[on-hold jingle] No doubt consumers really understand this ecosystem.
They may not know its name, they may not know we're on a podcast talking about the free ad-supported streaming television ecosystem, but there are fifty-plus million consumers who are navigating to them every day and watching channels.
And certainly over time, they're finding some channels that they like more than others.
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show.
I'm Brian Morrissey. I am just back from CES, where we hosted a great group of publishing and agency execs at a private dinner. Looking forward to doing many more of these in twenty twenty-four.
Big thanks to Outbrain and Adelaide for their support. This week, I caught up with Larry Fitzgibbon, the CEO of Tastemade. I think of Tastemade as one of the original digital video brands.
Ahead of its time in many ways since it was founded way back in twenty twelve, before streaming was even a thing.
This was an era when online video was still mostly about webisodes nobody watched and YouTube's famed dog on a skateboard video. I actually met that dog, by the way. His name is Brutus, or his name was.
I think he's passed away. He came to some Mashable awards I judged.
But anyway, Tastemade has been at the forefront of many trends, and it is now with everything from IP to subscriptions to Tastemade Plus, a recurring subscription model it has, to recreating the modern version of the cable channel.
I hope you enjoy this conversation. Please send me your feedback to bmorrissey@therebooting.com, and as a big favor, if you could leave this podcast a rating or review, I would really appreciate it.
Now on to my conversation. [on-hold jingle] Larry, welcome to the podcast. Appreciate you joining me. Excited to be here, Brian. Thanks for having me. You've been in this market a while, right?
Like, I think of, like, Tastemade, it was founded, like, duh-- uh, I guess you're going on a dozen years now, right? Yeah, two thousand twelve when we started.
And what was the original sort of insight, and what was the original plan? Yeah, good. When we started back in two thousand twelve, we saw that the, the world was changing, right?
And you were gonna kind of see the rise of things like social and mobile and video and kind of this instantly global world that we live in. And we thought we could build a new video channel for that new world, right?
We kind of saw what was happening in traditional television. We thought it was on the decline, and certainly the audience was on decline. And so we thought we could birth kind of a new network.
We loved kind of networks like HGTV and the Food Network and the Travel Channel. We were, you know, we had all watched those- Yeah...
you know, growing up and were really inspired by kind of the programming that they created and the brands that they had built.
And when we started out, we really wanted to build kind of a modern version of that, what we saw before.
Now, what I would say is we probably thought what's happening today in streaming was gonna happen, you know, in two thousand fifteen, and it probably took an additional decade- Yeah [laughs]... for it to really happen.
That-- Isn't it weird how that seems to always happen? It's like [laughs] never...
And this is why anyone who's out there who hasn't made prediction and wants to get in the predictions game, never, ever put a date on your prediction. That's right. It always takes longer than you think.
But along the way, right, all sorts of other things did happen, right? We saw, you know, when we started, YouTube was the only video platform on the internet, essentially.
Maybe Vimeo existed, but, like, it was really YouTube. There was no Instagram video. There was no Pinterest video. There was, you know, so many things. TikTok didn't exist, nor did Snapchat.
And so obviously the thing that did happen was younger consumers gravitated towards those new platforms. And so that created the opportunity for us to begin to program to them on those platforms.
So we created high-quality lifestyle video programmed under- And this is during when distributed media was the sort of every... Not everyone, but a lot of people were going all in on fish where the fish are.
Let's establish a beachhead on these platforms, get the younger audiences. We got three billion views last month. Yeah, we did that- Yeah... very successfully, and we, we still engage, you know, many consumers- Yeah...
on those platforms today. And so, yeah, we went where the audience went.
Those younger audiences were certainly leaving traditional television, but as, as you know, you, you follow this so well, the ad dollars really didn't shift, right? Those ad dollars kind of hung in there.
It's now starting to shift. And so we had this big transition where younger audiences were starting to essentially create their new channels or the new ways they wanted to consume video on these social platforms.
And like you mentioned, yeah, we were a pioneer in that space. Tastemade did an excellent job of building our brand, creating connections with those consumers, entertaining them.
And then it wasn't until probably two thousand, for us, two thousand eighteen when we launched a twenty-four/seven linear streaming television network on YouTube TV that we really started to get to the, the, the streaming or the, the TV part of the opportunity.
And we've since gone on to really build out that distribution. And so that's probably the closest thing to what we thought in the beginning.
Again, when we started, we saw this opportunity to connect with younger audiences through high-quality, you know, lifestyle programming, all in video.
