[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting Show. I'm Brian Morrissey. This is a summer episode. We are... I guess we're heading into, into August now.
In this episode, I am joined by Cynthia Littleton and Ramin Setoodeh.
They are the co-editors-in-chief of Variety, and we talk about how they're taking one of Hollywood's oldest trades and pulling off what's, what's long been considered, I, I think of as like the holy grail in publishing, and that's combining the reach and the pizzazz and the influence of consumer media with the stability and frankly, better economics of a trade publication.
And this is really difficult to do, but it's the Politico model, at least that's how I think about it.
And that's to serve a professional audience with high-value intelligence, but package it with enough punch and consumer appeal to build mainstream relevance.
And, you know, I saw this attempt to chase this firsthand when I was at Adweek. You know, our private equity owners brought in Michael Wolfe to inject that consumer heat into a B2B brand.
It didn't work, not because the model's fl-flawed, though, at least that was my conclusion, but because it needs the right context and the right asset.
You're not gonna pull this off in, you know, with like a utilities publication or, or waste management publication, but you can in other areas. Hollywood, for sure. Politics, I mean, Politico.
Music, you know, Billboard has done this. Sports, I think.
You know, there's, there's definitely an audience there that care, that cares about both the business and, you know, the overall sort of cultural, cultural aspect to it. So we get into how Variety navigates that overlap.
Cynthia and Ramin talk about running, you know, what's a high metabolism newsroom that breaks industry news and while also, you know, building these franchises like Actors on Actors, and they share how Variety has expanded well beyond print because, you know, text is in a tough place right now.
And also, like, expanded their own coverage area, right? So f- Hollywood itself is going through a bit of an existential crisis like many [chuckles] many industries right now, particularly in media.
And so they've expanded into video games and creator coverage, but it, it is a fine line, which we discussed, about staying true to your roots, and that is in the professional entertainment industry, while also expanding because entertainment is, like any part of media, completely decentralized now.
And so we discussed, you know, how they're still heavily invested in print and also in the craft behind making entertainment, but at the same time, they're, they're gonna be modernizing the brand both in their coverage areas and in how they distribute and make their content.
You know, but like any ma-modern publisher, Variety is vulnerable to traffic disruption. We talk about that. And, you know, that in many ways is the paradox.
You know, if you're going to be in the consumer sector, you're inevitably, at least in the past, you were gonna get pulled into being traffic-driven, and that leaves you exposed to the different algorithmic changes that we are seeing right now.
So we discuss all of that in this conversation. Really enjoyed it. I love to get into the details, particularly around B2B. So hope you enjoy this. [upbeat music] Now onto the conversation with Cynthia and Ramin.
All right, we'll just get right into it. Cynthia and Ramin, thank you for joining me. I usually do one-on-one podcasts, but then you're co-editors-in-chief, so, like, you know, I wanna have you guys on.
We're two for the price of one, so you have to get both of us in here. Exactly. Tell me about how that is, first of all. I've been an editor-in-chief. I've never been a co-editors-in-chief.
Like, it, it seems like it could be a very modern, like, approach, but I'm interested in how, how it actually works. It's actually an incredible relationship for us. I'm based in New York- Better be...
Cynthia's based in LA. We talk throughout the day.
I am on Eastern Standard Time, so I get to talk to our European correspondents and our journalists around the world a little bit easier 'cause of the time zone difference.
Cynthia's in LA, so she's online longer into the night, later into the day. And we really love working together. We really, really respect each other.
We talk throughout the day about coverage and how we wanna approach a story, and we're really proud of where Variety is. We're celebrating our one hundred and twentieth birthday this year.
We have been the number one site covering the business of Hollywood for three consecutive years according to Comscore. That's thirty-six months in a row of being number one.
We're very proud of that statistic, and we're at a really great place right now as a newsroom, as a brand, in our events business, and in our video production. Yeah.
So, Cynthia, tell me, how do you divide up, like, duties beyond the, like, time zone? Thank you. I just want to just sort of reinforce that completely co-sign with everything Ramin said.
I don't know how you would do this job as one person. I think it would be impossible. There is so much that we juggle between breaking news, magazine features, video, live events.
Our scope is enormous, and what's been fantastic about this partnership, absolutely the best sort, you know, senior management partnership that I've ever had, is that we have incredibly complementary skills. We have...
My background is very much Hollywood. I grew up as a journalist at the trades. I h- very much know this town and this ani- the animal of entertainment. I know, I know the wonky stuff really well.
Ramin grew up in the Newsweek world of New York magazines. He knows that world well. He knows everybody who... If you need to get a star somewhere in front of a camera or accepting an award, Ramin Setoodeh is your guy.
He knows everybody. He knows. He has those connections.
It's just b- You couldn't like, you couldn't have designed a better, more complementary fit of people and skills, and I will say the benefit, we have the benefit of being peers for a long time in New York, and we have the benefit of becoming friends.
I have a great deal of respect for Ramin, and I feel it coming back to me every day.
It's a, it's a truly fantastic partnership.Okay, great And, and by respecting each other, we're able to run Variety as one cohesive newsroom, which is really important.
I think that's a really important leadership lesson because, you know, obviously we're working in a very fast-paced environment, and there's a lot of quick decisions that have to be made, but because we work together so closely, we're able to manage our newsroom as one cohesive newsroom, which is really important.
