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[upbeat music] It's like your dad dancing at a disco. [laughs] Which I was like, yeah, that's pretty much it. That's it. That's it, which is, yeah, exactly.

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So we're, we're trying to, we're trying to help with the dad disco dancing pandemic.

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[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show.

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I'm Brian Morrissey. My hope is you're listening to this podcast somewhere enjoyable and taking time to recharge before the frenetic close to the year that starts every September.

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This week, I have a conversation with Oren Katzeff, the CEO of Literally Media, a digital media company that's home to several classic internet culture and comedy brands, including Know Your Meme, Cheeseburger, and Cracked.

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I got to know Oren during his time at Tastemade, and then when he moved to Conde Nast, where he was president of Conde Nast Entertainment. Oren was named CEO of Literally in March 2022.

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In this conversation, we discuss building a sustainable business model for comedy and digital culture. Never an easy task considering the flame outs of brands like Funny or Die.

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Oren talks about the bets Literally is making on digital video, creators, and live events, such as a Cracked comedy show in New York City that it held last week.

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I'm particularly interested in how media brands like Literally link up with creators to provide them with the media functions that solo creators often lack, such as distribution, sales relationships, organizational infrastructure, and even brand legitimacy in the marketplace.

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I believe we'll see more brands acting this way going forward.

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I hope you enjoy this conversation with Oren, and if you do, and you have a moment by the pool, please leave the Rebooting show a rating and review on Apple or Spotify.

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Thank you to Matt Robird, who wrote on Apple about this podcast, "Smart, chatty, a little catty, and filled with smart media conversations." Thank you, Matt.

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I'll try to keep up the feline vibes cu- assuming that was a positive. He left four stars, so I'm just gonna assume it was a positive.

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Anyway, I hope you enjoy this conversation, and we'll be back next week with a new episode. [upbeat music] Oren, thank you so much- Yes... for joining me. It's been a little while.

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I think we last talked a couple years ago live, and it was- We did... it was right when... Yeah, it was right when you were figuring out, like, your next move.

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I mean, you'd been at, at Conde Nast Entertainment, and then before that, I remember, you know, when, I think when we first got to know each other, you were at Tastemade, and then you went over to, I think you, you sent me a message, "I'm going to, like, Literally Media," and I, of course, I Googled it 'cause I literally didn't remember- [laughs]...

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which one it was, and I was like, "Oh my God, Cheeseburger, Know Your Meme- Yes... eBaum's World." And I was like- [laughs]... this is a little bit of a blast from the past.

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So explain to me what you saw in Literally and, and why you wanted to go and, and be CEO. Yeah, absolutely.

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And, and by the way, yeah, as we look back in, in history, and I'm sure we'll touch on it for a few moments at some point, how rapidly things have changed over the years since the podcasts we've done together in the media business.

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Um- I know. We have to go back. Greatest hits. Absolutely. And it was just, you know, when I was at Tastemade, it was just a very, very different time in media, right?

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Even that was only, you know, eight, nine years ago, and when you go just from there all the way to today, just so much has rapidly evolved to, to, to where we're sitting today.

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But with Literally, there were a couple things that really appealed to me, and I think in the past I've talked to you about how I'm, I'm a, I'm a s-sucker for a good brand.

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At Tastemade it was about us creating a brand from scratch, and I love the vision we had, and I think we could speak to it very succinctly and directly, and we built a great voice around food, and we were trying to be what Scripps was, but for a, a, a more digital and global audience.

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Conde Nast was about some of the most iconic brands in the world and ushering or helping usher them into a new era of video and audience and revenue.

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And with Literally Media, you mentioned it, these are iconic legacy brands. My feeling in general, and especially at Tastemade, is it's, you know, it's so hard to develop a brand from scratch.

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I think we did a good job doing it, but we also discovered seven, eight years in it's, it's a tough, tough challenge.

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And, and here with Literally, we had eBaum's, we had Cheeseburger, we had Cracked, we have Know Your Meme.

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And any conversation I had with someone before I took the job, whether it was an advertiser, a friend, a colleague, someone in the business, it was a similar reaction that you had, which was like, "Oh my God, I grew up on eBaum's World," or, "Cracked- Well, I didn't grow up on them...

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I used to read that every day." I spent my, like, thirties with them, but- Yeah. But, but I just mean the recollection- No, I know... that you have of the brand, right? That...

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and, and yes, y- I, I didn't think [laughs] that, that you did, but the, the recollection and the positive affinity that people in general had and have with the brands, I think is something special.

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And I'm a believer in general as the media world itself has consolidated as, as there's been more noise, more content, both good and bad, I think brand is so important, so that was one thing.

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And, and two, what I thought they were doing very well even before I joined is they had a massive audience going to the dot com stuff. We were still doing forty to fifty million uniques a month directly to our sites.

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And at a time where I think a lot of media companies are over-reliant on the Facebooks and Googles and Snapchats and YouTubes. And by the way, we're, we're there as well. We're, we're on all these platforms.

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But the ability to, to drive audience directly to our site, have a one-to-one relationship with them, build a newsletter, have communication directly with them, I think is real valuable.

