Why YouTube is obsessed with the Emmys

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to this episode of the Colin and Samir show. Today, we're talking about YouTubers vying for Emmys. How did YouTube become television? Is that a good thing? And does it even matter if a creator wins an Emmy? We just got back from South by Southwest. We'll recap a bit of that experience, and we'll also touch on the Sidemen charity match. If you make it to the deep end, let us know.

1:48So we just got back from Austin, and it feels like every conference is now a creator conference. Everything. I was at Sundance and it was full on a creator conference. Can last year, all about creators, South By. Maybe we're just hanging out on the creator side of these conferences, but it really feels like it's creators and companies that have an interest in creators. Yeah, I don't think we're just hanging out on the creator side. I think creators represent a big part of just general digital economy. And I think that is just the way these conferences are moving. They're going to follow the dollars.

2:24And creators not only represent like modern entertainment, they also represent commerce and startups and venture funding. And like they represent a lot of things. There was a year that I remember South by Southwest was like NFTs. It was all crypto. It was like everything was NFTs. Everything was crypto. And we spoke that year. And I remember our room was probably 20 % full at max. This year, we do a panel at the South by convention and they have like a YouTube floor. That's all creator focused. And I, we walked by this room to go to the green room and the line is out of this world. And I go into the green room and I go, what room are we speaking in?

3:10And the moderator goes 6A. And I was like, I just saw the line for 6A. And then I saw a tweet that said the line for colin is mirror's panel is insane And we go in the room. It's a 300 cap room and it is packed and there's still a line outside flex and yeah But but I think that's like super representative of what this year was It was a creator focused year and years in the past it it has not been as creator focused and people were there With real questions about what's like both from the brand side talking about how to work with creators from the creator side, talking about how to work with brands.

3:44We were on the panel with Nick Paul, the president of Spotter, and workshopping people's real-life creator-brand relationships. And everyone in the room, it was applicable to them. So I'm just saying it was a packed room of people who are transacting in the creator space. That feels tangibly different to me. Yeah, no, it was very cool to walk past a massive line and assume that that line was about to funnel into the room, but then get inside the room and realize, oh, the room's already full. And then at the beginning of the talk, we did ask everyone, are you a creator? Is it on YouTube? Is it on Instagram?

4:22Are you a brand? Are you a marketer? And it was pretty split down the middle with brands and creators. And I think that's why, like you're saying, the creator economy feels like it's taking over these conferences because you have creators there, you have brands, and then you have these entrepreneurs or startups that are kind of in the middle. They're like, yes, we are creating content and we are also the brand. So alongside, you know, some of the activations that we did, YouTube was very present this year. They had a creator collective event that we went to that kind of like the who's who of creators were there.

4:55A ton of prominent YouTube creators. Rhett and Link, Sean Evans, Michelle Carey, Ryan Trahan, Marques Brownlee. Cassie Ho. Cassie Ho. And a lot of them were there because there was a variety event that was heavily surrounding YouTube's campaign to get creators Emmys. This has been something that Neil Mohan has been very forward about. It's something that we've seen a lot over the past year. And I think this is something we should really dig into, this concept of YouTubers winning Emmys. We spent a lot of time talking to Sean Evans about this. We've spent a lot of time talking to Red Link about this.

5:34And, you know, the most firm question that I want to ask is, does it matter? it's interesting because if you look at the emmys the emmys celebrates the best in television right and now we are at a point where youtube is primarily watched on tv for a lot of creators especially the ones that youtube seems to be putting front and center like retin link like sean evans their content is being watched on tv now does it matter if we get awards for that that now we're on the same platform? And why would it matter? So different creators have chimed in on this. We actually asked Jimmy when he was on the show last, and he said he wants to win an Emmy so that his team feels like they are rewarded for the work that they're putting in, for the caliber of their work.

