And the Emmy Goes to...Creators??

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper.

0:05Sam Gutelle:And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren. Yes. Do you like Marisha Hargitay? Do I? Do I like Marisha? It's funny you say that because last night I realized, oh my God, I go in and out of SU like I always finish every season, but I hadn't watched a few. I watched two episodes in a row last night. She is a national treasure. And I feel like she's fine. People who love her love her. Love. Yeah. And she's kind of like she because she had this amazing document. Her mother was famously Jane Mansfield, who was like a pinup doll in the 50s and died tragically when she was very young. And she directed this documentary about her that came out this year.

0:38And what was amazing about it is she's funny, Mariska Harkite. And like I've seen all these interviews. She was on the Polar's podcast. She's like, I always thought I would be in comedy. And she's like, and I'm this like in this show about, you know, molesting children or whatever. She's in it. I love. She was in the Groundlings, too. I know. She was in the Groundlings. I know. She's also front row with a mix. What's not to love? Tell me why. Why would you ask such a question?

1:01Sam Gutelle:Because she's going to be hosting the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 14th, I saw that. And I feel like this is such a great moment for her. She's in Broadway right now. She's in like, I think it's a one woman show. She's been front seats, front row. Wow. Courtside. That's sort of like her. The Knicks. She's like a huge, she's just like, she's like bubbly. And now she's, we're going to get to see these others. I feel like this is like part two. She's coming out as like, I'm, listen, this is who I really am. Love it. I'm excited to see her too. And I feel like everybody in television is excited this year just because she's been around for so long and has been in the industry for so long.

1:3327 seasons on that show.

1:35Sam Gutelle:Yeah. You know who's not going to be at the Emmys though, Lauren? Who? Like any creators or at least creators from our world. I mean, that's not different than any other year. It's not different than any other year, except that YouTube has made a big push every year since 2024, I believe, was the first year when Neil Mohan came out and said, hey, we want creators to win Emmys. And YouTube is the new television, so they should. And YouTube has consistently ran these FYC for your consideration campaigns since then for shows like Good Mythical Morning, Hot Ones, Brittany Broski's Royal Court and more.

2:11Sam Gutelle:That show is really good. I mean, all the shows are really good. So funny. That and Chicken Soup. What's her name? Chicken Shop Date. Yeah, you're thinking of Chicken Shop Date's Amelia the Moldenberg. Yes, yes. Streamy Award winner, by the way. Of course. And so YouTube's made this concerted effort to try to get their creators in front of Academy members in order to get nominations. And they haven't been successful the past couple of years. This year, though, they were successful with one. So Subway Takes by Kareem Rama got nominated for Outstanding Short Form Comedy, Drama, or Variety Series in the Creative Arts Emmys, which is part of the Primetime Emmy Awards.

2:48Sam Gutelle:For those unfamiliar with the program, he gets on the New York City subway system, holds up a MetroCard with a microphone behind it and interviews celebrities and regular people. But I think part of the reason he was able to get an Emmy nomination is because of that celebrity component of the people he interviews. I mean, his guest list has been stacked. He's had Cate Blanchett, Charlize Theron, Ethan Hawke, Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Lopez, Lil Nas X, Charlie XCX, Halsey, Colin Jost, Hasan Minhaj, Rama Yusuf, Jason Bateman, David Byrne. Yeah, but you could say the same and more for Hot Ones than they weren't nominated.

3:23In Hot Ones, I think, I don't watch Subway Takes, I'm not very interested in it, but I am obsessed with Hot Ones. I think Hot Ones is genius. is I have a dream. You know how my dream, everybody knows who listens to this, that I have a dream to be on Dancing with the Stars. My second maybe now equal dream is to be on Hot Ones. I mentioned this to my husband recently, and he's like, you would literally not even last like one. I have zero tolerance for spicy, but like I would say like 1%. Like I'm not, I'm not. Like I couldn't.

3:53Sam Gutelle:Maybe you can win like a Hot Ones with Sean Evans at like a charity auction or something. I was thinking about like when in my life could I like stage a Hot Ones? Not necessarily, I'm not, listen, I'm not gonna pretend that I could get Sean Evans, but I'm like, could I like, in what forum could I invite people over and like do Hot Ones? Like I've had this thought. I think about this. I would love to do. I think it's, I think it is, it's just so funny. It's just so, so funny. Maybe for any like milestone huge birthdays you have coming up. Well, I mean, I know I'm gonna be like 30. It's gonna be crazy.

