Netflix is expanding its content ecosystem by securing exclusive deals with top YouTube creators and podcasters such as Nick D. Giovanni, Hot Ones, and Miss Rachel, leveraging their massive followings to drive engagement and viewership. These moves are effective in the short term, with shows like Miss Rachel performing well and costing significantly less than traditional programming. However, YouTube remains resilient, with strong user engagement and ad revenue growth, suggesting minimal immediate financial impact. Despite this, the shift challenges YouTube’s brand identity as a premium, TV-level platform, raising concerns about perceived devaluation of its creative ecosystem. While creators benefit from additional income, the broader industry sees a strategic realignment: Netflix gains access to viral content and audiences, while YouTube resists the trend by focusing on live events and premium programming. The economic model suggests that large-scale, high-budget content like major films or live sports is still out of reach for YouTube due to costs and industry gatekeeping. Meanwhile, a temporary restraining order has been granted in the Paramount vs. California market case, signaling early judicial skepticism about the merger’s market dominance, especially in film distribution. Though the full outcome remains uncertain, the ruling gives the state a strategic advantage and suggests potential regulatory scrutiny of media consolidation. Ultimately, both platforms are evolving—Netflix targeting creator-driven content, and YouTube attempting to maintain premium credibility—while maintaining distinct, complementary roles in the streaming landscape.
This episode is presented by AMC Network, a new chapter in Anne Rice's Immortal Universe begins with AMC's The Vampire Listot. Get a backstage pass to the iconic frontman who Pace magazine calls a Bowie-inspired rocker that will have fans screaming. Don't miss the legendary Vampire Listot Delian Corps in his own electrifying rock saga. Experience the glory and darkness. Engage the Vampire Listot only on AMC Plus. Learn more at AMCPlus.com. It is Tuesday, July 21st. If you're a big creator on YouTube with millions of followers, chess are the nice people at Netflix have reached out recently. As listeners of this show know, Netflix has been making a big push into digital creator content. It's not just podcasts like The Slate From I Hard or The Ringer, it's also big name YouTubers, Nick D. Giovanni, Rhett and Link, Hot Ones, most of these creators aren't leaving YouTube. They're just making their videos available to Netflix to make extra money, or packaging up their videos and shows like Miss Rachel, or in some cases they're creating entirely original versions of their shows like The Hot Ones Extension or what Mark Rober or The Science Guy is doing. Is it working? Well, it's early, and Netflix conspicuously refused to include podcasts in its latest engagement report. But on the creator front, Miss Rachel is now a top 10 show on Netflix, and compilations from Danny Goh and Salish and Jordan, they were top 30 and had a fraction of the cost of traditional programming. Other platforms are jumping in too, with Disney and Paramount also courting digital creator channels. So does YouTube even care about this? It's unclear. No one creator or five creators or 500 creators actually matters all that much to YouTube. So it's not that big a deal if they're also posting on Netflix, or is it? YouTube hasn't exactly been offering big deals to remain exclusive, but obviously YouTube CEO, Neil Mohan, he loves that it's the leader in streaming viewership month after month, and any momentum shift to Netflix could be problematic. Lucas Shaw or Monday Guy, who's on Tuesday this week, he wrote a whole column about this for Bloomberg this weekend, and today we're going to debate it. Chris versus YouTube, what's his stake, who's got the most to win and lose, and who ultimately benefits the most from this push towards creators? From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellini, and this is The Town. Okay, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg, our Monday Guy coming at you on a very special Tuesday episode. Welcome, Lucas. I'm very happy for you. You got to meet Mike Bloomberg, finally. I had met him actually 12 years earlier, and my first, I think in the first six months on the job he came by the office, did the photo line, gave us an update on the business. Nice. But this time you got a photo. I got a photo last time too, I just, I don't think I posted the last one. Now I can have my before and after, you know, Lucas says, Lucas in his mid 20s, now Lucas in his mid late 30s. Yes. Well, regardless, I'm still happy for you. All right, let's move on to the main topic today, Netflix versus YouTube. You wrote an interesting column for your newsletter about the poaching. I haven't checked my inbox in the last hour, but I assume there has been so. We didn't get another one, we didn't get another one Monday morning. I don't know if we're gonna get enough, no, not, but Netflix has issued what six press releases in the last two or three weeks about different YouTube talent they've brought on. Yeah. It's, it's