6:26If you listen to Rhett and Link, they say, oh, well, having an Emmy attached to our show will help with advertising dollars. So to a degree, I think that's true. But I don't know. Sometimes I feel like, do we really need that validation? So I want to take a couple of steps back because I want to explore Netflix as a case study. So Netflix at the most recent Emmys had 107 nominations across 35 titles and won 24 awards. And the reason I want to bring that up is because in 2013, Netflix won its first Emmy ever for House of Cards. You remember House of Cards was this really big deal. And as I was researching this concept, I started thinking about and recognizing like before House of Cards, Netflix was an aggregator of other people's content, right?

7:19Yeah. It was just distributing other people's content. House of Cards was their first big original swing. And Ted Sarandos said to the New York Times in 2013 that winning the Emmy solidifies that television is television no matter what pipe brings it to the screen. I think that is the effort of YouTube right now, right? Like, yeah, to be that next sort of Netflix in this evolution. Right. And when Neil spoke about it, he said something along the lines of, you know, the Emmys should embrace creators so they don't risk falling behind. So the Emmys doesn't risk. Yeah. So they don't risk falling behind the current sort of landscape and times that we're in right now.

7:58The difference here is that Netflix produced House of Cards. They made it. They funded it. They had a perspective on it. They made it and it looked like tv, right? It could be watched and consumed like tv on tv and You know house of cards had a lot of the conversation that we had with sean evans Which I he used a term that I just absolutely loved. He said cultural penetration What shows have cultural penetration and house of cards At that time had a ton of cultural penetration and If you think about right now, like what shows are having major cultural penetration. I would say severance right now, right?

8:36Maybe white Lotus, you know, but like, it's interesting to try and dictate or define what that means. And, you know, I guess the question is, do you need a like external group to say, yes, you are, you, you matter the best, you matter in culture, you know, cause it's, it's, it's hard to argue that like Sean Evans and Hot Ones doesn't matter in culture. I think it absolutely does. But then I think in the sea of content that we're in where, you know, to Sarandos's point, television is television, no matter what pipe brings it forward. But now with the amount of shows, like what does, is Hot Ones in the conversation with the late night shows?

9:19What is it in the conversation with? You know, what's its category? What's its nomination status? Like some of that is is up for debate. But yeah, I guess to the question of does it matter, I think it primarily matters actually functionally in the context of advertising dollars, right? Like functionally why this matters to YouTube is big brands are still spending a ton of money on television. Yeah. I think in order for creators to win Emmys, they're going to have to do what Hot Ones and Good Mythical Morning do, which is segment into seasons. You may not think they actually produce seasons. It can feel like there's always a Hot Ones coming out, but they do announce seasons, right?

10:07And I think if a Michel Carre with Challenge Accepted or a Yes Theory or a different creator wants to be considered for an Emmy, they're probably going to have to look and feel a little bit like TV so that the Emmys understands it the same way they started to understand Netflix. right? To formulate ourselves into these seasons and look more like TV. Yeah. I mean, you think about made on YouTube last year, like one, one of the announcements was the update to the UI of the connected TV app to look more like segmented in seasons and episodes. So I agree with you that that is like a huge, you know, it's a huge task to use the same verbiage as television, you know, to go, this is season one of challenge accepted.

10:53It has six episodes in it. It's a, it's a repeat format in season two, Michelle does these things. And part of that also is like in television, the context of advertising typically happens through the upfronts, uh, which is like essentially this, Hey, let's bring all of our shows forward. CBS will bring their shows forward and go this fall. We have family guy or whatever. I don't know what CBS. CSI. Yeah, whatever. These are the number one shows. Here's how they did. And YouTube does that, but YouTube does it more in the context of like the platform and like how big the platform is. And they actually, they don't know necessarily what's coming up next.

11:29Yeah. Right. They can just tell you what's come out in the past and the impact that it's had, the viewership, the watch time. But they don't know what's coming out, which I think that is now part of all a part of this shift of going competing with television is storytelling around this. And there was an article today in the Hollywood Reporter that announced that we're hosting an event alongside Spotter where we're going to bring Mr. Beast, Dude Perfect, a bunch of creators, Jordan Matter, a bunch of creators on stage to talk to advertisers about what's coming in the future. Because a lot of these media companies now know what's coming in the future.