Yeah. So let's get into like where the, the brand is now, 'cause I feel like every brand needs to like sort of, I don't wanna say have some identity crisis, but like y- you know, every- everything is in flux right now.
I don't [clears throat] mean that as just like a cliché. I think it truly is, really.
But I'm interested like because, I mean, you guys are historically a Hollywood trade, and the trades, for those who are not like in the sort of Hollywood and Hollywood adjacents world, it's like it's a particular animal.
So like, Cynthia, maybe you can, 'cause you've got a lot of experience. Like you talked about the trades. Because it's a totally different world. I, you know, I would always be struck with it.
I was-- I worked at like Adweek for like years, and it was... It's a totally different world. We dealt with PR people. You deal with publicists.
Like the two worlds are very different, and then there was always this long history of the trades being like at war with each other over [laughs] like what to the outside were like pretty small things.
But like I appreciated the, the energy that was brought. But- Hey, you need to know what director is attached to the next iteration of Spider-Man or whatever. This is all, you know, it, it's very interesting stuff.
It's stuff that people obsess about, but fundamentally what we cover is business intelligence for people in the business of making, distributing, marketing, promoting content, starring in it, and all the attendant business.
But at all the, the core is the business of content, and that it took me a long time to embrace the word content, but I finally gave in. Yeah, you have to.
And it is, it is content because it used to be able to film and TV, but now it's, it's so much more than that. It's social, it's podcasting, it's audio, it's, it's gaming.
It's just, you know, there's so many things that we cover. For our brand, I think certainly the big...
You know, for the, the biggest, the biggest, most fundamental change, of course, was, you know, we're a hundred and twenty years old, so we've been around a long time.
The biggest, most fundamental change was the internet when, you know, it came along.
We were a brand that was known in New York and Los Angeles to entertainment professionals overseas 'cause we had a special edition, a weekly edition that would go overseas and go into the middle of the country.
But for, you know, for 85 years, we were a daily newspaper, Monday through Friday, that was available in Los Angeles and New York. And so that, you know, that was very limited.
We have, we're, are, because of what, because of the business we cover and because we've been around so long and because we're a, we're awfully charming, especially, you know, we're, we are an awfully charming, we're a very irreverent brand.
But we were just not... So we were n- we were known, people knew Variety, but they didn't have the chance to read it, to interact with it.
About 25 years ago, the internet came along and changed everything, and now our brand is absolutely-- And now I'm gonna just completely unabashedly sound like a PR person, but our brand is- A publicist...
synonymous with... That's right. Syn- um, excuse me. No, comms professional. [chuckles] Okay. The word comms, I never heard it for till about four years ago. Now everybody is a comms professional.
If you use comms it means you have to be across things, I think. But now we, because so now every, people can interact. We're on the, we're online. People know us.
They have b- we are now very well known for independence, authority, a bit of irreverence because we cover a fascinating business, but we cover, we talk to the most creative, the most innovative people in the world doing world culture shaking business.
It's, it's, it's a lot sexier than aerospace or, or insurance or anything like that, and that has...
So that alone, that exposure has widened the world of Variety beyond anything that Sime Silverman, our dear founder, could have possibly imagined. Yeah. Ramin, do you wanna jump in there?
Because I'm interested in, in you coming from like, you know, Newsweek and those kind of magazines, like how you view this. Because while Hollywood was always thought of as the trades, right?
Like, like I don't think of Variety as like a trade publication. Like, yes, people use it for intelligence to do their work, but just by nature of being in,
in the industry of like entertainment, it is gonna have heat far beyond what, say, Ad Exchanger will have, you know? [chuckles] I mean, that's like, it's about ad tech, right? Like, and you're gonna stay in that lane.
It's, this is not going to be something that you walk down the street and people necessarily know about.
And so I think it, to me, there's a lot of similarities to, on the other side, like of the coast, to like Politico, right? Like where the sort of trades in Washington, D.C. were just like that.
The Hill and Roll Call were dropped off at, at legislative offices, and they were very, I would say, sleepy businesses, right?
And like the internet changed all of that, and then Politico came on the scene, and they were saying, "Hey, we can have a high metabolism news operation that has consumer reach but has a B2B type of business model."
How do, how do you sort of see where Variety sits within sort of the, the media ecosystem? I think that's a- 'Cause I don't think it's easy to, to pigeonhole exactly.
I think that's a really important question, really interesting question, and I think what's happened as someone who's been in magazines my entire life, my entire career, as a very young journalist, is that the audience and the consumer audience has gotten a lot smarter, and they are interested in the business of Hollywood.
They are interested in what's happening behind the scenes.
They're a much more savvy and much more informed about the way in which movies are produced, and they wanna know the B2B story about their favorite blockbuster, their favorite action star, their favorite independent movie, their favorite television series.
Showrunners are all known by the masses. Everyone knows about Mike White and what he did with The White Lotus.
And I think there's a really unique opportunity for us, which we've been very, very excited about-To reach millions and millions of readers around the world. Variety has never been bigger in its 120 years.
We are so proud under the ownership of Jay Penske for the last 13 years, we've had a glossy magazine, so we come out once a week instead of every day as a newspaper. We've invested in photography.
We've invested in long-form video. When I talk to journalism students, they're all aware of Actors on Actors, which is our, one of our banner video series. Mm-hmm.
They're aware of Power of Women, which is one of our banner events that we do honoring women in the entertainment industry who use philanthropy and use their spotlight for philanthropy.
