Can a traditional late night show succeed solely on YouTube?

PLUS: How Hollywood studios are secretly using AI

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Quick hits

Can a traditional late-night show succeed solely on YouTube? The creator behind an already successful video series is launching a new show with all the hallmarks of late night — including a live audience and house band — but at a fraction of the cost of a network production. Behind the scenes, YouTube is helping connect the show with brand sponsors. [NYT] (BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)

The New York Times has followed in the footsteps of Netflix by cracking down on password sharing. I can confirm that we’ve seen this in my own household — it’s basically extremely aggressive in emailing you a passcode every time you try to access NYT content on a different device. [Nieman Lab]

One of the most popular business podcasters spent over five years producing weekly episodes with virtually no audience. He reads one biography a week of an industry titan and then produces a solo monologue aimed at sharing his key takeaways. He eschews CPM ads and charges a flat partnership rate, with only one sponsor per show. [Fortune]

Meta’s Threads now has 500 million users and is just as popular as Twitter. I long-ago deleted Twitter from my phone and spend much of my scrolling time hopping back and forth between Threads and Bluesky. One thing I’ll begrudgingly credit Meta for is creating a Twitter-like social network for normies — the algorithm serves up the right mix of pop culture, current events, and random observations to ensure that it’s usually entertaining when you open the app. [NYT] (BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)

ICYMI: This YouTuber built a massive following with pop music guitar lessons

A lot of people conduct searches for instructions on how to play their favorite songs.

That case study actually sits behind a paywall, but if you’re not ready to subscribe, I also included it in an ebook that you can download over here.

More quick hits

Medium has long shared revenue with its writers; now it’s also sharing revenue with the editors who spin up and moderate its niche-based communities. [Medium]

Anime is one of Japan’s biggest exports, yet the country has struggled to fully capitalize on its intellectual property because of a slow, bureaucratic process for approving merchandise for overseas markets. That has created a vacuum that fueled a massive U.S. market for unauthorized merch eagerly snapped up by fans. [Bloomberg] (BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)

Netflix has always been incredibly good at getting its users to tune in for the first season of a new show. In recent years, however, it’s struggled to get those users to return for subsequent seasons. There’s also evidence that the average subscriber is spending less time on the app. [Bloomberg] (BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)

When Seedance first launched, it sparked a huge uproar as users created AI-generated videos featuring A-list stars. Now, Hollywood studios are quietly testing the platform to see how it can be incorporated into their own productions. As one producer put it, “It’s kind of like a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of a thing.’” [LA Times]

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