best we can do there is to be as transparent as possible about what they are and then try to adhere to them as closely as we can. I have not come across a situation where we haven't had successful trailers on YouTube for that reason. So if there's a specific example, happy to dig into it, but I feel.
- [18:53]
Matt Bellany
Like this is now a political issue, unfortunately. This whole content moderation, and we saw it recently with the Kanye west song, the Hitler song. You guys put out a statement saying that you're taking it down. Although I went on this morning and I found it, it's sort of hidden. You have to like find it and look for it. But do you see yourselves, where do you see yourselves on the spectrum where Twitter Slash X is now? Anything goes. And I feel like the curation of places like Netflix, they. They have a very curated feel to it. Where is YouTube on the curation and content moderation front?
- [19:29]
Amy Poehler
I, I mean, I'd say that we're in that sense quite different from Netflix.
- [19:35]
Matt Bellany
We are an open platform, but no Kanye Hitler song.
- [19:38]
Amy Poehler
We have community guidelines and we try to enforce them. And to your point, we're not perfect, but we will, as I said, always try our best to enforce the transparent guidelines that we have on the site. But first and foremost, kind of to first principles, to your core question, we are an open platform. Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world the magic of YouTube. These millions and millions of creators that are successful on our platform, we have 3 million creators in our YouTube Partner Program who earn revenue on YouTube. Many of those creators may not have had success if it wasn't for YouTube, because you can come to YouTube and upload your idea. And no one's gonna tell you that, Matt, you sound the wrong way or you're from the wrong part of the world, or you don't look the right way. YouTube is the opposite of that because of the openness of the platform. And I would argue that my. But a lot of my colleagues, the reason we come to work every day is because of that open platform and freedom of expression. So that's core to who we are.
- [20:43]
Matt Bellany
What do you think of the new Netflix homepage?
- [20:47]
Amy Poehler
In what sense?
- [20:48]
Matt Bellany
And obviously they did the redesign to try to boost engagement and to lower the friction between the customer and the content that they might enjoy. And I feel like I've been saying this over and over. That is the name of the game in programming in 2025. It's not necessarily about whether you're producing anything that's good, whether you're hosting anything that's good or bad. It's how quickly can you connect me, customer to content that I am most likely going to enjoy. And it seems like the Netflix redesign is a step towards that. And you could argue a step towards what YouTube is doing pretty well.
- [21:30]
Amy Poehler
I would say that what you're describing is core to YouTube. And actually the key insight about how YouTube works and when you open up your phone or when you turn on the television is that notion of personalization. And I think what's profound about that in the YouTube case is it is actually precisely me, me not telling you, YouTube, not telling you what's good, what's not. You're the judge of that. You get to decide that.
- [22:03]
Matt Bellany
Well, the algorithm.
- [22:05]
Amy Poehler
But I think the way to think about that, Matt, is replace the word algorithm with audience. Because all the algorithm is doing is trying to reflect back your preferences and.
- [22:14]
Matt Bellany
What you're interested in and nudge you, nudge you. And I mean, you say you guys don't do that, but come on, the algorithm, I see it with my 9 year old kid, it's pushing him towards new stuff that he might be interested in based on the stuff that he goes to. And it's getting a little bit more adult every day. You know, they'll push out, oh, these are guys are, this is a soccer game. Oh, this is a fight at a soccer game. Oh, this is a fight outside the soccer game. So it feels like it's kind of pushing him towards newer stuff that's going to juice engagement.
- [22:46]
Amy Poehler
The fundamental aspect and kind of the North Star of our algorithm is to find videos and creators or other forms of music that you may be interested in. And part of that, of course, is reflecting back those preferences that are expressed by you based on your past behavior. But another part of that is actually discovery of new content that is related to that past consumption. So both those aspects come into play. In fact, one of the things that I think, speaking of your son, that people appreciate about our YouTube Kids app is that it actually does try to strike that balance. One of the complaints that parents would have is that like it's the same thing over and over and over and over again, right? How do we actually open up the aperture so that kids can discover new things and learn new things while also going back to ground that's familiar to them? And so we do try to strike that balance. It's a combination of personalization based on history, but also discovery of Related content.