We did it on the social platforms first because those were the platforms that were available to us, and as soon as the, the, the TV really opened up to us, we pursued that pretty aggressively. Yeah.
So I mean, nobody can predict the future, but, like, what panned out as you sort of roughly expected? Maybe the dates moved around a little bit, moved, moved back a little bit. But, like, what panned out and what didn't?
Yeah, there's no doubt the audience has shifted, right? You know, particularly for younger consumers, they straight up don't watch- Okay, so that was a big bet, and that, that happened. That happened. Yeah.
And when you're entrepreneurs, you're thinking things are gonna happen in years, right? And the incumbents are gonna be too slow. But, you know, like, cord cutting is a, a good indicator here, right?
At one point, there were a hundred plus million people who had cable television in the United States or households. You know, that now is, like, sixty percent.
In twenty twenty-three, we reached that sort of inflection point where streaming now rep-represents a bigger percentage of watch time than, you know, cable and broadcast.
And so that was probably the point we were looking for. Again, it's happened. You know, we maybe have thought it was gonna happen much sooner, but it's undeniably happened.
The way in which people consume media, particularly television media, has totally changed.
The piece that didn't shift, right, is that sixty billion dollars in television advertiser, you know, where we thought would move over during that same period. It kind of hung in there, right?
The, the similar amount of dollars are being spent in that ecosystem.That being said, I think that is now starting to change, right? Like we're now why in some ways it's...
we're at the very beginning of this, and that's what presents, frankly, a good opportunity for us going forward as those dollars start to shift from, you know, doing it the traditional way to doing it the, the new way and streaming.
Yeah. And I think the question always ends up being where it shifts to, right?
Because a lot of digital publishers, text publishers, you know, they saw the Mary Meeker slide, and they saw audience moving to the internet, and they said, "Okay.
Well, we'll establish ourselves there, and those traditional dollars will go there." And then, oh, by the way, it went to the people who control the distribution, which happened to be the technology companies.
Won't the same dynamic play out here? Yeah. There's always that risk, and those big companies are bigger every day.
But our distribution on streaming, so just to, so everyone listening kind of can get a sense of it, we launched our first channel on YouTube TV, which is what's called a virtual MVPD or sort of a s- what was called a skinny bundle.
It's kind of the new way in which you get your content there. There's other services like that, like fubo and Philo, uh, DirectTV Stream, Sling TV. Tastemade's available on all of those platforms.
And then what also happened was something called FAST emerged, so free ad supported streaming television, where you now can get channels for free when you buy your Samsung TV or if you buy Vizio TV or if you are using Freevee with- within the Amazon ecosystem or Roku or Tubi.
And Tastemade is now largely available across all those different platforms. And on some platforms, we have all of our channels.
So we have the Tastemade core channel, which is primarily food, but touches on the lifestyle more generally. We have Tastemade Travel, we have Tastemade Home, and then we have Tastemade in Español.
And so those channels are all now available within that streaming ecosystem. And what I would say there is our distribution is fairly broad-based. I mean, think of all the companies I just mentioned, right?
So it's not three companies that are gonna control my destiny, but it's a broader set of companies that we can work with, and we believe we add real value, right?
We're not competing necessarily with a million creators in that ecosystem. It's a smaller set of companies that we're essentially competing with. And we can be truly differentiated and create something that's different.
So, you know, when we create content at Tastemade, we're thinking about our end consumer. We have tons of insights on how consumers have enjoyed our content over the years on social.
We're trying to enhance their lives in special ways and trying to give them, you know, essentially bring more taste to their life, right? And so that shows through in our content.
Some of our content, like our most popular show, is a show called Struggle Meals, which started actually as a Facebook Watch show. It was funded by Facebook, but we own it.
And that show, we just shot its hundredth episode. Our host, Frankie, won a daytime Emmy, beating both Netflix and the Food Network.
So we're creating differentiated high-quality content, and we think that's what's gonna create the stickiness with our partners. Yeah.
So, I mean, Tastemade is the brand because I think one of the things you said that was interesting is that you looked at the, the sort of cable networks, right? And if you look at, like, the cable networks now are...
because TV is unbundled to such a degree, and it will have to rebundle, and it already is in some ways that, you know, people are looking for shows. They're not tuning into networks anymore, are they?
I don't think that's, I don't think that's entirely true. I mean, we know with our... I mean, clearly people are tuning into our network as Tastemade, and they have an affinity for the Tastemade brand.