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And then the third thing is that we, we had only scratched the surface of things like video when I had joined.

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So I saw massive opportunity for growth, again in, in an arena where these brands had long-staying power, had been on the internet for many, many years, and there was, I thought, an amazing opportunity to continue to grow them, rebrand them a bit, continue to grow content on both the editorial and video side and, and scale it into something big.

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Yeah. So I mean, these are comedy and internet culture sites.That's right. We-we're in the umbrella of comedy, internet culture, and, and really memes.

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And memes, I think the interesting thing when you look at Know Your Meme is it's gone from something that's overly nerdy to something that everybody uses every day as a way to communicate- It's critical. Right?

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As a way to- Critical for someone like me. Like, I mean, I just like have no idea.

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I just actually-- I connected on the greatest social platform ever, LinkedIn, with the editor in chief at Know Your Meme, and I told him that I was reliant on it because I had no idea who Livvy was or what Rizin was, or even who Baby Gronk was [laughs].

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Right. And, and, and that's what we do. You know, we-we've been archived by the Library of Congress since two thousand and ten. We have thirty thousand encyclopedia meme entries.

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I mean, just basically every meme on planet Earth we have chronicled, discussed, analyzed in some sort of way.

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And it's becoming-- as it becomes more and more a part of, of day-to-day culture, we, we talk about the term meme literacy, which I don't know if we've coined it, but the importance of a brand or an advertiser or an influencer being very-- having that meme literacy is important, and it helps drive their business, it helps them understand or think about what kind of content to create.

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So we think we've carved out a real strong niche in comedy, which is a wide open space now, right?

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You look at ten years ago and it was The Onion and Funny or Die and Break.com, and now there's this wide o-open opportunity to, to, to, to really to own it.

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We're number one in comScore and humor, and then memes and internet culture. You know, two areas and two categories that we're very, very strong in. Yeah.

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So like fun properties and everything like this, digital media and comedy has never worked. Like they've never built business. So I mean, you mentioned like Break.com.

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I went to like an amazing Break.com party in like two thousand like four or five. They like put on a party for like ad buyers that like somehow I went to, and it was, it was amazing.

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At the same time, like you mentioned Funny or Die, Funny or Die came out and it was-- there was a lot of excitement around it. Will Ferrell- Yeah... was attached to it, didn't work.

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College Humor, I remember that was like giant and stuff. Mm-hmm. Explain to me why these are good businesses or can be good businesses. How can they be good businesses? Yeah.

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I think that when you look back at the formation of comedy in general in digital, and you-- I think, you know, around the two thousand and five mark was, is about the right time to go back on it.

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And all of those, by the way, I highly respect College Humor, The Onion, Funny or Die. All- Yeah... all I think had their moments back then. I, I think a, a number of things made it challenging.

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I think one is with Funny or Die, there's a little bit of a reliance on celebrity for hits, right? Yeah. And outside of celebrity, there wasn't much of a digital business to it.

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Um, and College- It was a viral business at the end of the day to me, you know? That's right. That's right. Um- And without regularity, it's hard. And Players Tribune saw this in a different area. That's right. Exactly.

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College Humor, I think has been well documented, whether it was reliance on Facebook or YouTube, they put a lot of eggs in that basket, thought that that would be the future, and that hurt with a lot of the direct traffic to the brand.

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And, and Sam, who now runs College Humor Media, I think is doing a pretty good job with, with his subscription product on Dropout, but it's obviously much smaller than what, than what College Humor used to be.

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And I also think that back then it was so fragmented, right?

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It was you had four or five players all taking a little bit of market share and adver-- fight-- you know, fighting for advertising dollars on, on every deal that would kinda be split up amongst four or five players.

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I think the difference now is... And I kinda go a little bit back to my Tastemade days and model where we knew that Scripps had a good plan with the Food Network and HG-HGTV and the Travel Channel.

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And with us, we look at Comedy Central, though it's not the brand it used to be ten years ago, but it still is a, a brand that, that's meaningful.

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When I think about what we can do in comedy, I often talk about us being a modern day Comedy Central. And so what does that mean? It means a couple things.

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One is that we're gonna create our own IP and work with third parties to create content and monetize that on social platforms that it feels like a lot of media companies are. So that's one.

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Two is we're starting to work a lot more with influencers and creators in that space in a number of different ways. Mm.

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You know, one is, again, co-creating content, but two is we've started to work, let's say, with big TikTok creators or up and coming TikTok creators that are very good on TikTok, but maybe aren't that great on YouTube or aren't that great on Snapchat, and we're helping them develop their channel.

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We're helping them, you know, kind of take off the work off their shoulders so, so they don't have to worry about it day to day.

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We're-- We have a team that's very good at, at building a day to day experience on those channels and monetizing it, so every month we're just putting money in, in creators' pockets.

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And then three is we're now starting to build an events business, and, and next week we're gonna have our first live comedy show under the Cracked umbrella called Cracked Live, and it's gonna feature a bunch of up and coming comics, a, a diverse group of up and coming comics, some who have had pretty good suc-success, some who are growing their careers.