fun for me because I get to learn who these influencers are via the press release announcing that they're moving to Netflix. You didn't know Nick did Giovanni, the chef? I did not. No. Did you know Alan Chicken-Chow? I, that name, I learned in your newsletter. Okay. I know hot ones, of course. You knew hot ones. Did you know that? Yeah. Did you know that the mythical guy's retinling? Good Mythical Morning. I know retinling. I know those guys. Okay. Yes. But this is not about me. This is about the Netflix strategy here to essentially boost engagement by going after YouTube talent. We've talked about it from a business perspective. We're skimming off the very, very top layer of YouTube talent. As one person put it, if you're like a top 25 or 50 YouTube channel, especially focused on kids and family, Netflix has made you an offer. Right. And I want to focus on this both from the creator perspective because obviously this is great for these creators. They're potentially getting paid extra for not doing anything extra, just putting their videos on another platform, which they likely would have done for free if it would give them more reach for advertising. And now they are in a kind of talent war with YouTube. Or is this a talent war? Does YouTube actually care about this? Well, that was the question that I tried to address and raise in my newsletter because as Netflix kept doing, like initially when Netflix did the deal, I don't, when we did a couple deals. I don't think YouTube care. Right? Okay. Like go and take a couple or like when Amazon did a show with Mr. Beast. I don't think Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube loved it. Okay. It's fine. Like Jimmy golf club. He loves YouTube so much. He's not going anywhere. Yeah. There had now been enough deals over the last couple of months that the kind of creators and their representatives and the people who run their businesses were definitely starting to hear murmurs from YouTube that they weren't thrilled about it. And I both talked to some of those people. I talked to some people at YouTube. I talked to some people who know the leadership well. And the sense I get is that YouTube is kind of torn on this. And the one hand, none of this stuff is really hurting their primary business, right? YouTube's revenues growing, usage is growing. You look at it and YouTube is sort of the bell of the media ball right now. So it's not a financial issue. It's not like holy shit. We're losing engagement because of this. Not that their policy has been looked. If you go and put your, I sent advertisers show somewhere else, do stuff somewhere else. It drives people back to YouTube because that's your main channel, right? And maybe there will be some damage to us in like three years, but certainly no business they're seeing in the short term. That's how they approach back rooms and obsession. They're like, great. If you can have a movie based on something you do on YouTube, more power to you. But then there is the kind of the optics and the ego of it all, right? Which is that nobody wants it to seem, you know, YouTube has spent a decade now pitching themselves as a peer to television. Yeah. The new TV. And if you're biggest stars when they want to do a bigger project or a more ambitious project, feel they need to essentially graduate to Netflix or Amazon or Hulu or one of these other services, it doesn't, it doesn't help. It doesn't sort of bolster your case, your equivalent to TV and it bruises the ego a little bit. And if enough people do it, then it starts to create sort of a perception problem for you, right? It's the same as but similar to when, you know, TikTok came around and started becoming the place that people went viral, YouTube felt like it had to respond with shorts because YouTube needed to be seen as the place where sort of new talent was incubated. But that's also an engagement issue. TikTok was a scaled player that was taking enough of this kind of content that it, I think, did actually hurt YouTube or they saw a projection where it hurts YouTube. It's also a free platform. Netflix is not free. No, totally. It is different. That's why it's not the same. But, but YouTube then, so there, there is this question of, do we feel that this is ultimately a problem? And if so, what do we do about it? Yeah. And it's interesting because I don't see it as a real problem for them if these people are cross posting and getting some extra money from Netflix. Is it going to change consumer behavior? Are there enough of these people on Netflix to really change, reduce YouTube as the place you go to watch videos because all these people are still there? It's, if they were going exclusive to Netflix, that would be another thing. I don't think so. And also it, it just, YouTube is one of these platforms and Netflix is like this to some extent too in a different way. Where it's just like, it's sort of too big for a lot of this to matter that people are just going to go to YouTube no matter what. Yeah. It's a utility. You could see the top 10, 20 creators like stop posting to YouTube and I don't think it would really damage the YouTube business that much. There would be a PR problem, which