They're aware of HitMakers, which is a big music franchise that we do.
And so we are in a very unique time right now, and I'm-- we're really proud of our newsroom for being able to execute and to be firing on all cylinders.
But the idea has been that we've expanded and we've grown, and we are a modern newsroom, and we tell stories on multiple platforms.
We tell stories in print, we tell stories digitally, we tell stories through video, we tell stories through our events, and it really is important for us to be a news organization that emphasizes storytelling, unique storytelling, undeniable storytelling.
We like to be best, we like to be first. We're very aggressive, we're very competitive, and we are really, really proud of the product that we create day in and day out. Yeah.
Cynthia, do you wanna just jump in about the, the competitive landscape? Mm-hmm. Because, I mean, it, it's always been fiercely competitive, like among the trades, like I- Right... mentioned.
And, and some of them are like, several of them are now like sister companies, but they're still- Right... they're still enemies, right? They're s- [laughs] Oh, it's, the consol- You still compete. Yeah. Right?
The consolidation that we cover, I've, from the time I started about 30 years ago, the story of entertainment has been the story of consolidation, mergers and acquisitions, Disney buying ABC.
You know, the, all just the, the, the shape of the business that we know today really did start about 30 years ago when there was a whole bunch of regulatory changes that kinda catalyzed a lot of, a lot of M&A activity.
And so, so, but, and consolidation in media, so in, in the... We are not immune to the, to the forces that we cover, and so we're, we're hitting that.
But, but historically, I am actually, it's, you, it, it was fiercely competitive. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, it was a great...
I'm actually very happy that I had the opportunity to kinda grow up in that time when it was fiercely competitive. It was old-fashioned newspaper competitive. Yeah.
You, you held your breath and looked at your competition the next morning to see what did they have? Did they have a better story than you?
And I feel very, you know, sort of fit to judge 'cause I worked for Variety, then I went across the street for Hollywood Reporter for a few years, and then I came back across the street to Variety.
So I've ha- I've seen both brands, you know, in that old heyday of being dailies. And it was different than the internet because now you have a big story, people can...
It's very easy for other, other outlets to match it. Var-Variety does that. We break a lot of our own news, but we also, obviously people break news, we follow it. It's different when it was in print.
You couldn't, you, you couldn't, you couldn't match it. It was there and it, it, it ki- you know, it, it's, if you had that, if you had that exclusive story, only you had that exclusive story all day.
If you had a mistake on page one, it, it also sat there and, and, and- Yeah... waved at you all day and made you feel terrible. But, but there was nothing like breaking news back then.
There was nothing like walking into The Four Seasons and seeing Daily Variety on the table, and you knew you had a big story. You kinda would just strut into the ballroom. Obviously, the internet has changed all of that.
But that tempo of the competition, and it was fierce, absolutely fierce. That tempo, I'm very fortunate to kinda have that, and I...
You really just want to, I think journalists, many journalists by nature are competitive, and that competition really drives- Yeah...
it can drive bad behavior, but if you, if you use it right, it can make you, it can make you really aggressive, and you're pushing, and readers are the better for two publications that have a certain amount of competition.
You're gonna, you're gonna really jockey to do the best job and do the best- Mm-hmm... journalism that you can.
To Ramin's point, that has also, I mean, the, well, we'll talk about the changes, but one of the changes in, in the, the scope and the way we write has changed enormously, and that's also obviously changed the skills- Yeah...
of the journalists on our masthead that we need. But how do you think of the, the sort of differentiation in a pretty crowded area?
I mean, there's, there's you guys, there's Hollywood Reporter, there's Deadline, there's The Wrap, there's now, there's The Ankler now. I had Janice Min on this podcast.
She took a little shot at, at, at you guys, but that's part of the, I think that's part of the back and forth in this field, I feel like. [laughs] We don't- So, so is Caucus- We don't-... in there?
In all, in all seriousness, we don't look at The Ankler as a publication that is similar to Variety. And Ankler is a niche newsletter- Yeah... that reaches a small audience.
We reach millions and millions of readers around the world. We have a video team that reaches millions and millions of viewers around the world. We are a large news organization. But to your question, um- I like it.
A little counterpunch. I like it, Ramin. I saw that... but to your question, I personally think that competition is good for us. I came up in the weekly news magazine world with Newsweek and Time.
We would go head-to-head every week. And once Newsweek, you know, became a diminished version of itself, so did Time.
So I think having Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline competing against each other makes all of our journalists operate on their A-game, and I think it's good for the industry and it's good for journalism.
Yeah, and so- And I, and just- Go on, Cynthia...
you know, the only brand that we run is ours, and that is the only brand that Ramin and I run is Variety, and that's what we focus on making as absolutely good as possible.
So let's talk about that, and I always thought of Variety... I mean, you guys always have done really well on the traffic front, right? Like, you get a, you get a lot of, like, traffic, and that's become harder to do.
I think your traffic numbers, I think they've mostly held up. But how are you thinking about your output then when a lot of people, honestly, who I talk to at publishers, are moving away fromFrom traffic-based models.
They're trying to, and I know it's just one part of the business, but I wanna talk about that part of the business, then we'll talk about the others, is they're trying to move more towards like events and having direct relationships and driving down this.
And that's a different business really than the traffic, because traffic is you gotta have a high metabolism, you gotta produce, you know, a lot of content.