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But at the end of the day, our goal, to kinda go back to, to your question of how we drive a business, we think, one, we're offering a three sixty solution to creators and influencers in, in a way that really didn't exist before.

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So now you work with Literally Media, you work with Cracked, what do you get? We'll co-create content with you. We'll pay you fairly for it.

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We'll help you create channels that don't exist today, and they'll be monetized, and you'll get paid for it. And we will literally build a stage.

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I guess we won't build it, but we'll put you on stage and help grow your career. We'll film the content that you appear on stage with. We'll distribute that across social channels. We'll monetize that.

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We'll share the revenue with you.

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And at the end of the day, my goal is to ultimately be the de facto number one worldwide leader in comedy, where then from an advertising standpoint, if you wanna dip your toes in comedy in any way, you, you must have a conversation with us because we're tapped into the influencers and creators that you wanna work with.

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We're on all the platforms that matter, and we're creating content that we know audiences are really clamoring to see. Yeah.

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[outro jingle]So let's take those like one by one, 'cause I mean, I think

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you said like IP basically, and I think a lot of people are, are-- they want IP and they, they wanna- Yeah... you know, build franchises. And then creators, and I think this is like one of those growth areas.

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I mean, Jonah has talked about with Buzzfeed. I don't know, people dismiss everything Jonah says now [chuckles] but I think he's still pretty smart. Um- He, he still knows what he's talking about, absolutely.

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He still-- I know, like yeah, where it says, "Look at the stock price," and I'm like, "Yeah, I know, but like everyone sort of screwed up in that era."

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And then, uh, which I think is like, you know, gonna be an important growth area for a lot of, a lot of people. The, the other one was live, and I think that- Yes... is like critical.

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I wrote about that actually today, so we should have this- I saw that, yeah... conversation earlier. Shit. And then the fourth was- Well, how it all just ties into advertising, right? Yeah, yeah.

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So the fourth is we've got- we've built this network, it's the, it's the biggest- Yeah... comedy network on planet Earth. Oh no, I'm sorry. Video. Number one entertainment company. Video is the fourth.

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Oh, well, video, yeah. Video is the fourth. Video, I tied into IP, though, right? Video- Okay. Okay... and IP, I think go hand in hand. All right. We'll do video and IP. Yeah. So video IP, good, three legs. It's a stool.

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Yeah. [chuckles] You need three legs. Trinity, you know, this is a reason this stuff existed since, you know, Jesus.

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So with, with video and IP, I mean, I thought of like Cracked, yes, and EBomb's World a little bit, but although it started as really a text and a display business.

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When you arrived at like literally what was the sort of breakdown or how much could you share with us, like what the business was at the time? Yeah.

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Because what I see with a lot of publishers right now is they gotta get out of the display text world. Mm-hmm. And like display will always be around, and you can make display work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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But video is where-- that is just where the CPMs are. It's just- Yeah... you just have to, you have to, you have to master video. So explain what-- where the business was, particularly vis-à-vis video. Yeah, absolutely.

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And, and by the way, now you know I consulted at, at Literally Media for about six months or so before deciding to join full time. So I, I had

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inroads into looking at some of the data and seeing what was working and, and where I thought we could really expand. The business historically was based on traffic to website and display.

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So display and, and O&O revenue being a, a very, very big share, you know, greater than eighty percent going back just a couple years. What I saw as an opportunity, and there were a couple things.

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One is with Cracked specifically, and if you recall, I was at Demand Media back in two thousand and seven, and we acquired Cracked when I was there.

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We shut the magazine down and, and I was part of the team that rebuilt it from about twenty thousand visits a month to like twenty-five million. Mm. So this is my second go around with Cracked.

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But what's important about that is that I, I knew the fan base was there. I knew that we could reboot video in, in a way that would work.

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I knew that there was additional IP that we could create and drive massive audiences to. And then Know Your Meme was no slouch in, in video either.

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It had a, you know, decent YouTube channel, and we were just starting to get going on Snapchat when I started. So I, I use those two as kind of the main pillars to start within video.

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And then with Cheeseburger and EBomb's World, there's some things that we're incubating as well.

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But to, to, to kinda give you a couple examples of, of what's worked and why I think it's been important, if you look at Know Your Meme,

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there's a, there's a piece of our business outside of video and outside of display that's a product we have, it's called Know Your Meme Insights- Mm... which we developed about two years ago.

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And, and Know Your Meme Insights, it's a combination of, it's, it's a data set, it's algorithms we have.

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It's information that we're pulling from fifteen years plus of meme data, both across the internet, across the web, and what we're seeing on knowyourmeme.com.

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And there's also a dashboard that we have that you can log into, and you can do searches by memes to see what's popular, what's happening, kinda drown out all the noise.

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And the reason that's important for us is two things.

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One is that we have partners that we work with who are using our tools and using our services to help power their content creation engine, because again, our tools ultimately look at all the noise on the internet every single day, what's coming in from a meme standpoint, and what are sort of like the three to five memes you should focus on within your space that we think have legs.