Obviously, within our lineup, we have different shows, and so we can see that some shows perform better than others, and we can see that some talent performs better than others.
But I think it's a k- you know, this is sort of like the oldest debate ever, right? It's sort of a combination of things.
I, I assure you, there are people tuning into the Food Network because over thirty years they really loved the Food Network and the role it played in its li- their life, the kind of things that they learned, the kind of things that they were inspired by, and I think that's true still to-today.
Yeah. So explain for those who are not totally into the sh-streaming market day in and day out, like, where is the development of streaming?
Because, you know, there was a brief period of time when Netflix looked vulnerable, and now it looks like it's gonna run away with [chuckles] with the streaming market. Yeah.
I think the most interesting thing about the market at the moment is just people's enthusiasm around the advertising component.
I think if you go back just even a couple of years, it was sort of believed that there was not gonna be any advertising with some of these big- Yeah... subscription services and, you know, the, the dam has broke there.
I think people now accept that these services are gonna be a combination of subscription plus advertising. You know, Netflix now takes advertising. And so that's a big transition.
And I would say in some senses, like we truly are at the very beginning of that transition.
You know, a good example of that is, you know, in a few, two weeks, Amazon has announced that they're now gonna have ads within Prime, right?
That, that was something I think if we all thought three or four years ago that wasn't how it was gonna play out. And so I think that's one of the biggest transitions.
And then I think also there, there is a lot of resistance around traditional, right? There's a lot of key players in that ecosystem are really hanging on to traditional and that business model.
And then during the pandemic, everyone went all in on streaming, and there's been some things that have been settling out there.
I think people generally feel like maybe they overspent, and so there's been a lot of cutbacks in how much the big streamers are spending on content.
So think of, you know, reducing some of the spending on content, introduction of ads, and then I also think just the acceptance that we are now living in a streaming world.
We're not living in a traditional model anymore. And so there's a lot of cleanup to do, is what I would say.
I just think we're in the very early days of this, but if you think about, I think Amazon's a good example, or even we haven't really talked about Google muchGoogle's an, a, a good example.
And what I mean by that is if for Amazon, right, they've been-- they're beginning to do this. They have Freevee, which is a separate app. Within Freevee, they have fast channels, but they also have video-on-demand.
They've got Prime, right? Where, you know, a lot of us got used to watching Prime with no ads. Now within Prime, there'll be ads.
So there's these different services, and I think we're heading to a place where we're s- we kind of stop talking about fast or AVOD or SVOD. We're gonna start talking about just streaming.
And streaming's going to be- Yeah... the combination, you know, free ad-supported. It's gonna be, uh, ad-supported. There's gonna be subscription. There's gonna be linear-like channels. There's gonna be on-demand.
It's gonna be kind of brought together in one service, if you will. You're kind of starting to see some of that emerge within Max, right? Yeah.
We're starting to see channels emerge in, in Max in kind of a linear streaming type way. And so I know it seems like we've been at this a long time, and obviously companies like Netflix have.
But in terms of like this true, you know, transition from cable television, broadcast television, this way which it used to work, I really feel like we are at the very beginning of that transition until these apps sort of reconstitute themselves as truly the new streaming service.
You know, there's work to do and- It sounds like they're gonna look a lot like cable. Like I, like I guess from the outside looking in, it's, okay, we're gonna unbundle everything, right?
And we're gonna create total chaos. When you went through Amazon, I'm like, "Wow, that's incredibly confusing."
[chuckles] Like they've got so many different tiers, and like nobody knows where anything is beyond all the metrics and being difficult to know who's watching what. Never really knew on T- in TV anyway.
But it seems like there's clearly gonna be consolidation happening. It's hard to see the world filled with all the Paramount+s out there. And just from a consumer perspective, it seems untenable- I think-...
the, the way- Yeah. As consumers-... um, the market's structured... we find a way. I think we're all finding all those different services that I mentioned, right?
But there's no doubt it's going to be more bundled, and then there's no doubt we can make it, the, the platforms particular can make it a lot easier for consumers. YouTube's in that same boat, right?
We have YouTube TV, which Tastemade's a part of, and then there's a handful of products that Tastemade's, uh, involved in on YouTube Core. And then there's also Google TV, right?
Which is part of, you know, what you get with Android when you're on an Android television, right?
So those are discrete different environments, but you have to imagine that, yeah, the platforms are looking at that and saying, "Hey, we now get a little bit more visibility into how this ecosystem's gonna play out.
We now have good data on how which of our products consumers are engaging with in the best ways, you know, the ones that will drive our business or, you know, delight them."