You're gonna have-- you're gonna be monetizing a lot of times through programmatic placements, and you're gonna be very reliant on search and other indirect sources, and it is a different, it's, it's a different business.
How are you thinking about where that fits in the business now and, and where things are going when you see, you know, AI overviews e-et cetera? Well, we're a news organization, right?
So you talked about traffic, but our traffic comes from news.
People come to Variety because they're trying to learn what's happening in the world of entertainment and media, and in TV, and in film, and on stage in Broadway.
And they come to us because they know we have the latest information on what they're passionate about, what they care about, and when news breaks, it's really important for us to be on top of that story.
And our journalists know that. They're aware of that. They're great at doing that. They're the best in the business of doing that. And so when you talk about traffic, it's a reflection for us of the quality of our work.
We're not in the business of clickbait. We're not in the business of aggregating stories just for the sake of aggregating.
We wanna provide our readers with the complete picture of what's happening in the entertainment industry.
And so some of those other brands and organizations that are scaling back from covering news and offering good journalism to their readers are doing it at their own peril.
For us, our philosophy has always been be great journalists, exercise great journalism, create great journalism, and the audience obviously follows, but it also leads to other avenues of really interesting storytelling, whether it be events, video, our international coverage at film festivals, real-time coverage.
It's really important for us to be on top of every big story and even stories that aren't big.
Interesting features, having conversations with the most important people in the film industry and TV industry, and the, the, the captains of our industry.
We want everyone to talk to Variety, and we wanna be the go-to place for coverage, and we've been able to accomplish that. We're very proud of that. I'll give you, I'll give you an example.
We recently had Apple CEO Tim Cook and Lewis Hamilton, Formula fa-fabulous Formula One race, race car driver.
You know, we had them on the cover, and that was the result of, you know, literally ten years of, of, of building a relationship with Apple on a level that, you know, just to even, just to even get near something like that, 'cause they don't, you know, he does-- Tim Cook does not, does not talk to, you know, does-- Tim Cook does not do a whole lot of press every year.
And so we felt, and it obviously was a moment in time for them, and we were so happy that Variety was the place.
When they had a big movie that they wanted to talk about, a big initiative backed and talking, talking for the first time at, at length that they had not before, talking about their Apple TV+ business, their streaming business.
We were incr- we were incredibly proud that we were the place that they wanted to tell that story.
And so we d- you know, we do everything from, you know, something at that, at that level of, you know, thirty-five-hundred-word story take out on Apple, and we also, very, very important sometimes are two-sentence items about somebody has just gotten the new job as head of marketing at this new platform, and that can spark a business deal from somebody else reading that, "Oh, I need to do something."
That's the connectivity.
So we want, at the thirty-thousand-foot view, we wanna go in, in, literally into Cupertino in one of the, one of the, you know, richest and most kind of exclusive companies in the world, and we also still wanna let you know who's going from senior VP to exec VP, 'cause all-- both of those things are really important, and they're, and they're all in our wheelhouse in a way that, that just gives us a, gives us a, a prism for what we wanna focus on.
And every single day, there's way more stories than we can get to. There is so much going on in the marketplace right now, so it's all about curation and selection and judgment. Yeah.
So I mean, I, I, I know when we talk about content, it's a whole variety, and so I, I think what I was referring to is not the thirty-five-hundred-word article.
It's the quick hit pieces, the high metabolism pieces that you probably publish hundreds a day. So that is still like an important part of the model, is what I'm getting, Ramin? Oh, absolutely.
And our readers like to follow the news, and they read the, the, they read the long form story, and they read the- Okay... the shorter journalism of news. So you're seeing traffic hold up just fine. It's growing.
It's fine. For us, it's been a, a story of growth, and we're really proud of that and very excited about that.
And also, the other thing that we're really excited and proud about is the fact that we get to come out every week with a weekly magazine. Right.
There are so few news organizations that have the privilege to do that, and so we really, really do invest in print, and we're very, very proud of our print product.
We were just doing a shoot with a showrunner who was talking about how excited she was about being in Variety. That was the one publication she wanted to be in.
And when someone says that, that's really just, that warms our hearts. That's what we want. We want Variety to be the go-to destination for the town, and we want everyone to want to be in Variety.
Yeah, and the role of the, the magazine now is different than it was before, right? Like it's, it's... I mean, I assume you build like a lot more- It's become more precious than ever before...
it's like a branding moment, and you build things around it a lot of times. Yeah. But- I was just gonna say, the print magazine is more precious than ever before.
As more and more go out of pr- go out of print, it says so much about our audience and how much they love us. See first scene of the studio.
It says so much about, uh, our audience, how much they love us, that they actually embrace. We do more, we do a weekly magazine, you know, most weeks of the year. We take very few weeks off.
We also do extra editions at film festivals. We are actually, at a time when print is receding, we're probably one of the biggestPurveyors of print. We do dedicated show dailies at certain festivals.
We do standalone issues. We-- Hollywood is, the business of Hollywood, the people that run Hollywood, they love print because they love visuals. These are the most visual people in the world. Mm-hmm.
And thanks to Ramin and all of that, all of that sort of magazine intelligence that we didn't have. We knew how to cover Hollywood, but we didn't have the magazine intelligence and that... And it didn't happen overnight.
Jay Penske bought us in the end of twenty twelve. We are transitioned from going, you know, the last daily Variety went out the door somewhere in March, I wanna say March of twenty thirteen.