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So we're working with third parties to deliver that data, work with them on content creation within their own content teams and marketing teams. But for us, we're using that data as well to help program our own content.

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So take an example of a episode of content we did. We have a show called Know Your Meme on Snapchat. Our own data was telling us that the Island Boys, I don't know if you remember the Island Boys.

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They were sort of phenomenal about a second ago. Yeah. Oh, I know the Island Boys. I lived in Miami for two years. Of course I know the Island Boys. Yeah. Maybe, yeah, right. Maybe they did a week.

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They were there like every other week. Yeah. That's, that's right. I think I might have lived there. [chuckles] Who knows where they live now. They might have.

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I mean, it's-- they're so hard to track now, but- I think they had to move up the coast. I think they had to go up to Georg- closer to Daytona. They ran into a little bit of trouble.

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But at the time that they became a thing, our signals, Know Your Meme Insights, was just off the charts saying, "This is it. Focus on this."

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And that drove us to create a series of content at that time around them that ultimately led to like fourteen million uniques watching this episode and, and future episodes of content over like a forty-eight hour period.

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So that, that's one example of how we're using data for- So you sell that to brands? We do. So we, we- Yeah. Okay... we sell both the tool to brands and kind of this white glove treatment to brands.

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But to go back to your original question, video as a result of that and just increased viewership across Snapchat, TikTok, and the rest, has really propelled our video business into something much bigger than it was two years ago.

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So you have like now what? Like five hundred million views, I think you told me. We have, yeah, we have over five hundred million views a month, and I would say eighteen months ago it was like twenty. Okay.

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So how much of the business now is like video advertising versus display?

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So I'd say it's probably about twenty-five percent now, whereas it was, you know, a year ago or a little bit more than a year ago, it's probably less than ten percent.Okay.

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So what franchises are you looking to-- Because, I mean, everyone wants franchises at the end of the day. Yeah. And when people are talking about IP, you really want that franchise.

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'Cause when you have a franchise, you can make money off it a ton of different ways. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and if you recall the last time,

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the last time we talked when I was at Conde, my, my conversation then was a lot of, of, of conversation around IP, right? Yeah.

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The idea that we're sitting on this goldmine of IP, and how do you get IP at the source and really turn it into something beyond these amazing articles in, in magazines.

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And, and for us, we kinda think about IP in, in two ways. What is the shows that we're creating that we're driving big audiences to. So as an example, we have a, a show on Crack called Honest Ads.

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It's one of our most popular shows. It's probably done over two hundred million, two hundred and fifty million total lifetime views, and it's, it's kind of a parody on advertising.

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It's, it's what if ads were true, right? Oh. What if cruise ship ads were honest? What if credit card ads were honest, right? What if, what if- I would love this...insert-- Right, right. What if- I gotta check this out.

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And I'll, yeah, I'll send you some links after this. Maybe I can do like the B2B version of this.

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[laughs] Well, we, you know, so we're, we're now we're actually building a Honest Ads universe which will extend just beyond ads, and it'll be what, what everybody wants. Oh, shit.

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You're gonna, uh, we're gonna be in competition. Uh, maybe you'll get to the B2B [laughs]. Well, I talked earlier about collaborating with influencers. I mean, we could figure out something here together, right?

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There we go. I'm not an influencer, though [laughs]. [laughs] Well, I, I, you know, you're influencing people. We'll start with that. I don't know. There's nothing sadder than the term B2B influencer. I'm sorry.

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[laughs] I, I would argue maybe the only sadder three-word term that describes- No, B2B creator. Sorry. That's the worst...B2B creator.

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The, the-- that might be the worst, but I think the most damaging three-word term for media in the last ten years is pivot to video. Oh, man.

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So we can talk, we, we [laughs]- I use, you know- We can talk about that separately...I, I just wanna like actually peel off for a second here 'cause I think you'd be okay with it, 'cause like Ryan Brown like gave-- was like snarking at me, and he didn't even tag me on Twitter, which is like cowardly, Ryan.

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About the, I put like pivot to events. It's meant as a joke. It is- I got it...alread- it's been a joke for a long time. Yep. Like, do you-- If you have to explain the joke to people, I mean, come on. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

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Right. Maybe we'll cut that out, but I don't think so. Ryan- [laughs]...get in on the joke. [laughs] So, so Honest Ads, so th-that's sort of one bucket of IP.

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The other bucket of IP that I would say we are developing now and continuing to develop are the, the talent that we work with and, and the talent as co-creating IP with us, right?

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So they've got either a small or medium or big-sized following.

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Our commitment to working with them to create both episodic content, again, as well as putting them on stage and creating content around their performances, I think that in a way too creates the opportunity for additional IP to be created in collaboration with them.

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So let's talk about, let's move into talking about that, 'cause these things are, are really overlapping, right?

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When you think about like IP, creators, like events, like all this stuff is overlapping, and I think that's the way it- Yeah...should be in a, in a good business.

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I have seen this, I don't know if it's like a trend yet, but like a lot of like media companies that are basically r- you know, going into business with creators versus...