12:03You know, like Sean Evans probably knows what the next season of Hot Ones looks and feels like when it's coming out, how many episodes it's going to be. So he can pre-sell from an advertising perspective in the same way that television networks do. So some of it, it has to do with like verbiage. And I think the Emmy is verbiage that supports that this is television. Without the Emmy, it's hard to argue to the broader ecosystem. Like it's an easy moment of social proof to go, no, no, no, this is television. Look, it won an Emmy. Yeah. The question that we keep coming back to is, is it good for YouTube to be seen as television?

12:42We always used to tell brands and creators that we worked with, don't make TV for the internet. Yeah, you're right. You're right. We've said that a lot. And there was a comment we got on one of our videos about this on our channel from Alexa Digital Radio. And I'll read it. It says, I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that YouTube is going to end up being the same as commercial TV is today, which isn't good. It's moving towards areas that lack creativity and are more about monetization and making your channel a business. That isn't what I want from a creative platform, which I don't think youtube is anymore Saying youtube is not a creative platform anymore I think youtube is a lot of things.

13:19I think the narrative of youtube is what they're talking about, right? because like on a on a day-to-day basis Still anyone can upload anything to youtube Within community guidelines, but like yeah anyone can upload anything you still have gox right like you still have incredibly artistic creators uploading they're just not necessarily and gox is a bad example because he's heavily part of the narrative of youtube but they're not necessarily part of the forward-facing pitch to advertisers and the thing that we always talk about when it comes to platforms is model citizens and so we look at what the who the platform is pushing forward the platform is pushing forward the tv like creators because that is that is the best thing for the business right now, the business of YouTube.

14:05It doesn't mean the other stuff doesn't exist, but that is what's being incentivized. Yeah. Pitching creators who are trusted and consistent and do know what's coming out and do have massive scale. Advertisers want that. Yeah. Right. But I agree with you. There is still a massive part of YouTube that is just unique and strange. Yeah. And where creators are making things sort of just as they get the idea. And I think even with these creators that are being pitched for Emmys, the Sean Evans and the Renton Links and, you know, Michelle Kares, they still have a very different DNA than television. Yeah.

14:42Because they've been listening to their comments. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And to their data from YouTube in a very different way. And they've been so connected to the process. And some of that is why they actually can't operate in the same like upfront schedule or like pitch schedule of here's what next season's going to look like. because I can generally tell you, but if I make an episode and then things change with my audience or the platform or I get feedback, the next episode is going to be based on that. Not necessarily like batching big production and releasing six episodes at a time. And so there's a little bit of like this, I can tell you some parts of what it is, but I can't tell you everything that it is because it's going to, you know, morph.

15:21I also think the big question about, you know, creators, I think it's really interesting. It's like, do creators care? and there's this great quote about from Markiplier, you know, back when he's been nominated for an Emmy and in space with Markiplier, which I think was a YouTube original, but that was, you know, talked about, he was nominated for Emmy and he was not covered at all by the media when he was nominated. And he gave a quote. He said, it's fine that they don't recognize me, But what amazes me is that if any of them were to interview me and put those videos on YouTube, it would do exceptionally well for their channels.

16:02I just thought that was like really interesting about how even for the business of the other media platforms, the business for the Emmys, it is a net positive for them to cover creators. But do the Emmys actually need creators more than creators need Emmys? Probably. But YouTube needs a creator to win an Emmy. I just wonder if YouTube long-term will get the credit for the Emmy. It's a good question. Because I feel like the more that creators start investing back in their shows, making seasons, making things episodic, you know, repeatable formats, 25 minutes, the more that those shows can also potentially go off YouTube.