At the end of that month, our first issue was the new head of Warner Brothers on the cover. I mean, that couldn't been, couldn't been more in Variety's wheelhouse. And but from there, it has been...
I mean, it is fine-tuning literally every week. You- we finally get a good one and we say, "Great, let's make a hundred more of these." But no, we're starting [chuckles] like a mag- the magazine business.
You are starting again from scratch. I, I can't reinforce enough that we are a twenty-four/seven digital brand. We do have a high metabolism, but we don't do-- We respect our readers.
We don't do the empty calorie stories. Anything that we do is gonna have some larger, some either, either just something interesting, "Oh, I didn't know Anne Hathaway was thinking that," or some
actionable something that will tell you something about our business. That is on, on virtually everything we do, that is the, that is the North Star.
Sometimes we just have fun, but virtually everything else is about business intelligence. I can't stress that enough because that's our guiding light. Right.
Cyn-Cynthia was referring to the studio in the first episode when Seth Rogen gets promoted to the studio chief.
Katherine LaNasa, who's the publicist at the studio, says, "You said this in your interview with Variety, and that's really, really, really- Right... what we want people to know." And he holds it up. Yeah, yeah.
We want people to come to Variety for their first interview and for their interviews throughout their careers.
It's really important for us to be interviewing studio heads and leaders in the industry and getting their vision and their story and what did they want to do with the roles that they have.
And content is so multi-platform, and it is, it is such an, a, an area that touches on everything. It touches on tech, it touches on sports, it touches...
You know, we were in Cannes Lion and we could see the ways in which different brands are integrating content and telling their own stories.
And so for us to, to be the journalists on the ground making sense of all this, everything that's happening is really, really important to Variety. Yeah. I'm interested in how, how you think about franchises, right?
'Cause I think about a lot of these publications, you know, they're brands at the end of the day, and you express a brand in a variety of different ways, so to speak, in a bunch of different ways, right?
And so whether you start it as a magazine or a trade, a daily, like, you're gonna express it in a whole bunch of different ways.
And I think to your point, like, with like, you know, The Anchored, they're, they're not, they're not doing it in all the different ways that, that you are, right?
And so talk to me about developing, you know, franchises like Actors on Ac- Actors and others. So I think Actors on Actors is a really great example because it's a brand within a brand.
It's now become so big that people just know it as Actors on Actors, and they know that Variety does it, but they are very excited to watch the conversations. The conversations also run in print.
We do a photoshoot that lives on TikTok and on Instagram.
And I think one of the reasons why it's such a successful franchise for us is that it is a multi-platform series that lives in all these different places and also creates conversation, which is what you always wanna do with a magazine.
You wanna be leading the conversation. And so when we were able to get, you know, Barbenheimer, the, the... It was, that was one of their biggest pairings.
We got Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy together in real life for the first time since "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" opened, talking about the biggest box office phenomenon of the year.
That was a conversation that everyone watched and consumed and, uh, you know, commented on on YouTube and commented on on TikTok.
And so for us, creating franchises, when we look to create franchises, it's really important for us to have a voice in the community and also have a voice in our storytelling that is distinct, unique, and the best. Yeah.
And Cynthia, how do you see that sort of fitting into like the overall editorial DNA? Oh, it's been... I mean, it's, it's... There are tent poles, basically. Yeah. They are the tent poles kind of, of our year.
We know that we're gonna have a certain amount of big, glossy events that are truly th- truly three-sixty events. They're print, they're digital, they're video.
They are a big, big live event that then generates more print digital video. It's a, it's an ecosystem. It really is. Power of Women is a another good example. We expanded Power of, Power of Women had...
is a, is a philanthropic venture where we honor people that have done incredible work with charities. And in, in the honoring, we raise money for charities, so it really, there's a, the great virtuous cycle with that.
We, we expanded that to Nashville this year because there's a lot of demand for, you know, there's a lot of incredible country women both in the business of Nashville, the talenting is obviously incredible there.
We had, I mean, we had Reba McEntire, Kelsea Ballerini, Mickey Guyton, and Sheryl Crow.
I mean, it was, it was an absolute incredible lineup, and most heartening, I think, was when we got there, oh my God, they were so excited to be there for Variety. They were...
They, people thanked us for bringing Variety, for bringing kind of our glow and our level of authority that you sort of, you've made it in show business.
And now, you know, I mean, Reba McEntire doesn't need us, but it, but it really, really meant a lot to us. And I also learned, I had no idea how many people from Los Angeles have moved to Nashville.
So many people I know from the industry were coming up and saying hi, and I was surprised to see them. Like, "Oh yeah, I moved here a couple years ago." I mean, it's really, really been...
So that's another interesting thing. That's a pocket. There's a clear entertainment hub is, is building in Tennessee, and we're there.
Just like we cover Atlanta more than we ever used to because it's a very big entertainment content hub now. Yeah. Well, that's something I wanna, I wanna get into, it's a great segue, Cynthia, thank you.
Which is, you know, the, the industry that you're covering. I mean, the entertainment industry is not Hollywood really anymore. I mean, it's, it's farBroader, it's, it's more global.
And Hollywood, in quotes, itself is going through a little bit of, I don't wanna say it's an existential crisis. I don't know what it's going through, but like, you know, obviously- More than a little bit.
I, I get what you mean. Culture. Okay. There, you're closer. Like, co- tell me about it, 'cause, like, the culture has changed, right? Like, I'm amazed.