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Now, I think creators and media companies in some ways have been oil and water for a little bit.

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I mean, we saw with BuzzFeed and their, uh, initial sort of efforts with, quote-unquote, "creators," you know, there was a lot of, you know, conflict, I would say. Mm-hmm. Because sometimes you have different objectives.

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But I think what's interesting is a lot of creators have incredible pull with, with their audiences, more so than institutional brands. It's just individuals have a far closer relationship.

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But, you know- Yeah...creators can't do all the stuff on their own.

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And like with brands, like, you know, they wanna work with like, with, you know, one source that can, a trusted source- Yeah...and stuff like this, and not chase around like a million creators.

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So explain how you end up structuring those deals, and I know they're all different. Yeah.

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Yeah, and I'd say too that on the brand side, they, they want exactly what you said, and they also wanna be on the ground floor on whether it's the creator, it's a meme.

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They wanna know about it before it goes big, right? And so whether it's through our own team, whether it's through our data, being able to deliver an advertiser a deal that allows them to feel kinda cool.

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And we always talk with, with, with Know Your Meme team that there's nothing more cringe than a brand jumping in on a meme conversation where they're too late or they're out of place. That's terrible.

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And it's right, it, it's the, the, the-- you're trying to, to-- it, it, it reminds me of the Chris Rock joke of being the old guy at the club, you know.

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You, you don't wanna- Yeah, that's funny that you mention that, 'cause I remember one of my favorite quotes early, 'cause I was like covering this stuff with social media when brands were just like absolutely the worst, uh, early in social media.

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And like this agency guy who was British, I think, so [laughs] he said, he was like, "It's like your dad dancing at a disco." [laughs] Which I was like, "Yeah, that's pretty much it." That's it. That's it.

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Which is, yeah, exactly. So we're, we're trying to, we're trying to help with the dad disco dancing pandemic.

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[gentle music] On paper, it all makes sense, right?

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Mm-hmm. The media companies have infrastructure that creators simply don't have, right? Yeah.

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And it ends up being the reason that they're, quote-unquote, "creators" is, you know, they want autonomy and they want the upside of this, and they don't wanna be employees necessarily of literally- Right...media or BuzzFeed or anything.

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And the question is how do you align incentives so that- Yeah...the creators get what, uh, you don't get everything that you want, right?

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There's trade-offs in life.The, the, the creators get the upside that they need and bring the, the unique talents and abilities that they have, and the media company also benefits. And so, like, everyone is- Right...

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begrudgingly happy- [laughs]... even if they don't get 100%, because they both kinda need each other. And so, but the devil is always in the details versus, yeah, it makes sense on paper. Right. Right.

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So f- for us, we think about it a number of different ways. One is when I put myself in the shoes of a creator, I think a couple things.

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One is that they're very, very talented and, and they're, they're not just content creators, they're, they're running their own business.

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And as we all know, a- as a solo person running a business, we, we talked about this off air, it's challenging 'cause you're not just thinking about the content, you're thinking about the people, you're thinking about promotion, you're thinking about everything.

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And on top of that, there are a lot of them who are doing it and are not making that much money, right?

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For all the, the, the, the, the talk about this being a creator time, I'm not seeing a ton of articles about TikTok, other channels paying creators a ton of money for what they do. Yeah.

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I mean, some do very, very well, obviously- Well, I mean, there's a massive power wall in the creator economy, and- Yep... you know, the, the, there's a very fat, I guess, what is that? The head of the tail?

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There's a very fat head of the tail with people like MrBeast and everything. That's why you hear about the same, like, examples and stuff like this. Right. That's right.

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There's a really long tail, and there isn't a, there isn't a giant middle class, at least from the, the data that I've seen. That's right.

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And so for us, I, I look at our partnerships with creators being less about a one-off transaction and more about being a relationship. And so what does that mean? It, it means a couple things. One is

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we are going to, again, either help you create content, so we will create content together and, and pay you for your role in that content creation.

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On top of that, we will help you create channels that you don't currently have, which again, that's a, that's a heavy lift off their shoulders when they're doing 1,000 different things on a day-to-day basis.

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What I didn't mention earlier a- as well is that if you're, if you're a creator within, you know, the comedy or internet culture landscape and, and you've got a YouTube channel with five, six hours of content, there's not a lot that you can do with that beyond the distribution to other social channels.

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But another thing we're working on is, is creating what we think will be one of the best fast channels within the comedy and internet culture space. So I can now work with you, creator.

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You have six hours, you have eight hours, you have 10 hours, you know, Cracked has 100-plus hours. We can collectively build a bigger, badder channel in a way that you couldn't do with just six hours.

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So that's another leg- Yeah... where, you know, I'm offering the opportunity to be seen and get paid. And so again, the, the, the ecosystem we're trying to build is not just like, "Hey, come perform at our show."

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It's by being part of our, uh, network, by working with us, the show, being at the show could be a part of what we do, creating a channel could be part of what we do- Yeah...

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having a fast channel could be part of what we do.