And so I do think that will start to settle out. And again, you'll end up with a handful of servi-- you know, there'll always be niche things. So but for the big folks- Sure...
you're gonna end up with these bigger services that again, w-we'll be able to lose some of our vernacular, right?
I don't think we're gonna have to know the difference between FAST and AVOD and all those different things. It's gonna be streaming. Oh, good.
And streaming's gonna have some subscription, and streaming's gonna have some ad-supported, and hopefully it, you know, makes it a lot easier for consumers to find and discover the content that they want.
[gentle music] My other question, is it a good business?
Because [chuckles] cable was a great business, right? Like it was really good. And then let's just say, I know Tastemade is in travel. Let's just say you're the new Food Network. You'd be good. Food Network's good.
It's big. Food Network got paid money to like be on by the cable providers, right? Like, I mean, it was a nice business model. It was, it was dual revenue stream business model. Distribution is baked in.
This is a different environment. Explain the similarities and differences of the business models of what you would be building pre like, you know, a Food Network in the TV era versus a Tastemade in the streaming era.
Yeah. They really were great businesses with great margins, in part because of the dual revenue stream.
That dual revenue stream, uh, again, for, for people listening, was obviously there's the advertising component where the channels were able to monetize the inventory that was available to them, but also they were paid a sub fee by the cable companies themselves.
All the... Within the cable ecosystem, each channel kind of got a different amount, right? And you-- I think there's a lot of articles- Yeah... that talk about just how much the, you know, how much ESPN is. Yeah.
Then- Everyone goes to ESPN, but not everyone got the ESPN money. And so the lifestyle channels typically didn't get the most, but they did get something.
But they have a-- they were, you know, were more heavily monetized through advertising, but they had the best inventory, right?
If you're an advertiser and you're trying to reach, you know, eighteen to forty-nine-year-old, maybe skewed slightly female, more upscale around lifestyle programming, this was great content that an advertiser would be interested in.
So those networks tended to do really well from an advertising perspective, right? So I don't know what the existing numbers for the Food Network is today, but that was like a billion-dollar business, right?
And highly profitable. So I agree. And again, that's -- we've always admired what was built there. We wanted to do it for kind of a new world, a new ecosystem.
And so what I would say is on the fast side or on the streaming side, yeah, today there's noKind of sub fee component to that. We have our own product where people can subscribe to it.
But within that, you know, kind of distributed ecosystem, the, the sub-sub fee concept doesn't exist. I don't know if that will exist in the future. I think we build as if we expect that it won't.
But there is still a pretty fantastic advertising opportunity. With most of our distribution partners, we get a share of the inventory that our team can sell.
And so T-Taste Made's done a great job building relationships with brands over the last, you know, ten plus years. We worked with brands in a variety of different ways. We've built trust with them.
And so most of that, for the longest time, we were executing, you know, on social, but now we can go to them and say, "We can also do things with you on streaming."
On social, as you know, largely sponsored content, right? But some advertisers just wanna run their thirty-second spots, right? And so it's been a boon for us to open up that inventory to our advertising partners.
And so from that perspective, we do a good job of monetizing that directly, or if we don't monetize it, there's great partners to help us backfill and monetize.
But on a kind of a yield basis, it's a great monetization channel for us that we do really well on the advertising front.
And then the other piece, the, the key to this whole thing is can you make content or differentiated content at the right economics for the opportunity?
That's, in my mind, that's the combination that potentially makes this a good business. And again, where did Taste Made get its origins? Well, we got...
We made our bones in creating high quality video content for the economics of social, which I assure you are much worse than the economics of fast or of streaming.
And so that's, you know, that's part of our DNA, is we can create award-winning, high quality lifestyle programming that we know engages consumers on a phone, or now we extend that to streaming.
And so that's a key component to our success. You know, we are growing that business. We're doing it responsibly, right?
And we do think there's a long term good opportunity for ourselves there because, again, we've got the DNA to be able to create the right type of content for those platforms at the right economics and have the ability to, to monetize it ourselves.
Yeah. There was lots of crazy stuff that happened during the zero interest rate policy era, but there was a lot of money that was being thrown around to programming, and everyone's pulled back on that.
Do you think you're well-positioned for that because you're gonna be more efficient in being able to produce at a lower cost? 'Cause we see, I mean, Netflix is even cutting down on the amount of content.
Like, it just seems like we're moving into this more with less era, and I assume that streaming will be no different. Yeah, I think there's, there's an opportunity on, on both fronts.