could become a business problem. But it would not immediately be a business problem because you, Mr. Beast, the biggest YouTube creator in the world accounts for such a tiny fraction of viewership on YouTube. Yeah. We would know if they really cared because they would be offering the money to stay. And they're not. Well, yes and no, they are doing their, their quote-unquote shows where they're not, they're sort of indirectly funding programming. Yeah. Like, shot Evans gets treated differently. Brittany Broski gets treated differently than your average YouTuber. They get advertising directed towards them, explain how that works. They get, they get featured at events and they'll, you know, YouTube will allot certain portions of brand dollars for certain initiatives. They did a whole Emmy campaign for Hot ones. I was part of it. I did that whole thing. I did on stage was paid for by YouTube to promote him for Emmys. Now YouTube could argue that this is not responding to Netflix. It's just sort of continuing to elevate what they offer on the platform, much in the same way that them going after NFL Sunday ticket and the Oscars is all about bringing certain premium live programming there that obviously sponsors who are there. One of their three primary constituencies really want. And YouTube has a very checkered history with funding original programming.
it hasn't really worked, the most successful program they had ended up only being a hit for Netflix, not for them, which was Cobra Kai, but is it possible that they choose to do stuff in the future? I think it's possible. Meaning, bring on a slate of originals that they pay extra to be exclusive. I think it's more likely that they do more of these shows thing where they sort of incentivize people to take big swings there and make it possible than directly fund, because directly funding, it's just, it's a hornet nest for them. Well, they could also give a greater share of advertising. They currently give about what, 55% of ads go to these shows. What if they up to 75 for certain people? There's no way that's going to happen. Bad traditions. Yeah, once the agencies learned about that, everybody would have 75. Especially because their peers in sort of social and shorter form video, they'll do shit. YouTube is the most generous with that respect, with respect to that, like Instagram, Instagram is not giving people a 55% revenue share. TikTok, yeah, given people a 55% revenue share. That's, we talked to Kareem from Subway Takes about this. This is why he's doing more stuff for YouTube now than for TikTok, because he can monetize better. Yeah. And YouTube's also in a moment where you look at it in the number of famous people and like former newscasters and athletes and whomever heard us being like, I'll start a YouTube channel. Like, I don't know that they feel particularly threatened right now. They still feel like they're operating from a position of power. Yeah. You gotta have it. I mean, in this media landscape, you kind of gotta have a, a YouTube page if you are in the video business, or if you're being paid by another platform, like these podcasters are. I mean, that's the interesting element here is that Netflix is doing exclusive deals with podcasters. We should also disclose one of those is the Ringer, which produces this show, although not this show. But are those working? You seem to think that this creator initiative is working for Netflix. I'm not so sure. I think that there's a difference between the YouTube creators and the podcasters. I don't think the podcast thing is working. Well, we know, we know what they're disclosing. And they chose not to disclose the viewership number of the podcast. I don't think it's that they chose not to disclose it. I think that the viewership is so small that it doesn't register. Well, they could do, they put in the dumps at the end, all the stuff that doesn't get to a certain level. So they could just throw it all in there and we would see, but they're not doing that. If you look at the viewership for Miss Rachel, what they, what they have gotten historically for Coco Melon, what they are getting with this with Salish and matter, what they're doing with Mark Rober. I think it's pretty undeniable that stuff is working. Well, the Mark Rober show has not debuted yet. No, no, but they have, they also have compilations of past videos. Okay. And all those are doing well and don't cost that much. So to me, that sort of is indisputable that it's working. The other thing I'd say is that what percentage of those, of the total number are those five hits you just mentioned? Well, they haven't done that. Most, they haven't done that. Most of these new deals that they've announced, they've just announced. They're not on the platform. I'm just wondering if, if we can say definitively, this is working. Well, I think the initial deals that they've done, Miss Rachel clearly working, the initial deals that they've done have worked. Now, there is concern, question that as they do more, that those new shows won't see the same boost because they won't be sort of first in the door. But if you add, if you add two or three of these top creators and people watch the shows, Netflix is doing what it always does, they just pour, try to pour fuel on the fire and they do like 20 other deals. So let, I would say the initial wave has been a success. The question will be, is it something that they can build on? Can they take a lot of the fans of these creators and have them come into Netflix more often? That's obviously the goal here. Lucas, I noticed that the ringer fantasy football show did not chart. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Give us a second. I mean, I'm going to rely on you as we approach the, my next fantasy football draft. I finished second in my league last year with a big help from you guys. So I was upset that it didn't include the pods because I thought we'd be top 10, but we were not. Yeah. No, that will be a big telling moment because Craig, I'm going to boost you guys here. You guys surge during August usually when people are stressing about their fantasy team. So we will see if the fantasy show ends up charting during that time. Next to the hawk. Yeah. No pressure. Do you think that it is easier for Netflix to onboard the kind of different YouTube and creator programming and sort of lean into that or easier for YouTube to become a premium? I mean, arguably YouTube is already premium because they have Sunday ticket, which is arguably the most premium product in all of television. They have YouTube TV, which serves up the cable channels that that is premium. I think what you're asking is, is it easier for Netflix to air Dave Portnoy than it is for YouTube to air the diplomat and premium shows like that? What is more likely to happen that Netflix becomes the primary place that people watch bar stool or that YouTube becomes a place that, you know, a major filmmaker wants to release a movie. I think the former rather than the latter because of the branding of YouTube and the eGalit's the sort of populous nature of the platform. The brand is just not curated at all. That's kind of the problem I've had with the Oscars going there is that you're putting the pinnacle of creative excellence in filmmaking on a platform that literally will accept a video of your dog peeing outside. There's a brand fit problem there. Obviously, the algorithm does a lot of this and they're going to do marketing for the Oscars that's going to present this premium. That's the issue I've had there. On Netflix, it's much easier to, the brand can be a little bit more elastic and bring on this curated set. Don't get me wrong, and I talked with this with Michael Boris on Friday. There are brand issues with Netflix trying to be YouTube. If they go too far into this, I think it does hurt the brand a little, but they have to be very selective about what totally. Variety actors on actors, sure. That makes sense on Netflix. I can see people watching it. Those are pop-up videos that come on when you click on an article. That's not premium. That's just celebrity. You can do that, but you can't do too much of that where it completely changes the brand. Sure. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, campaigns slow down, insights get buried, and opportunities get missed. That's why Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. To learn more, check out Accenture.com/Spotify. Related, because you and I have both written talked about this. So much of the discussion in streaming and TV right now, in part because we do get these kind of easy meals and updates, is basically the warfare engagement. That's a big reason we're having these conversations. Netflix's engagement is growing, but not as much as they'd like. They're broadening into other areas. YouTube has become sort of the king of engagement. I think you and I both agree that there is no way that Netflix or any traditional Hollywood company can compete with YouTube on engagement, right? Totally agree. So what are they doing? What do they do? And other than like, you know, getting us to just talk about revenue and profit. Like, how should we think? Is there a different way we should be thinking or talking about engagement as sort of YouTube and free eat more and more of that pie? I think it's honestly what they're teasing in their earnings report. They're teasing this not all hours are created equal. I mean, if you talk to the Netflix people, they point out that a lot of the YouTube engagement is coming from music or ambient videos, the yoga video that I use twice a week. Yeah. And Netflix could all of a sudden Netflix could put Netflix and chill, fall asleep with Netflix, where it's just a video of pleasant sites and pleasant sounds that you have on all night while you sleep. They could do that, but then they're then they're just going full YouTube. Right. So there is a better argument to make that this is not all created equal and they should be hammering that home. It's sort of ironically similar to the argument that the broadcasting cable networks used to make when Netflix and all these others came about. It's like, well, we're a safe environment here. You know, you put your ads on YouTube. You never know what Nazi you're going to be up against here. You know, we have no Nazis or at least we used to not have any Nazis. Right. They could go really hardball with the marketing. Yeah. I mean, Netflix has been making that argument. And I, in fairness to them, when Ted Cerandos had those comments, like, I forget if I was earlier this year or late last year, the media response would generally like, oh, you're just jealous of these guys stop trashing them. Yeah. Okay. But that can be true. And also, like, he can be justified in doing it. Yeah. Well, obviously they want advertisers to pay a higher rate.