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And on top of that, by us owning the market of comedy, we're already collecting a ton of data, as I mentioned, both within memes and within comedy, and we'll be able to feed that back to you, and one of the benefits you'll get is having data on what's working, what's not working.

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It'll help you program your day-to-day content programming schedule in a way that you couldn't do if you didn't have that data. Yeah.

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And I would imagine there is a lot of upside in selling them on the idea of getting out of the algorithmic trap.

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Like, because I think what's becoming clear with, you know, the rise of TikTok, and obviously Instagram is becoming seemingly TikTok Lite- Yeah... is the future is gonna be a lot of these creators just, like, feeding

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these algorithms and, like, crossing their fingers. Like, the follow model is over. It's all algorithmically driven, and- Yep... that is not gonna be reversed.

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And so when I open up, I don't use TikTok because I know that I, I'll just suck up my entire life. [laughs] But I get enough of it on, like, Twitter and, and, and Instagram, and now Instagram's basically TikTok.

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And, you know, when I get put into, like, the comedy bucket. Like, and they put me in different buckets. Like, I'm in, like, the Spanish meat bucket, I'm in the, like- [laughs]... the, which is a great place to be.

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Or I'm in, like, you know, I'm in the comedy bucket right now, and yet, you know, I see stuff... I'm gonna be in a different bucket next week. They're just gonna, like, rinse and repeat. And that's, that's tough.

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I mean, I always- It's tough... I sort of go back to it where, like,

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there's, like, a vision where we all become, like, the Uber drivers of digital media, where we're just, we're just sitting there and feeding in these, uh, you know, feeding into these algorithmic smelters.

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We're just, like- Right... shoveling content ore in them and hoping to, like, get, hoping, [laughs] hoping that our overlords will, like, you know, give us a little bit of money that they make. Yeah.

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Well, and, and those algorithms are very quick to judge, it feels like. Isn't that... I mean, I, you know, I watched- Yeah... three videos on pickleball, and now my entire feed is, is pickleball.

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Like, I, I just- Pickleball's amazing... I just, I just, right, I j- I just came in for, for a little drink. I didn't need the four-course menu. Yeah.

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I wanna, I wanted to hate pickleball- But that, that's a good point... 'cause I played it the other week and- 'Cause, you know, when, when you look, for example- I, I really liked it. Once you get out there, it's fun.

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I w- I was the same way. I'm like, "What is this?" Like, what, what, what are- No, it's addictive... is this Ping Pong? Is it tennis? It's really good. And then it, it's, it is addictive.

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What I was gonna say is that w- when you, when you take a property of ours like, like Cheeseburger, though, for example, and again, you know, we do over 100 million page views a month across our network, so we're collecting a ton of data on that as well, and, and, you know, with Cheeseburger, which is a growing video business for us now, we've got articles and editorial across, you know, here's the, the day's look at, at Karens and, and, you know, some of the, uh- The day in Karens...

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you know- I love it. [laughs] The day in Kar- Right? The day, the day, [laughs]The Karen's Gone Wild, you know, or, or The Great Resignation.

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You know, people are really right now liking stories or videos about Karens, about people who resigned in the most awesome way, and we're using that data from Cheezburger to essentially videoize some of those stories, and we've seen great success there.

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So, you know, to your point about algorithms and all that, we've collected our own data just from our own sites on what's working, and that's helped us program our own video and have success through that as well.

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So really what we've developed is, like, our own daily show based on internet culture, right? Yeah. That's ultimately what Cheezburger ends up being. So let's talk about the, the events side of it.

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I mean, I wrote about it today, and i- it didn't totally land as where... But you should all read it anyway. [laughs] You can critique it, but I was a little tired this morning.

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What I, what I was trying to get at is I really think that events are not new or anything like this. Yeah. But they're becoming a bigger part of a lot of, of publishers' portfolios for a few reasons.

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One is, is just, you know, a bad reason in some ways in that the digital ad economy is just... It's brutal. It's brutal for- Mm-hmm... a publisher.

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I don't really think that there's a future for a publisher that is gonna come out and be like, "You know what? We're gonna build a really big sustainable business on display advertising." Right. I... That's insane.

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I mean, I wish the, the, the messenger well, but I assume that's why they're putting video on every single page. And that's the reality and, and how you escape algorithms and d- display advertising is critical.

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And with events, you're not competing with Google and Facebook. No. You just aren't. You're not competing with TikTok.

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I mean, it's hard, and it's hard to get people motivated, and it's a real test of your brand, but it is a different ballgame than the difficulties of the digital ad economy. There's downsides with scaling and whatnot.

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Explain how, how you're and Literally Media is approaching the sort of live component to your business. Yeah, absolutely.

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And, and I, I think, you know, part of it, I d- just very quickly wanna start with the, the joke we made about pivot to events, pivot to video is... And that was a real thing, right? I mean, the, the- Yeah. Oh, yeah...

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the companies who pivoted to video and built these massive studios, and there's, every week there's a new story.

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We hired 100 producers and we're gonna film on this, all this content, and it was like, okay, awesome, but how are you gonna turn this into a business? Yeah. Business, what? Wait, we need to do that? No, no, no. Right.