One, for Taste Made as an owner of original IP and an owner of brands and channels, that we can create our content that's differentiated on these platforms more efficiently than others.
So there's no question that I think that's a, a key attribute of what we're building.
In some instances, we've created content for partners as well, and so the dynamic that you're describing, which is many of the, you know, the biggest players in streaming, are starting to think about the cost associated with programming on their platforms.
So they too are looking to find ways to create more efficient content.
And so, yeah, I think those are partners that we're talking to as well, where we can leverage what I just described is the power of our studio to help them with their content needs as well. Yeah.
How do, how do you break down your revenue buckets? It's primarily advertising is kind of the, is, is one of them.
Content, so that would take the form of when we're doing deals with companies where we're licensing content. Those are really the two, and then there's sort of like an other bucket.
But it's primarily we're an advertising-driven business with, with content being kind of the second biggest component to it. Okay.
And in the other bucket falls things like Taste Made Plus, and I think you're also doing a little bit of, of IP and like work, right? With, like a taco chain. Yeah. That's right. So, yeah, we think about...
We do things with our brand. So books is an example. We've got a couple of books that have come out in the last couple years with Clarkson Pod-Pod-Potter, who's our partner there.
We've got a couple of things we've done in the restaurant space, as you mentioned. One is we kicked off a long time ago when we kind of moved to where Taste Made Studios is in Santa Monica.
We have a restaurant that's essentially like on our campus. It's called Bluey's. We partnered with them early on, and so that's been really successful for them, our partners, as well as us.
And then, yeah, more recently we partnered around trying to explore the virtual restaurant concept and trying to understand some potentials around there.
So we partnered with C Three to do Taste Made Me Tacos, which we've been testing with them in a variety of different markets, kind of trying to get the learning to see if that's something that's we can scale.
And then the last piece, a new product for us, which is Taste Made Plus, which essentially allows consumers to get access to the rich library of recipe content and some functions and features within our products.
So, you know, save recipe box, things like that. All the rich video that we've created over the years. This is about twelve thousand recipes.
And then also our library of streaming television content, so kind of an SVOD offering. So Taste Made Plus can bring those two things together.
So if you are, you know, watching us on streaming, you're inspired by one of our shows, and you wanna get access to some of that content on demand without ads, you can subscribe and watch that content through us.
Or if you're on social and you're finding inspiration from some of our video content and recipes, but you wanna go a little bit deeper, you can come to Taste Made to subscribe to Taste Made Plus.
What, what is the role social platforms now play?
I mean, I'm in every single food segment possible on Instagram, so I get all the food content, um- Yeah, I mean, there's incredible content being produced every day, and I think there's more and more creators every day.
So I think it's a pretty vibrant ecosystem. I think people learned formats. You know, in some ways, we probably pioneered some of the formats that people use and create today.
But I think it- And TikTok has its own ones, you know. I mean, there's a lot of viral TikTok dishes that end up- Yeah, and there's amazing creators there. And so Taste Made's still very relevant on all those platforms.
We're creating original content and programming every day, engaging our audiences there. We still think it's a great ecosystem for our brand partners. You know, brand partners do wanna reach younger consumers.
Those younger consumers are- Mm-hmm...spending a disproportionate amount of their time on social.
We know how to create compelling video content and stories that make sense for the brand, but also are something that's exciting and worth, you know, worth engaging in if you're a consumer. And so that's the role it...
the primary role it plays for us. You know, we have a strong following across all the different social platforms.
But we still every single day are out talking to brands about how we can help them be relevant, how we can work with some of the creators, um, that we might wanna partner with, how they could partner with Taste Made to create compelling content that, kind of conveys the stories of their brand, but also, again, is something that's compelling and worth watching as a consumer.
But streaming is a way bigger opportunity, right? It's not like, you know, if we were talking five years ago, so we might be talking about Snapchat Discover or something.
It seems like these are smaller opportunities if you're gonna... if you're able to play...
Like, if you're a creator and you're doing, like, completely, like-But it seems like for a company like Tastemade, the bigger opportunity is in streaming. We're super excited about streaming.
Again, it has the added benefit of being kind of what, you know, when we started the company, what we were excited about. So we're sort of thrilled to see it sort of take the form it's taking now.
But we're also in the advertising business, and if you're an advertiser, social's still pretty important. And so if you're an advertiser and you're trying to reach consumers, we can help you do both.
I guess that, that, that's our message to the brands. Yeah. And so from an audience perspective, we still have audiences there, we still engage them.