- [23:53]
Matt Bellany
This episode is brought to you by Focus Features An Indian Paintbrush Presenting the Phoenician Scheme an epic comedy adventure from director Wes Anderson starring Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threpleton, Michael Cera and an all star cast follow Zsaza Korda as he races to survive assassinations, win back his daughter and pull off the scheme of a lifetime. The Phoenician scheme rated PG13. Only in theaters Friday. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Presenting the Diplomat from writer and creator Deborah Kahn, Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell return, with Allison Janney joining in the explosive second season as US Ambassador Kate Weiler navigates high stakes diplomacy and a fraught marriage in search of the truth. The Guardian lauds the Diplomat a masterclass in storytelling and Indiewire hails it one of the best shows of the year for your Emmy consideration. You guys have tried a number of times to do professionally produced content with established Hollywood style creators has never really worked on YouTube. The best case example was Cobra Kai, was a YouTube show, didn't work, went to Netflix, was huge. In this age where Netflix seems to be going more towards YouTube, is there a scenario where YouTube tries to become more like Netflix and invests a little bit in professionally produced content that it could own or co own with creators?
- [25:18]
Amy Poehler
I'd say a couple things about that. The first is just in terms of kind of how you're defining professionally created content.
- [25:25]
Matt Bellany
I know, I know. Mr. Beast is that dude perfect is that they're all professional. I don't. You're not. That's my word, not yours. But you know what I mean. Shows, movies.
- [25:34]
Amy Poehler
I'll just say I mean the term that I like to use in terms of YouTube content is it's creator produced or creator led content. Because these creators are professionals. They're just using the Silicon Valley analogy. Where I'm from. They're the startups of Hollywood. Right. They're the startup ecosystem. But it doesn't mean that they're not professional. So just. That's one point.
- [25:54]
Matt Bellany
I get it. But you know what I mean.
- [25:56]
Amy Poehler
I know. So I'll come to your kind of the second part of your question. So our experience, and we did try this a few years ago, I say now maybe seven or eight years ago, and we learned a lot of things along the way. You highlight some of them. But I think the two things that are different now versus then is when we first started to do it. I think we were trying to understand if there was a certain kind of vacuum or a certain type of content that was missing from YouTube. And I think you fast forward to today and back to what I was saying about creator driven sort of professional content. I don't really feel like there's that type of a gap. And our viewers are telling us that in terms of their engagement. The fact that we're not just the number one streamer in the US in the last two years, but now we're the number one distributor across all forms of content, streaming traditional content.
- [26:50]
Matt Bellany
But you can tell the difference between a movie and show or something that.
- [26:54]
Amy Poehler
But why does that like. I guess the question I'd ask is why is that relevant? It's really about.
- [26:58]
Matt Bellany
Well, if you're showing engagement and ad eyeballs, it's not. But. But if you are in the business of premium, where in the case of Netflix you're charging a price for that access, then it does matter.
- [27:10]
Amy Poehler
I would argue that again, we shouldn't presume what is premium or what is time well spent.
- [27:19]
Matt Bellany
Well, you have a service called YouTube Premium.
- [27:22]
Amy Poehler
That's the name of a subscription service. But it says nothing about the content.
- [27:25]
Matt Bellany
No, but what I'm saying is maybe someday it does. Maybe someday there are shows there.
- [27:30]
Amy Poehler
And I'd argue that it's really, for me, it's more about. So back to kind of why we did this and sort of what we learned. One thing we learned is that there wasn't really that type of a gap in content. Our creators fill that gap, by the way, not just in LA and New York, but really all over the world. I was just in Mumbai a couple weeks ago. I saw creators doing that on the ground there as well. The second thing is again, back to where our expertise and where our resources should go. I would argue that they're better Served building the technology that our creators can use themselves to be successful on the platform, as opposed to us picking and choosing what's gonna work or not. So that's really sort of getting at the essence of why we tried that, what we learned, and as you said, hits came out of it, not on YouTube but elsewhere, and why we don't do it today.
- [28:26]
Matt Bellany
To me, though, as the ecosystem evolves, it seems somewhat inevitable that there would be some kind of a premium product on YouTube. Whether it's you guys buy something or you host something. I mean, you have a premium product in Sunday Ticket, and that is perhaps the most premium product. And it just feels inevitable to me.
