Big Media is Just Ceding Creators to YouTube, and Now Amazon

It is lack of fit, or lack of understanding?

I saw the news yesterday that Amazon had invested in the creator economy startup Spotter, and had several immediate thoughts:

• I’m glad I’m starting a newsletter focused on the Creator Media space

• How does YouTube feel about Amazon getting very cozy with a company that essentially exists to partner with the best YouTubers (Spotter has paid out nearly a billion to creators like Mr. Beast and Dude Perfect)?

• Why doesn’t YouTube have a mechanism to invest in creators like this for bigger projects - and should it?

Then, I spent most of yesterday at the Future of Television conference on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, and heard from many folks working in creator media, and what traditional Hollywood doesn’t get about creators…and I thought:

• Why didn’t, say an NBCUniversal or Disney or Paramount, invest in a Spotter?

After all, Amazon seems to want to use this deal as a pipeline to bring more creators into bigger Prime projects. Shouldn’t the big media companies be doing that? What about Netflix?

Do they even have a plan for creators?

Because creators are soaking up TV screen time, and increasingly, ad dollars.

"The number of creators making the majority of the YouTube revenue on TV screens is up more than 30% year-on-year" tweeted Lightshed analyst Rich Greenfield.

“Hollywood must start engaging,” said Jawhara Tariq, senior VP of strategy, corporate development & investments at Mythical Entertainment, the company behind the long running YouTube duo Rhett and Link.

I’m not saying that investing in Spotter is going to instantly make a bunch of creators into TV stars. As Andy Wallenstein of Variety pointed out, when it comes to YouTubers jumping to TV, (like Lily Singh or Grace Helbig) “the track record is not great.”

However, those were examples of YouTube talent being plugged into existing TV formats. Amazon can now theoretically incubate potential series through its Spotter relationship, while maybe getting first looks at potential new projects from creators, along the lines of its upcoming, very pricey Mr. Beast series.

How long can big TV ignore this space? What’s behind the reticence?

“There is a disillusion with creators,” said Taryn Crouther, a former AMC executive who is now COO at ATTN. “Some of that is fear-based, and the idea going from billions in revenue to millions.”

Crouther likened the situation to the rise of cable in the 1990s, when both advertisers and big media companies doubted the quality and staying power of cable.

“People making decisions [in Hollywood] do not reflect their audiences,” she said. “Creators are green-lighting video based on audience feedback, that’s terrifying for [traditional media companies].”

To be sure, investing in Spotter may just be out of most debt-ridden, shrinking media companies’ price range these days. And many may feel burned by the MCN investments of just a few years ago, such as Disney’s nearly $700 million deal for Maker Studios in 2014.

But there may be other factors at play.

Eric Decker, known on YouTube as Airrack, theorized that some media decision makers likely have an outdated view of what kind of content is resonating on YouTube.

“You probably still think of a guy with a camera filming himself,” he said. “Instead we’re working from a 30-page creative brief with shot for shot planned out. So I think it’s an adjustment of perspective on what a video looks and feels like that needs to happen.”

To be fair, it’s not as though big media companies don’t work with creators at all. NBCU smartly brought many into the fold during the Olympics. At the show yesterday, RJ Larese, Vice President of Talent and Influencer Marketing for Paramount Global, talked about how crucial influencers are to promoting shows like Yellowstone, and how the company has a rotating stable of talent they are working with regularly.

But there’s a difference between working with this kind of talent for marketing, versus trying to figure out how, if at all, they’ll fit into your company’s programming strategy over time. That alignment is not easy.

I had the events organizer, Jamie Gutfreund Founder, Creator Vision, on my new Next in Creator Media podcast yesterday to talk about where things stand. She was both impatient, and hopeful.

"Hollywood is starting to look at creators as creative sources for IP,” said Gutfreund. “The smart media networks will recognize the power of passionate fan bases, albeit ones that manifest in a different way than they are used to."

Just as Crouther mentioned, tapping into that fandom and unique creative process will require a big change in thinking for media execs.

“It's not the gatekeepers who traditionally, whether it was Anna Wintour or the head of a studio that are deciding what they think the audience will like, It's the audience is really deciding what they gravitate toward,” said Gutfreund. “And if you understand the audience and you're able to develop and provide that content, you could probably create a massive, pretty big audience and fandom.”

Sounds like something pretty much every big media company could use right now.