Again, the monetization we're finding on streaming is superior to what we're finding on social, and that's attractive to us. Yeah. So we certainly will follow that. Yeah.
[laughs] But when we sit down and chat with brands, sometimes we're doing things that are pure streaming, but other times we're sitting down and talking to them about who are you trying to reach, how are you trying to engage, what kind of storytelling do you think makes sense?
And then we'll tell stories that are truly cross-platform.
We can create content that makes sense on Instagram, but we might also blow that asset up and have it run as a 30-second spot or a one-minute spot inside our streaming environment.
So we really think it's the combination. Yeah. Yeah. How different is it with streaming? 'Cause you have no control over the distribution, do you?
And how do you get some control over the distribution to make sure that people see your content? 'Cause I think one of the big...
I don't know, there's multiple original sins of the internet when it comes to media, but one of which is, like, all the distribution power went to the platforms, and that left a lot of the media companies sort of just, you know, they couldn't control their business without having any control over the distribution.
Yeah. I mean, it's all distribution, right? And there are lots of big companies involved, so I appreciate- Mm-hmm... your point. And yeah, I wish the internet would've played out a little bit differently.
I agree with you there. On the streaming side, it's a little bit different. I mean, we're not just throwing something up on a platform. We're striking deals with these companies. Those deals have- Yeah... terms.
We know what we're getting, we know what they're getting. And then more recently actually, we've started to see the number of channels actually declining.
So over the last few years, added a lot of channels, and then some of the platforms are sort of paring back. But yeah, there's absolutely risk there, you know, but...
And it's not exactly the same risk as, say, like, the cable television business, where the Scripps Networks would sign a seven-year deal with Comcast.
So it's not as sticky as that distribution, and it, like you said, it doesn't come with a sub fee. But, you know, we have established relationships. We have contracts with these folks.
But look, at the end of the day, all of this is how good is your stuff, and how good are you at marketing your content, and how good are you at engaging your audience? That was true on social too, right?
I could put a video, anyone could put a video on, you know, Facebook.
Anyone could have put a video on YouTube, but it was up to us to make it the biggest or make it the, the one with the greatest engagement or find the largest audience.
And so that's true in the streaming ecosystem as well. Yes, we're working through partners, but every single day we're thinking about how we're programming our schedule.
We're being super thoughtful about everything that we say yes to. We're studying pretty good data from these platforms, and so we'll use that to influence that next day of programming that we're gonna put out this year.
And so by garnering audience on those platforms, I, I think that makes you sticky. And then also being a brand, right? Tastemade has been around for a while.
It's created us an opportunity for us to really build relationships with consumers. That's one of the benefits of social. Like you mentioned a second ago, Snapchat Discover, right?
Well, Tastemade was one of only 20 channels on Snapchat Discover in, you know, August of 2015, right? Well, guess what?
Like, every millennial on Earth was using that product back then, and so a lot of the consumers know the Tastemade brand. They got to know it across these different social platforms.
And now when they buy their Samsung TV or they turn on Freevee, they can see a brand that they're familiar with and that they like, and then it's our job to program and delight them in the same way that anyone who's building a media business is.
Yeah. A- as far as, like, let's say, like, just watch time goes, which platform do you get the most watch time on?
Well, I'll tell you today, and this was kind of at your question of, like, how important or big is streaming for us. Streaming now represents about 60 per- plus percent of our total watch time as a company.
So pretty, pretty remarkable, you know, going from being, uh, 100% social probably in 2018 to now being- Yeah... predominantly streaming. Obviously, that's-- it's sort of the nature of the beast, right?
Social can be, you know, a lot of short sessions, short-form content, and then when you're programming half hours, an hour-long type television programming, people are gonna be more inclined to sit back and watch.
But that's been a pretty fun transition for us to watch.
I mean, it's similar to kind of those early day transitions from when we were watching, you know, how much desktop viewership we were getting on YouTube to, you know, it transitioning- Yeah...
to being, you know, 90% mobile. We're seeing similar type transition for our business where we're just engaging people more deeply on the streaming side. Yeah.
And when you say the streaming segment being 6%, does that include fast? Yeah. So the, all streaming, so that would be, uh- Yeah...
our distribution across, again, the virtual MVPDs or all the fast platforms, which could be Samsung TV Plus or LG or Vizio or, you know, platforms like that. Yeah.
I'm interested in how that, like, works out because the device owner, the TV maker, basically, you know, look, Apple proved, like, how critical that is. I mean, when you control the device, you can control the interface.