16:49Sure. So Amazing Digital Circus, massive animated channel. we spoke to Kevin who runs it. He's doing a really interesting deal where he's actually releasing on YouTube and Netflix at essentially the same exact time. So Netflix has already broken through and is winning Emmys. I feel like there's just going to be this shift and this barrier of, hey, if you're a creator who's making episodic shows on YouTube of a certain quality, come over and release those on Netflix or on Hulu. You'll find different audience. You're going to find your algorithmic audience. You're going to find your community on YouTube.

17:26But hey, you may find a totally new audience here on Netflix. Part of this also has to do with like, I don't know if people are aware of how much money it costs to campaign to win an award. And this year at the Oscars, there's a really interesting stat about Anora. Anora won Best Picture, won Best Director, won Best Writer. It won a ton of awards. Anora cost$6 million to make. neon the studio that financed it spent 18 million dollars on the marketing for the oscars campaign yeah three times the cost of the film so you take a step back and you go this is kind of like political campaigns where you have to raise a ton of money or have a ton of money to even go out and campaign it's it's there there's part of this that's like merit-based but there's another part of this that's like, who has the best campaign, right?

18:22Like you're campaigning to voters. It's, I remember meeting someone from the Netflix awards team in London. And I said, how many people work for the awards team? She was like, well, my direct team is 75. My gosh. That's a huge division of people working on awards. Yeah. So this is a very important thing for networks and platforms. and it's not necessarily strictly merit-based. And I think that's where creators get frustrated. There's a quote from Link from South by Southwest where Link said, if you look at the numbers, we're exceeding those of late night shows in the 18 to 34 demo. We're exceeding all of them combined, Marquez added.

19:07So, you know, I took a look at some of the Q4 ratings for late night. These are what are called live plus seven ratings, meaning like live plus seven days of viewership. Kimmel is averaging 1.9 million viewers. Late Night with Stephen Colbert, 2.5. Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, 1.3 million. So yeah, the competition is like, Rhett and Link are competing, right? They are competing in that type of daily show format. Hot Ones is absolutely competing, right? And at times blowing them out of the water. But is it, is that the comparison? Is it like the apples to apples comparison of Fallon and Hot Ones?

19:54Because by the numbers, yeah, they should be head to head, but there's so much more at play than just the numbers. Yeah, for me, when I look at it, if I'm Sean Evans, I'm probably saying to myself, yeah, Emmy would be great. It'd be cool. It'd be a marker of my career and what I've done. But as long as I am consistently putting out work that I like, and it's resonating with an audience that continues to grow and enjoy it, that's actually the most important thing. Like I am in my own lane and there is such freedom to just being like, I actually don't need, I don't need to win an Emmy. Yeah. My concern is when you unlock that door of like a creator winning an Emmy, it opens up that competitive landscape for creators and even that aspiration in a world where we have found ways to have a hot ones emerge without any gatekeepers, any conversation, any engagement with the like bureaucracy of Hollywood.

21:02And you know, it is, it's plain and simple. I think the most important vote is the vote of the audience. That's the most important vote. It just is like, and back to the conversation around like cultural penetration, it's like, some people have it, some people don't. And if you have it and you built it yourself, keep going, keep on rolling, just keep, keep rolling, you know? And like, it's easier to do that without other stakeholders. That's why these creators are where they are today. So I'm very fascinated by this, this Emmy effort. And I just, I'm curious what, what others think about how much or how little it matters.

21:43Again, it comes back to the advertising business. Like that is what this is about. It's about dollars shifting from major TV networks to YouTube. So shifting gears and speaking of, you know, creators who are doing things themselves, have a connection to an audience and are having a major impact. Sidemen charity match. Every year, it didn't happen last year, it happened in 2023 and happened in 2025 very recently. It amazes me the amount of people that come and watch digitally in person. This year it was 90 ,000 people watching live, watching a bunch of creators. In Wembley, yeah. In Wembley Stadium.