- [28:48]
Amy Poehler
Yeah, I mean, I think right now the focus is. And the success that we're seeing in terms of the creator economy and the feedback on our product is really around investing in the capabilities. So we've talked a lot about television and how that's been years in the making on YouTube and what users expect on it. Another great example of that is podcasting. We have a billion users listening to podcasts on YouTube.
- [29:20]
Matt Bellany
You can lecture me about my podcast not being video, which I have brought.
- [29:25]
Amy Poehler
Up with you, Matt, in the past. So I am still waiting.
- [29:27]
Matt Bellany
I'll tell. I'll say publicly, we don't do it one. We eventually, I'm sure we will. We don't do it one, because we edit stuff and shorten episodes. It's harder to do that in video. Second, I think my guests, a lot of my guests don't want to be on video. They don't want to be sliced and diced on social media. And then third, it's just bigger pain in the butt. But I, we. We give up the YouTube audience because of that.
- [29:52]
Amy Poehler
Whenever you're ready to do video, we'll be ready to support you for all.
- [29:55]
Matt Bellany
The other ringer pods. Do it. So you get a lot of it.
- [29:58]
Amy Poehler
Yeah, yeah, for sure. They have lots of success on the platform. But I point that out only as an example of sort of how YouTube thinks about this. And so when it came to podcasters, people like yourself, it wasn't about sort of our experience was it's not about picking the right podcasters or how to go about doing it. It's actually building a set of tools and capabilities that will ultimately for the listeners of those podcasters, and therefore for the podcasters themselves. So we built a number of features into our audio app, which is the YouTube Music app, but we also built capabilities into the main app, specifically around two things that podcasters really cared about, which is growing their audience. So discoverability. And the second is actually is monetization. So how are we growing the monetization capabilities of podcasts? And we started that investment, I think, kind of right at the height of COVID So it's been another one of those sort of overnight successes that's been years in the making. But that's typically how we approach the problem, which is what is the key insight or technological innovation we can bring to this content genre and how can we do it really at scale, back to the stage metaphor, so that podcasters or whoever the next creative person is can shine on the platform as opposed to saying, I like that podcast, I don't like that podcast.
- [31:21]
Matt Bellany
How important is it for you via YouTube shorts to compete with Reels and TikTok as platforms?
- [31:28]
Amy Poehler
We are the leading platform for watching, sharing and creating video. And increasingly that is across all kinds of different formats. So to the extent that the video is shot using these incredibly powerful cameras that we carry around in our pockets, shot vertically and as you know, less than a minute to something that is a 15 hour gaming live stream, YouTube should be the home for all of that content if you're the creator of it. And so that's the way I think about YouTube shorts, which is it's actually a new creative format and it's a creative format that's used by young people, but really all kinds of people all over the world. And so if it is a new way of storytelling, then it's very logical for it to live on YouTube just like a 15 minute vlog does or a 15 hour livestream.
- [32:16]
Matt Bellany
Do you think the platform would be as successful today if it was not owned by Google?
- [32:23]
Amy Poehler
I do think that Google played a really big role in the success of YouTube. It still does and still does.
- [32:31]
Matt Bellany
And I'll give you, there's no real competitor globally. I mean, yes, there's TikTok, there's all these other things, but in terms of place on the Internet, open to everyone, that you can go and post video, there's no global platform like YouTube.
- [32:45]
Amy Poehler
I mean, my everyday experience is that it is an incredibly dynamic and competitive environment. But on your Google piece, what I will just say is one was of course having the vision and investing in that vision over years. Right? Like we've been around for 20 years. What I really like about YouTube and it's enabled by Google, is us placing big bets, audacious bets. We've talked about a couple of them here. Whether it's podcasting, whether it's YouTube Premium, whether it's our growth on television screens and then having the patience to see those bets out. And I also think back to our core mission of building that stage. We get to partner with some of the deepest technology in the world. And YouTube sort of sits in this really interesting space where on the one hand, we are adjacent to some of the most cutting edge AI in the world, Google, DeepMind. And on the flip side, we are facing the creative industry every day. So, you know, AI to enhance human creativity. One of the places where I think that's gonna happen is YouTube. Precisely because of our relationship with Google, but also of course, because we're speaking with creatives every single day.