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You know, and so that, that notion of pivoting to video, people and companies did it because they felt like they had to or they were gonna fall behind, and I think that's an important lesson for all of us.

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For us at Literally Media, the foray into events isn't out of necessity, isn't out of desperation, isn't out of us feeling like we have to.

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With our Cracked Lives, which again starts this Monday in, at The Sultan Room in, in Brooklyn, tickets are available for those who want to attend. Yeah, we'll put a link in the show notes. That's great.

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Um- Do, do you have an, do you have an affiliate we got maybe like a TRB? We... Yeah. [laughs] I'll send it all. You'll get it all. Discount.

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I- in, in this case, comedy and live events go hand-in-hand since the dawn of time, right? I, I think, I think there were cavemen and women back in the day that were doing live comedy shows.

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So for us it's a very natural progression into something that we wanted to be in from the beginning and makes a lot of sense within just the comedy world, right? Right, just at, at a top level it does.

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Two is that it really ties in nicely to what we're trying to do with creators in general, which is continue to help them build their career, build opportunity to monetize their content and, you know, a- and in doing so, also help build our own brands.

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But there's also a piece to it, and again, this, this I think comes directly with, with live and comedies, is that, you know, COVID hurt so much of the comedy world. Comedy clubs are shut down. Comedians didn't- Yeah...

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have as many places to perform. I think it really hurt just the, the genre i- in general. And so for us there's a little bit of we wanna build this revival.

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We wanna be at the center of this revival of live comedy, of event comedy, and to support again the up-and-comers and the diverse group of creators in a very unique way. So to us, again, it's not a desperate move.

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It, it really ties very directly into the business model we built out when we looked at what it meant to be the modern-day Comedy Central.

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And the opportunity I think is well beyond just that live comedy event, but to, to actually record the show, to have 100-plus clips of amazing comedy, to be able to share that with the creators, to be able to post that across multiple social media platforms and to drive revenue that also gets shared with them, it's just, you, you know, it's a model that, that checks a lot of boxes for us both from a brand standpoint, from a revenue standpoint, and then, you know, obviously from an advertising standpoint our expectation is as we- Mm-hmm...

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continue to develop this show, to have advertising packages, not just with the event but across our entire network.

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[upbeat music] So how do you, how do you deal with, like, who owns the IP, right? Like so, I mean, you're... Let's take Thorin Bradley, right? You're working with Thorin- Yep... right?

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He's a- Yes... you described him to me as a very talented and entertaining lumberjack, which- [laughs] Which-... is compelling. I- it is. If you, you might not even know how to hold an ax.

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If you see 15 seconds of a Thorin Bradley video- I live in Manhattan... I'm just saying. It's a fair, it's a fair, it's a fair assumption I don't know anything about axes. I don't know.

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If you've seen someone holding an ax in Manhattan, I think, yeah, it's time to run. I'd run. But all I'm saying is don't give yourself only 45 seconds to watch Thorin Bradley.

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Once you dive into an episode, give yourself at least 15 minutes. He will, he will draw you in.

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So Thorin is less comedian, more entertainer.And our deal with Thorin, very talented person, very successful on TikTok, has a lot on his plate, and what we're doing for him right now is taking care of all things on Snapchat for him.

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So we created his channel, we take-- he works best, he gives us his content, we Snapchat optimize it for him, we build the thumbnails.

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We-- So we've got a team that has expertise on the right thumbnail, the right headline, the right everything, the right length of time of the video, the right editing, and we just take all that work out of his hands.

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Yeah. And, and then- Yep... pay him a fee every, every month. There's a, there's a- Okay... rev share deal that we have with him. So is this like a s- more of a studio and agency business?

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'Cause I guess what I'm getting at is, like, there's... I was trying to get at it the, in, in the piece today, is a lot of, like, media businesses are, I guess, front operations, I call [chuckles] them in some ways.

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[laughs] It's like the thing that you see is not really how they make money, and that is just a testament to how difficult in, in many ways this business is to be just straightforward.

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Like, I always say, like, imagine if restaurants, if the restaurant business, which is really, really difficult, by the way, I don't know personally a- other than working in, in kitchens, but, like, it is difficult from everything I've read, is if restaurants operated the way, like, media businesses operate, where they're like, "No, no, no, we don't make money off the food, we make money off the..."

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And it's just like, what? But that is like a reality, and there's a lot of businesses that are... And there's nothing wrong with being, like, a studio business.

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I think, you know, when you look at Vice, a lot of people wreck on Vice and stuff. They got a very successful studio business. But how do you see that as being...

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I mean, do you see this as, like, at its core, really, like a studio business? I, I think it's, yeah, I, you know, I think it's, there, there are multiple pieces to it. I think that the,

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the studio side of the business is a important part of how we look at monetizing and giving something like event legs beyond just the moment. Mm.

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So to take a step back, when I, when I think about the event business in, in our world just for a second, there's a couple boxes that I think it checks that are very important to us.

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All, all that ultimately help generate business for us and help move the needle for us. The, the first way is just the event itself, right?

