David Bloom:
Hey, everybody. I'm David Bloom of Next TMT. I'm here with Bevin Fletcher, the senior editor of StreamTV Insider, and my colleague, Dan Frankel, co-founder of Next TMT and a contributor to StreamTV Insider. We're here at the StreamTV Show to talk a little bit about the show's many, many, many highlights and kind of what the state of the industry is right now.
So, Dan, talk a little bit about the state of the streaming TV business. It's an interesting time. Warner Brothers Discovery just announced they're going to go ahead and split the company into two pieces. We thought that was coming when they did a reorganization. Disney's laying off people. Other companies are trying to finally make money, which is a nice change of pace. Niche providers are really doing interesting stuff and finding audiences and turning into real businesses. What's the state of the business from your perspective right now?
Daniel Frankel:
Disruption, Dave, disruption. As I would say, a lot of themes here at this big StreamTV Show. First of all, it's massive this year. 1,700 people coming through, advanced advertising, fast state of content, state of audience, a lot of different tracks. What stands out to me is, it starts first thing on Wednesday morning, a discussion of the nature of the audience itself, the end of the monoculture and life after it.
Alan Wolk, an analyst of TVREV, is going to sort of look at programming for a new type of audience that's dispersed and fragmented. And that discussion will be sort of a through line throughout the day. I noticed Adam Lewinson, who is the chief content officer of Tubi, is going to be here talking about how they don't program for this water cooler event, this idea that 100,000 people are watching MASH, it doesn't happen anymore.
David Bloom:
Well, 100,000 would be a really terrible MASH audience, but a really great audience for a lot of shows these days. Bevin, as you look at the business and the show itself, are there things you're looking forward to seeing today?
Bevin Fletcher:
Oh, absolutely. I think there's a ton of fragmentation and a lot of opportunity for innovation right now. So I think while there's a lot to work through, there's a lot of opportunity too. And one thing I'm really looking forward to is conversations around YouTube, because I think, obviously, their CTV dominance is not a debate anymore, but kind of where it fits in the ecosystem is, and I think there's also a question of this frenemy relationship with streamers who are also using it as a platform to promote their own content to create fandom. And we saw at Disney, they put free episodes of Andor's latest season on there, so even a subscriber acquisition tool. So their role in the ecosystem I think is really interesting.
David Bloom:
I think YouTube's particularly interesting, you're right. Nielsen, in its last The Gauge metrics, said it was 12.4%. We had something in the Next TMT weekly newsletter talking about another measure. And Daniel, I can't remember who.
Daniel Frankel:
Roku.
David Bloom:
Roku said it was 18%. Basically, one in six hours spent watching is on YouTube in some fashion or another. And they have a huge number of creators with a million followers. There are more million followers, and we were talking about 100,000 watching MASH. Maybe they'll watch it on YouTube these days and 100,000. But MrBeast, for instance, has got 250 million subscribers or some crazy number.
So it's definitely one of the bells of the ball and we'll have several opportunities to speak this week. So, Bevin, one of the key things in all of this streaming TV is data and how you use data not only to figure out the shows to show to people, but the ads to show to the right person. And a lot of what's going on here is going to be about what they call advanced advertising, which I prefer over the regressive advertising. But what are you seeing in terms of what's going to be at the show and where the industry's going with that?
Bevin Fletcher:
Well, for the show, I'm pretty excited about Alan Wolk's going to have during his Streamonomic session, a contextual revolution AI-powered sesh panel with, I think, Wurl, Anoki, Grace Snow, a bunch of leaders in the space that are doing really cool things with AI to match not only the content to the viewer, but the emotion within the content and emotions the viewer themselves are having. So I think that's an interesting marriage of AI and advertising in the contextual space. And then there's going to be a CTV Ad Tech Leaders' Roundtable, which I'm looking forward to and we've got a whole bunch more.
David Bloom:
So it should be great. What else has got you interested? Adam Lewinson, I've seen with Tubi, and Tubi had the Super Bowl on this year, which is really interesting, and it's the main streaming operation for Fox these days.
Daniel Frankel:
No, Adam's going to be there talking about how they program for everybody's personal rabbit hole, a fragmented audience where everything's sort of deeply personalized for a unique audience of Gen Z. Nobody draws it quite like Tubi does. So that's going to be interesting.
You mentioned YouTube and what I think is interesting about this conference is we already know that it's a connected TV powerhouse, that's everywhere. But what I really think is cool is Fede Goldenberg, I think he leads their AVOD partnerships, he's going to be talking about now that we know it's a connected TV powerhouse, how do you program for it? How do you reach audiences? How do you monetize it? And that's a really relevant discussion that's happening Thursday.
David Bloom:
Yeah, the idea of life in the YouTube era and how that becomes, as you said, a frenemy, a partner, a challenger, a competitor, an enabler is really an interesting component of, I think, this entire show. There's a lot more going on though. And we talk about disruption. People are not just dialing into three broadcast networks anymore. That's long, long, long gone, or even 50 cable networks. Now it's thousands of providers, ultimately, if you take all those creators.
And it's a very different dynamic than it was even five years ago. So this should be a lot of fun, and we look forward. We're going to be putting a lot of video interviews up. I'll be doing them, Bevin's doing them, Dan's going to be doing them. We'll be having chat shows throughout the three days of the conference, putting those online, putting them out in our daily newsletters. Please join us for what should be a fantastic show here in Denver at the Gaylord Rockies Resort for StreamTV.