I was, like, reading the, like, an Economist, like, last night, like, an, an old one, and it was, like, talking about this Ukra- this 12-year-old, like, Ukrainian who has a massive media and entertainment empire that, you know, sh- that her, well, her parents have, like, really built, I guess she built it too.
And I'd never heard of this person before, and I feel like they're... I, I don't think I should have heard her, for, because she's for, like, you know, preteen kids, so it'd be weird if I had heard of them.
But the point is, never before I feel like have there been more people famous that nobody has ever heard of. [chuckles] Like, it's completely decentralized. It's not like it's just Brad Pitt and stuff.
Yes, there, there's, there's the George Clooneys and the Brad Pitts, and they're all getting, like, older, but like, with, particularly with YouTube being the center of, of culture for a lot of young people, I don't know.
To me, it's just like, what, where is this moment for the industry you're covering? 'Cause I think then it, like, sort of reflects on where, where you go, 'cause it's not just about the movie stars anymore.
These influencers on YouTube have probably more influence i- in some ways, particularly among, you know, uh, in their niches, than, than any of these stars do. Actually, I don't, I don't subscribe to that. Okay.
And I think this is a really interesting conversation to have, and I'm glad you're asking. But I think that what you're describing is obviously the social media revolution allowed fame to be democratized, right? Mm-hmm.
So anyone could be famous. So we had reality TV, we had social media, we had the rise of TikTok, and I think fame is different than stardom, right? And so the- Yeah...
heart and soul of the film industry is still in Hollywood. It's still being greenlit in Hollywood, the stories are still being told in Hollywood.
What Brad Pitt does with F1 on the big screen is so different than what an influencer can do or a TikTok star can do, and that fame doesn't translate to the movies.
You can see that many influencers have tried to launch film careers or TV careers, and very few have made it. And so I think what you're describing is there is this- No, they're different.
I mean, so first of all, they're different. It's very different. Yeah.
Because I think the old way was, well, YouTube and stuff is the minor leagues, and if you're gonna be in the major leagues, you're gonna need to do, like, scripted, you're gonna do, need to do movies. Well, guess what?
MrBeast, like, I don't care if he ever does, does, does movies. He's got a great business. It's better than most Hollywood businesses.
So, like, you're competing at the end of the day for people's time and attention, and the fact of the matter is that's all being leaked out, and we're seeing this all through media to a lot of this, in this decentralized, and for entertainment, to me, it's like the heart of it is YouTube and then, and then also TikTok.
I think, I mean, I th- I think that there's such an interesting, you know, it is such an interesting moment, 'cause, yeah, of, there's no question, people can bubble up almost out of nowhere, and in a, in a week everybody's saying, "Oh, yeah, you've seen..."
You know?
But I think there, because you can, because everybody has a megaphone and because there's so many more avenues, the a- it actually makes the real stars, the Brad Pitts, the indelible stars, and the indelible franchises like the "Stranger Things," the "White Lotus."
Mm-hmm. There's, there's a, there's a new breed of c- of shows, of movies that play on a global level like we've never seen before, sort of erased borders in entertainment.
Netflix, Apple, Amazon, you know, H- Disney Plus. Like, they, they play now at a global... Entertainment actually used to be very, very geographically bound, you know?
You put, m- a movie or TV show came out in the States, it would be exported overseas in a certain amount of time, usually not simultaneously. You know, all that has changed. I think that the, the, the
growth of sort of the grassroots level stars and, and, you know, stars that can bubble up, bubble up out of nowhere are, tho- those can be real careers, you, y- you know, 'cause we are covering much more of that, the creator economy.
And the one thing, you talk to peop- you talk to talent agents that work in this space and they say, "I used to have to hustle to get my TV writer three jobs a year.
With my influencers, I gotta get them 50 to 60 jobs a year." Yeah. It's really all changing.
But the, so, but so the, the, the, you know, the F1 movie that can go and draw people around the world, like that, you're not gonna get that. I'm not saying that no TikToker will ever get there. Yeah, no, for sure.
But you're not gonna get that from TikTok now. And I just, I can't resist the opportunity. You talk about YouTube. We have been covering YouTube since it- Yeah... since before it started.
But to show how all roads lead through YouTube, we had YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on our cover in March, and we launched, if you go back, the record is clear, the whole push for YouTube at 20 started with Variety, and that was because we were sitting around sometime last year and going, "Hey, YouTube's about to hit 20," and we thought, I mean, that really h- made us step back and pursue that interview.
That didn't, that didn't, wasn't handed to us in our lap. We really had to- Uh-huh... pursue that. And I am again going back to proud. We're 120 years old, but we are not missing this moment.
And, and knowing that our core readers who are in the business of making the high-end movies and TV shows, they need to hear from the CEO of YouTube to understand what's going on in that gigantic sea of content that is for sure competing with people's discretionary income and, and available time.
So- So what, what, how would, Romina, how would you, how would you describe this sort of like quote unquote existential crisis then for like-Hollywood.
I mean, 'cause there's a lot of forces that are hitting it, and this is across every... It's not unique. I feel like every industry is in this.
I don't know, maybe it's because, like, I'm in the media world that I, I feel like every industry is under existential pressure.