4:26It's gonna be crazy.

4:27Sam Gutelle:And so people are saying that this is YouTube's kind of like first Emmy nomination. I want to say - It's in like some weird shorts category. It's like not even a thing. So you're right. It's not the main kind of like best variety talk show category. It is for Outstanding Short Form Comedy Drama or Variety Series. It is nominated alongside Colbert Before Air, The Daily Show, Desilitic Fox Explains, The Randy Rainbow Show, and Bad Thoughts. To be clear, The Randy Rainbow Show has been on YouTube for a while as well. Yeah. And I just feel like I don't really buy your I don't know why this one got nominated.

4:59I don't buy your argument about celebrities because all the other shows we just talked about Chicken Shop and Hot Ones have tons of celebrities on it. I'm sure like it was a contributing factor. But I think that like, you know, these like I don't know, I have a lot of like these like sort of old school Hollywood award shows. I mean, people get nominated by the people who are old school Hollywood people. And so and it seems like this bigger kind of representation of what people like than it actually is. It's like 20 ,000 people, which is like not nothing, but it certainly is not like a representation of like when actually people are watching.

5:35Sam Gutelle:Yeah, but who knows if it should be a representation of what people are actually watching or not, too. I mean, that's debatable as well. Like, are these people who are voting arbiters of taste and style and creative endeavors? Or are they not? Should it be more populist kind of vote? That's, I think, a topic for a different conversation. But what I want to point out is just some historical context here, too. Well, you're sitting here talking about like, you know, YouTube's making this push and they're not getting the validation. And my point is like, it's about being validated by these people who are not the audience that these people are trying to reach.

6:04Sam Gutelle:Yes, Lauren, I kind of agree with you with that. And I think YouTube is doggedly kind of like trying to get these nominations and break into the television ecosystem because it wants those television advertising dollars. because it's easier for people to think of YouTube as television than billions of dollars of advertising spend to suddenly shift from television over to something that's not television. Right. And so the more kind of cultural touch points, award hardware, press hits, etc., that YouTube is able to aggregate makes it more and more closer to television and therefore more and more closer to the television advertising dollars.

6:41Sam Gutelle:100%. 100%. Now you're making some sense. On the flip side, I don't think YouTube needs any of this. They're the biggest name in entertainment by far on a global scale. They have billions of users every single month. In the United States alone, they encompass upwards of 13 % of watch time on television screens. Netflix is at 8%. They're like closest competitor. YouTubers, where they get a bunch of Emmy nominations, I can understand how that's cool validation. And that may tip the needle in terms of brands and advertisers somewhat. But it doesn't change the overall trajectory of where the ecosystem and the industry is going.

7:16Except that you're saying that it could in terms of because the more advertiser dollars that go to YouTube.

7:20Sam Gutelle:I think it could accelerate the trajectory for sure. Just like things like CanLions. Creators being at CanLions accelerates the trajectory of investment into the ecosystem. Yes. But everybody knows which way the wind is blowing now. Sure. And this can speed up and pull the future closer to the present. But it's not going to rewrite what's going to happen in the future. I hear what you're saying. Okay. Do you think that YouTubers care about being nominated? I think a certain subset of YouTubers care about being nominated because they watched the Emmy Awards and the Oscars and these traditional Hollywood award shows when they were growing up.

7:52Sam Gutelle:And they think it's cool and validation. And it's something that not lots of their peers have as well. And because it can put them and because for the same reason that YouTube wants it, it could accelerate the trajectory of investment into their own channels and ecosystems. Right. Just like a great press hit could have or a great story or a viral video that everybody sees. It just accelerates that trajectory. I don't think it's necessary for that trajectory to happen. Listen, everybody does that. It's awesome. Nobody's mad at an award and recognition. And Lauren, just to provide a little bit of historical context, the first kind of like YouTuber show to win a primetime Emmy Award was the Lizzie Bennett Diaries back in 2013.

8:33That was Bernie Sue, right?

8:35Sam Gutelle:It was Bernie Sue and Hank Green. Yeah. And they won a primetime Emmy in an interactive category. And it's a spinoff Emma Approved one, too, for like vlog style modern storytelling of Pride and Prejudice. I was about to say, do you know what Lizzie Bennet-Dyer is based off of? Yeah, we just said it. Did you even know the source material for that? Of course. Did you even know? Have you ever even seen Pride and Prejudice? I've never seen it, but read it a few times. No, you have not. You've done neither. Pride and Prejudice. I will tell you, I don't know if anybody knows, this might be a reveal right now.