22:19Historic Stadium, yeah. And consistently 2.5 million concurrent viewers. On YouTube, yeah. on YouTube. 17 million views of the replay. Not to mention, why are all these creators so good at soccer? Like I watched a highlight reel of Sketch in Goal. I don't know. And it just, it feels like a video game. No, it doesn't. It really doesn't make much sense what's going on. Like, yeah, I've always wanted to be asked to play, but now when I look at it, I'm like, no, I'm actually, I'm not. Also, Jimmy missing the free kick. Tough, tough, Jim, you know. Look, who are we, man? Like I, listen, never been invited to play in it.

22:55I've never seen you play soccer i think i could kind of i kind of get it yeah i mean i am getting old now but like yeah i think i kind of do it robert robert looked politely disagree with mark robert looked so young and spry like he's never been fitter in his life he's 44 years old and he's like sprinting around the soccer field he scored a goal in the in the in the penalty kicks yeah um i'm convinced the sidemen charity match is just a way for all these creators to show how fit they are and like score a goal and take their shirt off i mean it's like a really high quality camera unbelievable it's the coolest looking event in our industry by far.

23:28And again, we go back to this concept of like making something that matters in culture. Like this matters. Yeah. This absolutely matters. When the audience votes with ticket sales, when they vote with showing up to an event, that matters. It just matters. And I think there's a lot of questions around how do you know if a creator matters? Like how do you know if a creator has real community and engagement. Like this is how you know, you just, they, they host an in-person event and people show up at South by Southwest. I thought one of the most impressive, if not the most impressive thing I saw was us going to Jake Shane's live show.

24:06My gosh. We walked in the door at the Moody theater. I think there was 3000 people there. It was three levels, three levels, absolutely packed. And he had this audience captivated. Like I this audience was in the palm of his hand. He's alone on stage. Yeah And I looked at that and I was like this is what everyone needs to look around and go like You know back to our conversation with jack conti subscribers don't really matter anymore. This is what matters Do you have a real community that'll show up for you? Yeah, it reminded me of speaking with kevin hart At spotter summit at the beginning of the year and him talking about how seriously he takes touring and seeing his audience in person.

24:46You know, we spoke about it briefly, but it just keeps coming back to the top of my mind of like, oh, you really want to build a community based off of the work that you do digitally. You need to go see the people. Yeah. And that's what Jake Shane is doing. That's what so many creators are doing right now. The sidemen give that opportunity in a lot of ways for physical engagement with their brand between, you know, they have restaurants. they uh have this event where it's like this annual tentpole major moment that people get to get excited for and 90 000 people showing up is insane it just proves it's not a gimmick it's not like yeah hacking the algorithm no it's not empty viewership right it is like truly a lot of people who their brand is impacting their life so that that's i think like the reward is that event.

25:43And I think people in our space this year, I think tracking towards more and more physical events and like seeing your community show up in front of your face, I think is like, it is so important because it is the metric. How do you measure engagement? I think that is how you measure engagement. I think it's the coolest event in our space by far. Yeah, let alone KSI's performing at halftime and Feastables is the sponsor. It's just this, like, it's just so strange. It is. It's cool. It is. It's like they built their own Super Bowl. Yeah. Super Bowl for creators. Continually impressed by those guys.

26:22Yeah. I'm sad we couldn't go out this year. We've always wanted to go out. Just a crazy year with fires and babies and, you know, figuring out. That's enough. Figuring out how to get back. Fires and babies is. Yeah. Figuring out how to get back on our feet. But I'd love to just go and see that. Like, I think it's the most impressive event. All right, let's do some creator support. We got some questions from the audience. We're going to answer one of them right now. If you have questions, you can submit them to us either on our Reddit, tweet at us, or preferably actually send us a voice memo. I'd love to play voice memos on here.

26:55So creator support. This comes from our subreddit, jobs that serve as internships for content creation career. Hey, y 'all, I remember michelle carre saying that her and some of her uh fellow creators worked at buzzfeed and that served as an quote-unquote internship for their creator journey I'm, someone who wants to either create my own content comedy mainly or become a writer for content creators I love to write. I love the creative process so I can see myself being Content working for someone else as long as I love what they create and have a good time with the job itself Long story short question is how do you break into the world?