[chuckles] I mean, you can say that Hollywood is always in crisis, and it's always thriving. Yeah. Movie, movie theaters are doing better this year. I think Sinners is, Ryan Coogler's Sinners is- Yeah...
an extraordinary success story, right? That is the example of an original story that he wrote himself, he produced h- himself, and worked on and had this, you know, passion project.
Warner Brothers believed in his vision. He has ownership in it. It has made more money in the United States than the la- last Mission Impossible movie.
And so I think that you can say there's an existential crisis, but also there's been a lot of success this year in Hollywood, and the interest in Hollywood and the fascination with Hollywood and the conversation generated by The White Lotus or your hot water cooler shows is still as high as ever, and social media just feeds into that interest.
And I think what MrBeast is creating is his own empire, and that's, to me that is different than what the entertainment industry is because it's very hard to successfully execute a great movie or a great TV show, and at its heart, that is what Hollywood is about.
And I think, you know, the influencer economy is a different business, and it is tangentially related to Hollywood, but to me, that isn't Hollywood. That isn't driving Hollywood. Yeah, not influencers.
I mostly meant, like, creators. So you, like, are, do creators fall into your purview? 'Cause I think that they're...
I understand what you're saying, that they're not directly doing the same things, but like we've seen before with social media, man, they, they took away... They weren't doing the same thing as Newsweek.
They weren't doing the same thing as Time Magazine.
Like, but, like, the reality is that all these forces, you compete with everything and everyone out there, and if you're making movies, you're competing with video games, you're competing with TikToks. Mm-hmm.
Like, that's just the reality. I'm just wondering how you, how, how you end up, you know, figuring out- Right... which part of this or all of it you end up focusing on.
Oh, I'll give you a good example, especially coming out of Cannes Lions, we real- it's, it's very clear to me that, that the filter, the filter that Variety has always used, there's, you know, there's a million actors in Hollywood.
We don't cover all of them. We cover the ones that are rising up, that are getting the significant roles, that are getting the deals. We are covering, we're covering the creator economy in that lens.
Are you doing bus- again, our lens is through the business of content, high-end professional content. Yeah.
So as people start to interact, as people start to interact more and more either with brand deals or do, you know, influencers, the studios, no question, the studios are, are courting influencers because they have audience, and the studios wanna want to piggyback on their audience to let them know that Sinners is opening on that day and Superman is opening this weekend.
The reviews are good.
So I, I think that, I think that we, there's natural places for us to plug in there, and we are spending a lot of time c- looking at how all of these different things are impacting the c- the core business of Hollywood.
One huge area of growth for us in the last two years has been video games. We've never covered it really as a business before.
Now we have a terrific young writer who is focused, covers the earnings of video games, covers the, covers video game creative development, release dates, trailer launches.
We cover those just like we'd cover a movie or TV show. It's been incredibly, it's been really rewarding, and it's, once again, this is an industry that's like, "Oh, my God, thank God you're covering us.
We're so happy to have a place to talk to professionals, industry professionals about whatever agenda we wanna talk about," and it's been great. We got to know Neil Druckmann just in time for The Last of Us.
It's been, it's really been terrific. That is an area. Gaming is a huge area- Yeah...
where you're seeing so much inter-intertwining quite f- you know, and, and, and th- and that world, gaming then brings in, you know, huge Venn diagrams of fandom and creator and, you know, it's, it's fascinating in that we haven't even touched the technology of it all, which is- Yeah, okay, so you, you- The art of that is fascinating...
yeah, you stay focused on your core, but then the reality is that core, I think this is what I was trying to get at in, in a roundabout way, is that core is part of a much larger inchoate whole these days.
Like when I think about, like, the information system or the infor- uh, I'm sorry, the information space with, without where news is within it, because, I mean, publishers exist within this larger information space.
Like, people on X are doing something very different than what The New York Times is doing and all. But at the el- end of the day, it's all part of this weird- Mm-hmm...
overall system, and I feel like the content system, if you will, [chuckles] is kinda similar. It's video games. It's gonna be VR. Mm-hmm. It's gonna be AR. It's, it, it's already creators. It can be influencers.
It can be everything. And I don't wanna diminish what the influencer economy is. I don't wanna diminish- Yes...
the salaries that are being paid and the paychecks that are being generated in that sphere, but I also think when people conflate that with Hollywood, it's not really apples to apples. And so- No, it's not...
we cover, we cover the influencer economy. We write about influencers. Right. We talk to creators.
We, you know, we have really great coverage, but when it comes to what our audience wants to read, they wanna read about, you know, what's going on behind the scenes of the White- the latest season of The White Lotus, right?
They wanna read what the latest studio chief is doing and green lighting and, and b- putting out at Warner Brothers. Yeah.
They wanna read what's happening on HBO/HBO Max/HBO Max, Max/H- like, they wanna read about what's happening in the industry, and there still is a very vibrant, strong- Right, right...
creative, interesting industry that we're covering, and it's very, it's a very, very interesting time to cover Hollywood.
I think, you know, the tension and the questions about the future of Hollywood make for great stories for our journalists. Yeah.
One really imp-- huge, big, big component of our business that we haven't mentioned is that, is what we call artisans, which is below the line.
The, the arts, the crafts, the technical, you know, makeup, hairstyling, costume.
And one thing that really helps us is that weWe cover, when we cover The White Lotus, we cover it from the first germ of the idea, the, you know, when they announce the setting and the casting, we cover all of that.
