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The large media conglomerates have become bloated ticks
Puck detailed how much media company CEO pay has risen despite years of stagnant stock prices and revenue:
ISS, the proxy advisory, charted a median rise of 117 percent in media and entertainment C.E.O. pay last year among large S&P 500 companies, while their median total shareholder return was down 28.6 percent. Bob Iger, who didn’t grow Disney’s share price at all in 2025, earned an 11 percent raise, to $45.8 million. Paramount Skydance’s lawyer, Makan Delrahim, earned nearly $64 million for just three months of work, thanks to a generous stock award that will accrue over five years. Our guy David Zaslav, the most grotesquely overpaid of them all, whose Warner Discovery was in such bad shape that he’s offloading it to Paramount, tripled his pay package, to $165 million.
This is the sort of dynamic that gives the Creator Economy its edge — on platforms like YouTube, more money flows toward the people who are actually making the content. One of the biggest problems in legacy media is that the highest salaries often go to those furthest removed from the actual content production, which leads to bloated overhead and star creators peeling off to establish more direct relationships with their audiences.
(BTW, I used a gift link so you can access that article for free.)
ICYMI: How a former hedge fund analyst built a six-figure newsletter covering Asia’s overlooked stocks
Michael Fritzell founded Asian Century Stocks in 2021 because he thought he had an information edge.
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.
Every video strategy needs to focus on building franchises
For much of its existence, the digital publisher NowThis was known primarily for distributing viral news clips, but in recent years it’s actually seen tremendous success launching video series with repeatable formats — oftentimes, a viewer won’t even realize a particular show is produced by NowThis.
From NetInfluencer:
NowThis … measures whether its shows are becoming culturally useful: whether celebrities ask to appear, whether advertisers want in before a show is formally pitched, and whether formats can move beyond the feed into live events, merchandise, and branded extensions. Its slate includes “Are You Okay?”, “Judgy,” “Salary Transparent Street,” “Crosswalk Crush,” and “Stand Up Desk,” which added more than 200,000 followers in roughly a month, according to [editor in chief Michael Vito Valentino.]
The formats themselves often borrow from concepts that have existed for decades: confessional interviews, street games, and interactive comedic structures. “We take these formats, these tropes, these themes, and we make them work for this audience,” Michael says.
Every media brand that’s succeeding in video is adopting some version of this strategy: launching reality-style shows as standalone verticals and then doubling down on the ones that gain traction. The parent brand can still use its marketing channels to drive awareness, but ultimately the shows have to succeed on their own.
There are several advantages to this approach. For one, repeatable formats encourage binge-watching because viewers know what they’re getting each time they click on a new episode. It also helps recommendation algorithms better identify which audiences are most likely to engage with a series.
A repeatable format also makes production far more efficient. Episodes can be produced in batches, which streamlines workflows and supports a more consistent publishing cadence.
Just as importantly, repeatable formats are easier to monetize. Advertisers are more likely to sponsor a series when they can clearly understand the creative product and audience appeal. These franchises can also expand into merchandise, live events, and other revenue streams tied to individual shows.
And as Hollywood increasingly merges with the Creator Economy, owning a large library of franchise IP becomes even more valuable. Successful series can eventually be licensed to FAST channels or premium streaming platforms, unlocking an entirely new layer of monetization.
A digital media outlet inside a book publisher
This is really fascinating: According to Adweek, Penguin Random House launched a food media brand — initially to promote its cookbooks, but it’s now on track to generate seven figures of revenue on its own:
The original mandate was content marketing, a smarter way to tell the stories of Crown’s cookbook authors, a roster that includes Ina Garten, Molly Baz, and Alison Roman. The model was loosely inspired by Punch, the drinks publication launched a few years earlier within the same corporate family …
Taste’s newsletter now reaches 250,000 subscribers; its website draws 200,000 monthly unique visitors; and its podcast generates 125,000 downloads and roughly 2.7 million listening minutes per month, according to the company. On pace to generate a high-six-figure revenue this year, the brand expects to clear $1 million by next year.
The most distinctive product driving that growth is a full-episode branded podcast format, in which a single sponsor, such as a CPG brand, tourism board, or hospitality client, sits at the center of an episode produced in Taste’s house editorial style.
Penguin Random House isn’t the first major publisher to figure out how to diversify its revenue by publishing online content. Back in 2008, the science fiction publisher Tor launched a dedicated website that publishes original short fiction and scifi fandom coverage, and it’s still publishing til this day. A year earlier, its parent company Macmillan partnered with podcaster Mignon Fogarty to run Quick & Dirty Tips, a massive podcast network and website that has multiple revenue streams.
What’s great about these outlets is that they not only give book publishers a way to diversify revenue, but also serve as powerful promotional engines for their titles. It’s why I’ve often wondered why more national media companies don’t launch their own book imprints. Imagine if The New York Times required its reporters to publish through an in-house imprint. The company would have a stronger incentive to give reporters book leave, while also being able to leverage its massive marketing channels to drive sales. If I were a Times reporter, I’d want that kind of promotional muscle behind me.
(Yes, I know the NYT has a book imprint, but most of its reporters publish outside it.)
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It doesn’t matter if you’re a YouTuber, podcaster, newsletter writer, or traditional news publisher — you’re going to find strategies here that you can incorporate into your own business.
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Can Buzzfeed fuel a FAST channel?
The Hollywood Reporter published an interview with media mogul Byron Allen, and he revealed his plan to incorporate Buzzfeed’s video content into his FAST channel Local Now:
BuzzFeed is one of the most recognizable brands, as well as HuffPost, and for us — I own something called Local Now. It’s a free streaming app it curates, aggregates and streams super hyperlocal news, weather, sports and traffic, geofenced to the user’s zip code.
One night I had dinner with Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, and I said “Hey, what keeps you up at night?” He said “YouTube.” I said, “YouTube?” He said, “Yeah, Byron, if YouTube starts delivering premium content, how do I get people to pay me XYZ per month?” I said, “Got it.” So, YouTube is the biggest streamer by far. The world’s two favorite words right now: “Free” and “streaming.”
What I can do is I can take BuzzFeed and HuffPost and put it into the free streaming business with this asset that I’ve invested heavily in. And it’s not to replace anything at BuzzFeed or HuffPost, it’s additive, it’s to build on the 20-year foundation that they’ve created.
For the uninitiated, Local Now is available on all the TV streaming platforms and licenses local news broadcasts from hundreds of TV stations. Basically, when you log in it uses your IP address to pull in the local content most relevant to you. The channel also licenses a bunch of movies and TV shows to round out its library.
I guess the plan here is for Buzzfeed content to further extend the channel’s offerings. The problem is that Buzzfeed’s video division has seen much better days. Out of curiosity, I began pulling up several of its YouTube channels. Many of them have gone dormant — despite each having millions of subscribers — and the ones that are still active are pulling in pretty paltry viewership numbers. In fact, the only channel that still sometimes gets north of a million views on new videos is BuzzFeed Celeb.
Local Now will be able to index Buzzfeed’s large archive of videos in its library — but is that enough to justify its $120 million price tag? Surely, Allen wants to leverage the asset to develop new IP, but it’s unclear whether Buzzfeed still has the creative muscle needed to build that IP. Buzzfeed Studios is still run by Richard Reid, who’s been there at least a decade, but many of the biggest YouTube stars to have come out of Buzzfeed have long since left. So how much is Allen willing to invest to build that content pipeline back up?