9:02No, Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley is my favorite movie of all time. I've watched it, I mean, like hundreds of times.

9:10Sam Gutelle:It's my favorite movie of all time. Matthew, what's his name? McFadden? What's his last discussion guy? Oh, God. It's your favorite movie of all time. Who is it? He's Mr. Darcy. I mean, I'm not worried about his movie. Because, you know, until Succession, nobody really knew who he was. Oh, God. He's so good, though. And then, Lauren, if you go back to 2010, the first kind of like online video thing from our world, you could say, that won a primetime Emmy was Star Wars Uncut. It was by Casey Pugh and Jamie Wilkinson. And they basically crowdsourced the whole Star Wars movie. They had fans send in 15 second chunks of Star Wars.

9:47Sam Gutelle:And you could go in onto this interactive website and choose which chunk you were going to film. And then if there were multiple people choosing the same 15 second period, people would vote on which one would win out for the final cut. And then they stitched it all together for this final cut that also won an interactive Emmy Award during the primetime. I don't remember that. That brings me back to the sort of the Felicia Day world. But the world, remember when all that was sort of going on. But like you were just reminding me, like when I was at Facebook, there was like this big push for user.

10:15I feel like that was based on like, wasn't Joey Kershaw in that show where you could the user could decide what ending they wanted? That was like a big moment for like probably like 10 years ago where everybody was like that was like the thing. Like voters can like vote on how it would end. And we were trying to build something like that at Facebook, but it never really took off.

10:32Sam Gutelle:I think that was one of those things where it's like, well, what can we do on the Internet that we can't do on other entertainment platforms? And like, let's explore this creatively. It ended up being pretty cool. I think it was a moment in time. Maybe it'll come back. Josh, up next, Netflix has just come out with a bunch of really interesting deals with publishers. So Netflix said this is sort of a first wave of content that they're going to be of partnerships like this. So deals include, like I said, BuzzFeed, Condé, again, Allure, Architectural Digest, Bon Appetit, Condé Nest Traveler, Epicurious.

11:02So it's going to be some archival IP and then there's going to be some new stuff. So it's going to be relatively like short form, like three to 20 minutes. I think this is really interesting. It feels like, you know, Netflix pushed to like sort of, you know, bring the world in one sort of spot. But I kind of love this in a lot of ways. I'm a big, we've talked about this before. What are your like two to three websites that you go to every day, no matter what? Because people.com is one of mine.

11:26Sam Gutelle:Oh, that's awesome. I used to go to Slate, but I had to stop because I was reading too many articles on there and it's not good for my just regular time management. Also Reddit, which I'm only allowed to view on my phone now because I can't look at it on my desktop. Again, for time management reasons. I just have a lot of guardrails in place, Lauren. Like if you put like a thing that like it won't allow you to like is your mom watching like that's what like who. No like I hardwired my computer in my terminal settings where I can't visit these websites. You really did. Yeah. Are you lying. OK. No that's what I do.

11:58OK. That's not a thing.

11:59Sam Gutelle:As someone who's medicated for ADHD I need to put some certain guardrails on my own kind of daily Internet consumption. Yeah. And I would say. I would. I would argue that it's mostly still not working in terms of your time management. So like, I guess it could be worse. I guess like if this is better, like I'm grateful for that. Totally. Anyway, talk about these deals that Netflix has made. Lauren, I think what Netflix is trying to do here is basically they're building like an anti-YouTube YouTube inside of their own platform. Ooh, tell me more. What do you mean by that? They watch YouTube obviously become the single most watched screen in America.

12:40Sam Gutelle:Yeah. On the back of exactly this kind of snackable lean back content. Yeah. And instead of Netflix building it out themselves and having some platform where anyone can upload video content and then the best ones get served more, et cetera, et cetera. they're just cherry picking the ones that they like the most that they think have the most like high value and fit comfortably underneath the Netflix umbrella like reach whatever threshold of quality and consumption metrics that they think befit their brand and are putting it on the platform to give people like easy stuff to watch in between when they find other stuff that they want to watch.

13:20How long until you think that Netflix is going to allow some version of user generated content on their platform?