At the end of it, we also cover, we talk to the costumer, we talk to the set designer, we talk to the person that, that lo- the person that found these incredible locations, and here's why. Mm-hmm.
We-- there's this whole huge dialogue of the arts and crafts community, which is the heart, and literally the heart and soul of the creative community, the entertainment creative community in Los Angeles and New York, the heart and soul of that.
Ask any writer, director, actor, they will tell you the heart and soul are the crews.
You do not make a movie or TV show without a crew, and crafts, and technical experts that put all this stuff together, and we cover that. We cover sound mixers.
We get sound mixers together to talk about the state-of-the-art or compare, compare notes on that.
That's not gonna be as popular as something like a major cover story with a Channing Tatum or a Ryan Gosling, but to our audience, to our core audience, that's, it's as important, and people are interested.
And then the super fans, the super fan of The White Lotus reads every... We can track it. They read every story that we publish. If we get-- we could, we could publish, y-you know, we, I mean, we can cover every inch.
These huge shows drive so much traffic, and we give people everything. Mm-hmm. We'll talk to the composer. We'll talk to, you know, we literally break it down, and that's not clickbait.
That's what we've been doing for a hundred and twenty years, and we're very, very... We're one of the few, very few people that invest in that level of deep discussion of the craft.
There used to be a lot of different, there used to be a lot of, like, sort of wonky journals that were really, really for cinematographers and really get deep and geeky on lenses and focus and everything.
A lot of those have gone away, and we are a real hub for that, and it's, it's super important and very much it keeps us connected with that core, core industry that makes the world screens light up. Yeah.
On the artisan front, and this is the last topic I wanna get to, but is how much, like, how would you gauge the AI dread overall in, in Hollywood?
Obviously, it was a big, it was a big part of the negotiations during the labor dispute, and I think it hangs over just about every creative industry at this point.
You see VR three and, and you play it forward, and I don't know, you can see a lot of displacement. Look, I think we all are waiting to see how the industry's gonna change with AI.
We're obviously covering it very vigorously. We're aware of the questions that it's raising and the ethics involved with AI.
But I think for us as a newsroom, what we are confident of is that AI cannot repl-repr-uh, reproduce or replace great journalism.
It can't re-- and one of our philosophies and one of our real missions has been to hire the best journalists out there. It's from Tatiana Siegel to Matt Donnelly covering investigations, to all of our incredible critics.
We have invested in criticism to our film reporters, to our international team covering film festivals around the world.
AI is not going to be able to replicate the work that they do, and we're waiting to see how the industry adapts and changes, and obviously, there will be change, and people will sort of see how AI replaces some areas of the business and helps in other areas.
But at our core, as journalists, we are confident that journalism still matters and that great writing still matters, and that is, I think, one of the reasons why we've been successful. We've invested in writing.
And I may b- that may be counterintuitive in this day and age when, you know, there are so many different ways in which people get their information- Mm-hmm... but it really is about the writing.
If you produce great writing, people will read your publication, and that is something we strongly, strongly believe in. Yeah. Cynthia, how about, like, within the industry?
Like, what are, what are you hearing of, you know, how much... I mean, maybe there isn't much, like, dread.
It seems like there is a lot of changes going on about how entertainment will be made in the future, and I don't know, I'm interested in, in, in what, in what your conversations are.
I will tell you that, that back to the covering, because we cover the art and the technical, you know, the technical- Yeah... and the craft side of the business so well, AI, AI has been in visual effects.
AI has been driving visual effects- Yeah... from, for, I mean, um, well over ten years. So there's a little bit of, like, you know, shock, the gambling's going on in Casablanca.
Like, we've, because we cover the visual effects world, because we cover everything from the, the high tech of the visual effects world to the, to the labor issues and the union drives that, that the visual effects world have had, all of that stuff, none of this is new to us.
The-- what's new is the more consumer application of AI. Mm-hmm. And we've been covering that quite a bit, both from the human drama of all the companies, but also, for sure, the impact.
We don't have a crystal ball and can say what's happening in the industry, but we can, but what we can do is have smart conversations with smart people that are tr- either trying to figure it out or making a case for this, that, or the other.
We've had a lot of a, we've had a lot of kinda high-level AI coverage. Our, you know, when there's a big issue in the industry, you're gonna see thoughtful, deep, detailed coverage and variety.
That's, that's just the, the symbiotic- Yeah... relationship. But you're not seeing anything right now where it's like, you know, vibe coding, that there's gonna be, like, vibe movie making. No. But we also don't know.
We have to be honest- Right... sometimes as journalists. We don't know what we don't know. So we don't know what AI's gonna do to the industry in the next five years.
There's many predictions, and there's many guesses, and we are going to be covering it every step of the way. But I think, I think we have to... This is a wait and see situation. Yeah.
I mean, it-- I'll be interested to see how much people... It's coming. I just don't know how, I don't know what the consumer demand is going to be for, just like, you know, I think vibe coding got a, got ahead of itself.
It's like, well, it doesn't connect to a database. This is like,
I think, you know, probably, at least initially, and for a little while, a lot of the things that are gonna be created by these, these AI engines is going to be interesting, but it's not gonna be compelling, if you know what I mean.
[chuckles] Uh, 'cause I don't know, I could be wrong. I still don't think they're very good at human storytelling, but time will tell, as they say. Cool. Ramin, Cynthia, thank you so much.
Really appreciate this conversation. It was great to connect. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. All right. Good questions. [upbeat music]