These companies have never been very good at interface and software in my view. But they should be doing well.
I'm interested in how that will shake out, I don't know if you have any thoughts on it, when the positioning of the device itself, like the SamsungVersus the technology platforms that want to...
'Cause everyone wants to control the interface at the end of the day, because that's where the money is. So the media has- Yeah, there's some op- uh, people kind of focus there on the, on the operating systems, right?
Roku is now not just a hardware- Yeah... device but an operating system. And, and they've partnered around their operating system, bringing it into other platforms.
Android is, you know, 150 million devices or something like that. So not a lot of people are talking about Android TV and how [chuckles] popular it is, but just like we saw on mobile, right?
Google's incredible at using their software to get it out there. And so I think you'd be foolish to not be paying attention to that.
I, I would say too, on your comment on the UIs and those types of things, if you buy a new TV, in the old days, maybe those UIs weren't that good.
I think these UIs have come a long way because the, the TV manufacturers started to really understand that the margins for their business could materially improve- Yeah... if they had the advertising piece.
And the way to really engage consumers is to have a better experience. And so platforms like Samsung, straight out the box, is a great user interface. Roku does a great job straight out of the interface.
You know, Vizio, all these companies have materially enhanced their consumer experience. And they're, guess what, all materially in the advertising business. And so those are important platforms.
You know, Samsung has a large number of devices that have been sold here in the United States, and I'm sure they sold a ton during Christmas.
So this ecosystem's a little bit different than Google and Facebook is going to rule the world, right? Mm-hmm. There's some nuances to it. There's some different players.
Some are the media companies, some are the big Amazons and the Googles of the world. Obviously, Amazon is gonna be a force in streaming television. But it's a little bit more distributed, I think, in this ecosystem.
And there's real players that have real scale and are great partners for folks like us.
[gentle music] And, and what is the state of FAST?
Because this is free ad-supported television. 'Cause it seemed like there was a period where it was like the Oprah thing. You get a FAST channel, you get a FAST channel, and you get a FAST [chuckles] channel.
Everyone had FAST channels, and I'm like, "Who's watching all of these FAST channels?" Yeah.
There's-- So definitely over the last few years we've seen some of the last reporting was it's, you know, in excess of a thousand channels. That includes a ton of local news broadcast channels.
But yeah, I think we saw that number going up. There's a lot of new single IP channels. That's like if you're a fan of Nashville, the TV show, right, it would get its own channel. Yeah.
So we've seen some of that dynamic. And so yeah, I think we've seen this big build up. People wanted to give variety to consumers. And then I think the smart platforms are doing what they do, right?
They're gonna push out a ton of different content to consumers, and over time start to figure out what people care about. So I think there could be some culling of some of those channels, and we certainly have seen some.
It's absolutely harder to start today and say, "Oh, I'm gonna launch a FAST channel," and assume you're gonna get all the distribution that I described.
I mean, Tastemade was like a true pioneer on, you know, that part of the ecosystem. And so I think those days are a bit older.
To some degree, you're seeing, and, and I think this is maybe what you're alluding to a little bit, to some degree, you're seeing some of the platforms themselves launch their own channels, right?
So if you are one of the big media companies- Mm-hmm... you have a rich content library that enables you to do that. Even if you're not, right, you can pull together libraries and create, you know, competing channels.
So we've seen a bit of that. Those channels don't tend to have great brands. They tend to be kind of collections.
I don't, I don't know if they are as thoughtfully put together as, say, something like we do every single day. But they exist, and certainly it's part of the dynamic.
I think advertisers-- Well, no doubt consumers really understand this ecosystem. They may not know its name. They may not know we're on a podcast talking about the free ad-supported streaming television ecosystem.
But there are 50-plus million consumers who are navigating to them every day and watching channels. And certainly over time, they're finding some channels that they like more than others.
Again, that's part of what we're seeing with Tastemade's success. People know that brand. They start to understand our programming and come back and watch it.
I think also part of that ecosystem, in the early days, it was an older audience. And by the way, I don't know of too many ecosystems that the, the early adopters are older people.
But we certainly saw that with the FAST- Who couldn't get out of the, couldn't get out of the TV guide, right?
[chuckles] I think it was maybe, you know, some of those- No, my parents are definitely-- I've had a, I've had to like, you know, be like, "All right. Here are the remotes. Here's what we're gonna do."
[chuckles] Some of it, people are cutting the cord, right, and they're just turning on their TVs, and yeah, well, uh, there's channels. And, and so that was probably how some of those early adopters.