- [34:03]
Matt Bellany
Well, congrats. You've gotten to that rare place where everybody hates you but they have to work with you. So you are in a rarefied space.
- [34:12]
Amy Poehler
I like to say we partner with everyone.
- [34:13]
Matt Bellany
Okay, yes. We're going to get this pod on video. What I really want to do is I want to do one of those things where they replace me with an AI baby. Have you seen those? Where it's like me but as a baby and my guest is also a baby.
- [34:26]
Amy Poehler
Why?
- [34:27]
Matt Bellany
It's just fun and you don't have to see my face.
- [34:29]
Amy Poehler
Let's do it. Let's make it happen.
- [34:31]
Matt Bellany
Thank you very much.
- [34:32]
Amy Poehler
Thank you, Matt.
- [34:36]
Matt Bellany
We are back with the call sheet. Craig, you are missed here. I keep getting people coming up to me saying, where is Craig at the upfront? Was it more or less fun? That's very nice. I don't believe you. That's very nice. Was it more or less fun? Three separate people. Greg came up to me and asked where you were, including this morning at the Warner Discovery upfront, which, I mean, I feel bad for them. They don't have any big sports, no NFL, no NBA now. So they like brought out hockey commentators and tennis commentators to talk about their like exciting Stanley cup coverage. It's like, oh, my God. Well, in general, what is the vibe like at TV up fronts now compared to in the past? It's all the tech platforms. That's what people are excited about. The reach, the scale they can give them. And you know what Netflix and Amazon are doing in the ad world, that's what people care about. I mean, yeah, they care about Disney. They care about the traditional players too, but not as much as they do the tech platforms and Warners. You know, I, I just feel bad because they don't have the numbers on the ad front for Max. Speaking of Max, we got the big announcement that Max is no longer. It's Going back to HBO Max. Unbelievable. But yes, two years after rebranding as Max, they are now going to be HBO Max, which should not be a surprise if you listen to my Casey boys interview recently. Basically telegraphed it, but still a pretty extraordinary turn of events. It's comforting to know that even at the highest levels of business, no one knows what to do or what's going on. No, David Zaslav is just as knowledgeable about the future of Internet enabled television as you are. I mean, if you think back, it was hbo, then it was HBO Go HBO now, then it was HBO Max, then it was just Max, then they went back to Max, but with the original black color. Now it's HBO Max. And my prediction today is that in two years it will just be hbo. I just think it's very hard to change your name when people, when you are already a successful, popular company and people have a relationship to the name. I think it's easier to just keep the name even if you change the type of content you're doing than the other way around. Yes, exactly. It's like saying Burger King is now going to be like tasty yum. Like what? Exactly. It's Burger King. We know what it means. I know, Listen, they tried to be global. They tried to compete with Netflix. They tried to. You could still have done all of that while keeping the HBO name. Yeah, the, the, the studies they saw showed that HBO was as limiting as it was valuable to them for certain audiences. And when you're putting on Dr. Pimple Popper, it's tough to have HBO there. But it doesn't work. They're doing it. And today, today, I mean, some of these, some of these discovery shows that they announced today, literally they announced a show called Dancing with Sharks starring Tom Bergeron of Dancing with the Stars fame. Here's the Logline unprecedented underwater dance competition between expert divers and their shark partners. I honestly, I can't. It's amazing. They also announced a Jennifer Love Hewitt show, a true crime show called they know what they did, not to be confused with I know what you did last summer, which also starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and has a reboot coming out this summer. Like that garbage is still going to be on Max, and yet now it's going to be called HBO Max. So, you know, they've been purging shows, they've been purging a lot of the food content, a lot of the kind of, you know, sloppy slop stuff from Max and focusing on the quality, which I think is their sweet spot. But they still got this stuff there. So we'll see hbo. They know what they did with their name. Yes. They know what David Zaslav. They know what they did. Oh, God. All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guests, Neil Mohan, producer Craig Horbeck, artist Jesse Lopez. And I want to thank you. We'll see you one more time this week.