David Bloom:
Hi, I am David Bloom with Next TMT here at the StreamTV Live Show. I'm here with Emily Posey, who is the director of acquisitions for Tastemade, one of the old line online services that has been creating content in cooking and food for what? A decade? 12 years?
Emily Posey:
More than that. Yeah.
David Bloom:
It goes way back, but it's a new era. And you came over from CNN to head acquisitions, both coming in and going out. Talk to me, I guess you just got off a panel talking about acquisitions and the sort of state of acquisitions. It's changed a lot. So what's the world like now for this content, the libraries, the stuff that you guys use, and you all have an interesting mix on top of that.
Emily Posey:
We do. We have an interesting mix of original series that we produce, really premium stuff, premium licensed content that we partner with, something like a Jamie Oliver series and also creator content that we source from YouTube. So in that sense, Tastemade is really unique. There's mostly single IP channels in the FAST space, so what we're doing is pretty special.
David Bloom:
Okay. And in terms of just finding content, I sort of feel like isn't everything already licensed up?
Emily Posey:
Not necessarily, but I mean, to your point, exclusivity is not worth what it used to be in our opinion. Most of the stuff we take is on a non-exclusive basis. We do really well with it. I mean, even Jamie Oliver is an example. We're licensing stuff from Fremantle, even though they own the Jamie Oliver FAST channel. So there's an interesting partnership there, and it's a symbiotic relationship. I feel like we're both winning in it and we get access to great content. So from our perspective, the non-exclusive thing is not an issue at all.
David Bloom:
Well, that's an interesting thing to think about. Now, are there other changes going on these days in the content that's available, in the partnerships you may do?
Emily Posey:
Yeah, there are. A lot of the gatekeeping has gone away and the walls have come down quite a bit. We're getting approached about doing interesting hybrid partnerships all the time. We recently did a deal with A&E where we co-commissioned a new season of a show called Wild Game Kitchen that's been really successful for us. It's hosted by Andrew Zimmern, who's a very prolific chef, and having a co-exclusive first window with a cable channel is something that five or 10 years ago would've been pretty unheard of.
David Bloom:
That is interesting to think about and how would you even go about figuring out who the good partners are right?
Emily Posey:
You kind of maybe know them when you see them. I think you can kind of suss out by how the approach is set up and how the partnership is presented. We are lucky though. We've had a lot of really good partners approach us, and a lot of good deals come out of these conversations because we're open to collaborating and these people are as well.
David Bloom:
So where are you all going next? What's next for Tastemade? Sort of think about you guys again is this old reliable site, but what's new? What's hip and cool about Tastemade these days?
Emily Posey:
Yeah, so we're trying to make sure that all of our channels are fully distributed. So we have our flagship channel, which is mostly food content, but we also have home and travel, which are newer, and we're still kind of building those brands behind the flagship one. And so we're trying to make sure that those are available everywhere you want them to be. We want to meet customers where they are and make sure that whether it's flagship, home, or travel, we are everywhere that they're going to be.
David Bloom:
How are you using data? Does data help drive the acquisition decisions that you make?
Emily Posey:
It does. It's tough. The data can be very limited coming from the partners, and so some of it we have to get pretty creative with. I think of it sometimes as competing against ourselves. Like if I'm assessing a new acquisition, is it going to have the potential to be the new best performer that I have in my stable of shows? That sometimes is more valuable to me to think about versus how the data comes in from a provider.
David Bloom:
What's the coolest show you picked up recently?
Emily Posey:
I'm going to have to go with my guy, Jamie Oliver.
David Bloom:
That's the naked truth, as it were.
Emily Posey:
We have an embarrassment of riches in terms of great content that they bring to us, and most recently we were able to get one of his series called Jamie Oliver: Fast and Simple, nominated for a James Beard Media Award, which is really amazing. So something like that, you have to... it really punches above its weight in terms of the acquisition value.
David Bloom:
Absolutely. I mean, Oliver's been around even longer than Tastemade.
Emily Posey:
Quite a while.
David Bloom:
I remember back 20 years ago, he was The Naked Chef in British television, and here he's gone so far, but it's great. He's still pumping it out. And you've got a James Beard Award. That's fantastic.
Emily Posey:
He was featured on the Netflix Chef's Table series this year, so it's sort of... as long as he's been around, he's still being recognized as a very significant voice in the space.
David Bloom:
That's great. And so with home and travel, what kinds of stuff are you looking for?
Emily Posey:
That's a good question. We're working on building out what those brands should be and something interesting that we've done, we have a series called Kitchen Glow Up that we produce for Tastemade, and we're renovating kitchens. So it's great because it can play on flagship or on the home channel. That's an example of a type of hybrid series that I love. And so whether we're making it in the example of Kitchen Glow Up or I'm out acquiring it, something that serves a hybrid purpose is definitely always top of my list.
David Bloom:
Well, I'm all about hybrids, and we're going to have to wrap this up, but thank you so much. Emily Posey, Director of Acquisitions.
Emily Posey:
Thank you.
David Bloom:
For Tastemade. I'm David Bloom with Next TMT here at the StreamTV Show.