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Earlier this year, Netflix made headlines and stirred excitement among talent agents when co-CEO Ted Sarandos said video podcasts would likely start showing up on the streaming giant.
Sarandos had framed the development as inevitable for Netflix, given the growing popularity of talk-show-like programming and the blurring lines between talk shows and podcasts. But since those April earnings call comments, we’ve heard very little from Netflix on the topic. There’s no evidence the company has spun up a special video podcasting team, and it hasn’t elaborated on how it might go about landing the shows.
Netflix watchers that were hoping for an update during the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Thursday will also be disappointed. Company executives stuck to talking about how they want Netflix to do more work with creators in general, whether they are podcasters or YouTubers.
“We want to be in business with the best creatives on the planet, regardless of where they come from,” Sarandos said. “Some of them are here in Hollywood …. Some are creators that distribute only on social media platforms.”
He pointed to a few examples that are working, including licensing videos from Ms. Rachel, who runs a toddler-focused YouTube channel and has racked up 53 million views in the first half of the year on Netflix. That suggests that Netflix’s approach of luring YouTubers with creative deal structures, which we reported earlier this year, is paying off.
The slow roll on video podcasts, meanwhile, is likely par for the course for a giant company like Netflix, though there are also some real challenges to landing that type of content.
Many of the most popular hosts that would seem to be obvious choices to work with, such as Alex Cooper who hosts “Call Her Daddy” or the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” are tied up in deals with companies like SiriusXM or Amazon’s Wondery. Those deals involve exclusive rights to sell ads on audio and video versions of the shows, though shows can run on other platforms.
There are, of course, other ways Netflix could work with big-name hosts. For example, Joe Rogan, who renewed a $250 million deal with Spotify last February, premiered his first stand up special in six years with Netflix last July. Earlier this year, Netflix released a comedy special on its streaming service with “Kill Tony,” a popular live comedy podcast taped in Austin. Both deals make a lot of sense: Netflix has long-running experience with producing comedy specials.
Hulu, meanwhile, premiered a docuseries about Cooper and she’s also helping produce a new reality dating show for the streaming service.
But as Sarandos pointed out, there is still plenty of other talent out there for Netflix to work with, podcasters or otherwise. “Most of them have not yet been discovered,” he said on Thursday. “For those creators doing great work, we have phenomenal distribution, desirable monetization, brilliant discovery in our [user interface] and a hungry audience waiting to be entertained.”
Here’s what else is going on…
Deals & Debuts
See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors.
Substack raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Bond and The Chernin Group, valuing the company at $1.1 billion. Other investors included Andreessen Horowitz and Skims CEO Jens Grede. Bond partner Mood Rowghani will join Substack’s board. The newsletter publisher is also warming up to advertising, which would supplement its subscription revenue.
OpenAIplans to add checkouts to ChatGPT and take a cut of online shopping purchases made within the chatbot, the Financial Times reported. The move is a way for OpenAI to make money from people using AI for shopping inspiration and product recommendations.
The Tick-Tock on TikTok
• TikTok is trying to discuss security solutions with the Canadian government, which in November said the company had to shut down its offices in the country due to national security concerns. “We are still looking to get to the table,” Steve de Eyre, TikTok’s director of Canadian government affairs, told the South China Morning Post. TikTok’s app would still be available to Canadian users even if the company has to shutter operations based in the country.
• TikTok on Thursday announced new features for songwriters, including labels that identify them as songwriters on their account. A new tab will also show some of the tracks that they have written or co-written.
Overheard
Creator startups are compelling because entrepreneurs flip the traditional model of building software first and then a brand second, according to Slow Ventures partner Sam Lessin, an approach that’s especially valuable amid the AI boom.
“What matters in a post AI world is trust. It’s communities,” Lessin said in an interview on The Information’s TITV with our reporter Akash Pasricha. Slow Ventures in February launched a $60 million fund to invest directly in creator entrepreneurs.
After finding “great entrepreneurs” that have built trust in a certain niche, “step 2 is building lots of software services companies around that,” he said. “That pattern, I think, is going to be one of the biggest implications that comes out of this.” (Sam Lessin is married to Jessica Lessin, founder of The Information.)
People on the Move
Connor Hayes is the new head of Threads. Previously, Hayes was Meta Platforms’ vice president of product for generative AI, and he also was part of the team that originally built Threads. Hayes will now report to Instagram Head Adam Mosseri, who previously was overseeing Threads, according to Axios.
LTK promoted Kristi O’Brien to chief revenue officer and Kit Ulrich to chief experience officer, where she will lead the creator commerce startup’s product teams. Previously, O’Brien was the general manager of the brand platform, while Ulrich was GM of creator shopping.
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