I think some platforms have leaned into that, right? So they saw that data and then they reinforced it by featuring more programming that would appeal to an older audience.
I don't think long term that's really a winning strategy if these things are really gonna be ad-supported. Brands typically are looking for younger consumers, not the 60-plus crowd. Yeah. Some advertisers are.
But so I think some of the more forward-thinking platforms have started to introduce original content or certainly content that would appeal to younger consumers. Amazon Freevee is a good example of this, right?
They've really invested in originals. Like, if you were a Bosch fan on SVOD, you can watch Bosch Legacy on Freevee, which is a great show. I'm a fan of both. Yeah.
And then they also had a hit with Jury Duty, which kind of won streaming for a couple of weeks this year, where everyone was watching that, young and, I think probably young and old.
It just became a, a show that sort of captured the zeitgeist. And so I think that's an example of someone who's doing it right. Right?
Yes, of course, you wanna follow the data and address the needs of consumer base that's there.
But if this is really going to be a replacement for traditional TV advertising, you need to also bring in younger consumers, and the way to do that is through fresh programming.
And by the way, we have the data for us where that Tastemade audience on FAST is materially younger than the broad FAST bases.
So it's kind of our premise playing out, which is, hey, if we engaged-- We did engage these consumers on social. They're now finding us on, on FAST.
They can now experience Tastemade in kind of the lean-back glory of their, you know, their full-screen TV in their living room.
But we're doing our job of delivering a younger audience, which advertisers will hopefully reward. Yeah. It's 40 minutes in, and I have to ask you the AI question.
Any new technology c- usually comes for text first, right, and then it goes into other areas. So a lot of, obviously a lot of, you know, text publishers have been up in arms about OpenAI and ChatGPT.
There's lawsuits, and we spend a lot of timeGoing into fair use and what constitutes fair use and all that.
But there's also, the tools of creation are having an impact, but I think also AI is gonna have a major impact just around the edges, but people focus on content creation.
How are you thinking of AI, uh, for Tastemade and in your area? Is it gonna have a major impact, or is that to be seen? Yeah. I think if we go full circle, right?
We know it's-- we know the answer is absolutely yes, but we don't know when, right? Is it three years- [laughs]... or is it 10 years? But there's no question of the answer. This stuff will just increasingly get better.
We've been all over just testing some of the video tools. If, as you've probably done this yourself, the video tools are not as compelling- Mm-hmm... as the text tools.
It's, you know, it's easier to create text that's compelling than it is to render a high-quality recipe video by typing in a prompt.
So where I would say we're at is obviously, like, in different areas of our business, we're trying to, you know, use tools to the extent we can to, you know, to make us more efficient, so we're trying to be smart that way.
But in terms of creation, it's a little too, you know, from our perspective, it's a little too early. We've done some kinda cool stuff where we've kinda pieced together maybe three or four different things.
We did something that was animation, and then we, you know, wrote the script and used one of our voice, you know, used some, a voice to voice it and then translate it.
You know, we've done some kinda cool prototyping and those types of things, but nothing so compelling yet that, uh, you know, we're ready to bet the farm on.
You don't see this being, at least in the near term, being a major factor in, you know, being more efficient, being able to do more with less, being able to create better content.
I think a lot of times with AI, what I notice is everyone just talks about being able to create stuff cheaper, but I'm like- Yeah. "How about better?" Like, maybe better? That's a great point.
Yeah, we just haven't seen it yet with the tools. I mean, I'm sure, again, I'm not... I'm sure there's something out there that's...
But, you know, whenever things drop each day in the news, you know, we're paying attention.
We have a small team that's, at Tastemade that's focused on these things, so a, a little work group where we'll go in and test things or report people, re-report back.
I'm sure, by the way, given who listens to your, uh, podcast, I'm probably gonna get inundated with, you know, 20 SaaS- AI pitches... AI tools. Uh, um- Yay... but, uh, they'll be calling me.
Well, we're gonna have to set up a system we could run. Yeah, no, your LinkedIn's gonna blow up. [laughs] Okay, Larry. Thanks so much for doing this. Really appreciate it. I'm glad, uh, we got you doing it. Absolutely.
Thanks for your time, and, uh, have a great day. All right. Thanks. [upbeat music] Thanks for listening. Thank you to Jay Sparks for producing the Rebooting show.
If you have a podcast that you're considering making, you should check out Podhelp Us and what Jay can do for you. Go to podhelp.us.
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