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And whether that's through ticket sales, or whether that's through an advertising sponsor.

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We look at events as another line of revenue business that helps diversify our portfolio, which I mentioned again, we were, you know, we're, a couple years ago, very heavy on O&O, and we've now diversified in a very meaningful way over the last, you know, year and a half or two years.

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So, so that's one box. The second box is what you're able to do, and you can't do this at all events, right?

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Sometimes when you, when you have an event and you, and you film video from it, it's just a highlight of the event. And I find that no one...

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You know, the red carpets and all that, you know, sometimes that, that works, I think, depending on the, this level of celebrity at the event.

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But often, if you're just looking at a recap video of an event, it's not, there's not much to that. But- Mm...

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again, I think comedy in a unique way lends itself to having far greater legs than the event itself, and, and that gets into the studio component of actually filming, distributing, and, and kind of giving life and revenue to the content beyond just the event itself.

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So, you know, that's the second box it checks for us. And then third is, is the relationship with the creators. Where again, we don't look at it as just a transactional thing where, "Hey, thanks for doing the show.

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Goodbye. Good night. Thank you for being with us." It really is about, okay, who beyond just the comedy show can we do more with? Can we create a more strategic relationship with?

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And through that strategic, strategic relationship, we're building audience and revenue for, for both of us. So, you know, the events business for us are all three of those pillars. Right.

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And so how many creators do you end up working with? We-- I'd say right now, and, and, you know, I, I'd put creator under...

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I, I would define it as anybody that we've either created channels for or that we're working on these live comedy events with. We're somewhere in the 15 to 20- Right... range right now.

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And again, I would say this is a strategy and, and something we invested in starting this year. Yeah. Because like I... Yeah, I mean, it can get, like, unwieldy, I think, if you're...

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And, and if you wanna have, like, deep relationships with, you know, the creators.

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I guess the question I end up, 'cause, like, there's studio and then there's, like, basically being, like, an agency to, to them- Right... is, you know, how do you make sure that...

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'Cause I mean, we saw this with, like, BuzzFeed. It's like if people blow up, they just, they kinda wanna fire you, don't they? [laughs] They do.

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Yeah, I mean, it's, it's- That was always my problem with WeWork's business model, 'cause I was like- Yeah... wait, so, like, every company in here aspires to the day they don't wanna do business with you, WeWork.

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Like, so that's kinda weird. That's right. That's right. So the, the kryptonite to the, the deep, deep creator model, and I think it always has been, and, you know- Yeah...

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it's interesting, it comes up in conversations, conferences, and everything, is someone goes big, and they decide to leave. Isn't that awful? That, isn't that- Yeah... isn't that, isn't that terrible for you?

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And my answer to that is, is not necessarily. You know, not necessarily for a couple reasons. One is that I think if you run a successful model in the creator space of this nature,

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A is you wanna make sure that you always have enough up and coming talent that you're working with. So, you know, yes, it, it does, it, it will be a hit if you miss or lose one of your top creators.

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The hope is that you're continuing though to generate business with up, other up and comers, that you, you know, you have a pretty steady slate of talent that you can work with. I think that's one.

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And then two is that I don't know that it's a terrible model if people become successful having worked with you and they have your relationship and your brand still somewhat attached to them.

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Now, they might go off, and obviously they're gonna go do big things, but the fact that they started-With Literally Media or started with Cracked. I don't mean started their career with Cracked- Yeah...

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but that was one of the steps along the way or along the path of success. I feel like those deals and those relationships beget additional deals and relationships.

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Now, again, I, I'm not here saying that, you know, the, the no hit at all. It's a perfect model. It's great. You know, you don't have to worry about- Yeah... about people leaving.

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But it, it's happened, you know, since the dawn of Saturday Night Live as well, right? Yeah. Eddie Murphy leaves, Chevy Chase leaves, Billy Crystal, all of them end up leaving. I think Lorne takes a percentage.

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I don't know what his relationship is with the talent that he, you know, he, he kinda dips into the pool, but that always happens.

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And, and I think the success is and, and longevity is based on the totality of talent and creators that you work with. Got it. Okay. Cool. Arn, thank you so much. Sure. Gonna leave it there.

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Uh, maybe there's a final thing is, like, is there any, is there any meme that, like, I need to be on the lookout for right now? 'Cause again, like, a lot of times these things pop up.

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I see them on Twitter or whatever, and I'm like, "Hmm, I don't know what anyone is talking about right now." What, what's the-- Is the da- what's the data telling you? What's the da-- You know, I, I will...

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What I'll do, I'll send you, I will send you our report. I'll send you our meme report- Okay... for today, which has, it's got, it'll have the, the memes of, of both today and, and it goes as far back as last week.

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So I will... I don't, I haven't gotten it yet, but I will- Okay... give it to you the second I get it, and you'll be, you'll be up to speed. I'll be up to speed.

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I'll be-- It'll be great for, uh, the conversation about her. All right, Ari. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Great to see you. [upbeat music] Thanks for listening.

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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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And as I said, we'll be back next week with probably our last episode of the summer.

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[upbeat music]