13:27Sam Gutelle:I mean, I think like it's inevitable at this point. I think if you could look at the trajectory. I mean, I guess they do. I mean, I guess that's a bad question because I mean, technically they do already because they have deals with creators. So I guess that like I think I just mean more, you know, like not so polished. I think Netflix in the foreseeable future is always going to have some type of minimum viable threshold of quality whatever that means to them i don't think it's going to be wholesale everybody can upload to netflix and then see what rises to the top and gets the most views i think they already have this quote farm league as they would probably say in youtube and so they can see all those things and then they can sign deals with the people that they want to sign deals with to bring over to their platform they're already doing this with a number of content creators including Amazing Digital Circus, Jordan and Salish Matter, and more.

14:17My kids are deep in Jordan and Salish. Like they talk about Jordan and Salish all the time. Am I cool because I have pictures of myself and Jordan? Jordan has been on this podcast many times. We've interviewed him. Yeah, I mean, I'm not, it's not, it's helping.

14:29Sam Gutelle:That's, it's great. Thanks. Hey, Jordan, you hear that? We'd like, Lauren would like to have you come on the podcast. We'd like to continue. I'd like to continue our relationship. I'd like to, I'd like to further, I'd like to go deeper. Go on. And so I think this follows kind of like a similar trajectory, maybe you could say, of Netflix adopting advertising. Years ago, they said they're never going to have ads on the platform. They would never have an advertising tier. Right. And then several years later, they have an advertising tier. Of course. I think if they did say they're never going to have, quote, UGC on the platform years ago, they're going to have some version of that in the near future because they need to in order to keep up with YouTube.

15:05Sam Gutelle:I know. I mean, you just you would think at the end of the day, right now, the biggest differentiator is probably is curation, right? With YouTube and between YouTube and Netflix in some ways, right? Like, it's just like, it's just they're all going to become the same. And it's just sort of exhausting. And I think what Netflix also is trying to do here is stave off people going from Netflix to YouTube. So Somebody Feed Phil is a good example of that. It had the first couple of seasons on Netflix. It's going to do its next season on YouTube. and I think if there's this perception that YouTube is more television, that people can, who come from this Hollywood ecosystem, go on to YouTube and have careers on there, whether it's advertiser supported, YouTube supported, or brand supported, like integrated brand supported, then Netflix hasn't really had to deal with like a talent issue before.

15:58Sam Gutelle:They can kind of get whatever talent they want, but if YouTube comes up as a viable competitor for it, they need to figure out how to also take like some of what YouTube is doing really well and bring it onto their platform. Well, it's just a numbers game. I mean, YouTube is just like, you know, owning, you know, their numbers are just rising. And so it's like, how do they compete? And speaking of Netflix's trajectory in 2017, Reed Hastings, then CEO famously said, quote, we're competing with sleep on the margin. I remember that sleep was the enemy. Then in 2018, Netflix said, we compete and lose to Fortnite more than HBO.

16:33Sam Gutelle:So YouTube wasn't even in the vocabulary of - Isn't that interesting? What the Netflix CEOs were talking about. Right. Then in 2024, Ted Sarandos said that the two feed each other pretty nicely, that Netflix trailers do great numbers on YouTube. It's a great promotional vehicle. But by early 2025, really the gloves came off. And Ted Sarandos said, YouTube is in the quote, killing time business. Netflix is in the spending time business. Ooh, ooh. Subtle but impactful difference. And then in March, he blatantly said, YouTube is, quote, a straightforward direct competitor for television. And he said the television screen is a zero-sum game.

17:15Sam Gutelle:Whoever you pick is what you're watching tonight. Crazy how fast that changed. Yes, it's crazy how fast that changed. It's crazy. You know, I think we could predict for a long time that this is what the kids are watching. So, of course, kids grew up and now they're watching this content on the bigger devices and all that sort of stuff. So, like, it does. I never went to, like, love a prediction. They're just it's not my favorite game to play. But I could never have predicted this. This is the speed. This is crazy. And Netflix is doing this with these smaller deals with these publishers, which is honestly a big lifeline for these publishers, I think.

17:44Sam Gutelle:It gets them more distribution. They get to be premium because they're incorporated with Netflix and more. But then they're also doing with these big, huge deals. is like they paid$100 million to Jay Shetty's podcast to pull on purpose off of YouTube and put it on the Netflix. And other shows like The Breakfast Club got a Netflix deal. So it's doing, it's looking at both ends of the spectrum here, doing these big high profile deals to kind of take people off of YouTube or the majority of the content off YouTube and bring them onto Netflix. And then this kind of low hanging fruit where it's working with these premium publishers and these premium publishers probably love the idea of being on Netflix.