rate for advertising on Netflix than anyone would pay on YouTube and they need to drive home the reason why that Netflix costs what it does and YouTube doesn't, right? Yeah. So that is certainly the case that they're making. Yeah. And that's what goes away if they launch a free tier also. Well, they are not going to launch a free tier in the US. You don't think so? No. That would, if you, if you listen to what they're saying, yeah, they're, we talked about this on Friday, they're saying it makes more sense in other markets where they're not as known where they're not as known where there is not a lot of disposable income. If you look at places where some of YouTube's biggest markets in terms of users, not necessarily in terms of revenue, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, these are places with, you know, hundreds of millions of people in India's case more than a billion people. Most of them don't have very much money and they're not going to pay for a video service. They're just not used to paying for content, right? Or, they, you know, they, they don't have credit cards, it just is, is complicated. And YouTube is very easy to sign up for and use. Is there a way for Netflix to do that and Netflix to, for exposure and Netflix has to do it in a way where they cannot, they, they're not cannibalizing their ad tier, right? If they did it here, a lot of those low-cost people on the ad tier might just shift to the free and that would cost Netflix money because there's just no way they're going to make as much money from a free tier. I agree with that, but they could also see it as a way to bring in a bunch of new people that can then be upsold once they give a taste of the content. They could, but if you're already at like 85% penetration in the US, as they say, there's just not that much room to grow. But if there's a market where you have like 1% penetration or 5% penetration, when there's very, there's far less harm, the ad tier is where it's at for them right now. They want you to increase the percentage of revenue that comes into the ad tier and having that front door where you can monetize people might do that. It's also why it feels inevitable that they have to go for something bigger in sports, but including NBC Universal. Well, that's, that's the whole thing. I was thinking more like how seriously did they look at the world cup, but yeah, yeah, for next time, but that's four years from now. Yeah. What about Sunday night football that's coming up next year, probably? No. If they can, I still think there's probably an arrangement for them to make with NBC where NBC gives up some games to Netflix, but I don't know, you know, I don't know what that, how that shakes out. Yeah. Or Peacock, the games on Peacock are available on Netflix, something like that. Or Peacock is distributed on Netflix. Sure. Yes. Which we know is an option. All right. To bring it back to YouTube here, what do you think? Do you think, and I know you don't like this comparison, but do you think that Netflix is more likely to be YouTube before YouTube is Netflix? Oh, the question I asked you. Yeah. Um, I think it is easier for Netflix to ingest top YouTube creators than it is for YouTube to get top filmmakers. Yeah. The economics just isn't there, but I also, but I think it is easier for YouTube to become a home for premium programming than it is for Netflix to become like a totally, like a UGC platform. Right. Right. If they're all the sudden tomorrow, we're a tile on Netflix that is, you know, YouTube shows or YouTube premium or whatever, or you can, anyone can upload here. That's not going to happen. Right. I just don't think it will. I think the odds of like, you know, YouTube taking the rights to a $100 million drama are higher than that at a certain point. You do. Something either is going to happen. I think that they're both sort of like nibbling at the margins and I think that they both can thrive if they sort of stay in their own lanes, but like YouTube just wants to get seen as a little more premium and Netflix just wants to boost engagement and some other times of day. And I think these are sort of can be addressed incrementally rather than having to fundamentally change who they are, but that's my two cents. So you think that they will not go after more of the big ticket items like the Oscars and NFL. YouTube at YouTube. No, I think that they probably, if we're talking about live programming, they're clearly interested in it and I think they will go for more. But there are clearly limits, right? Like people were surprised that, you know, they didn't end up getting an NBA package. It doesn't. It seems like they might not end up with any, you know, Netflix got more NFL games, not YouTube. Amazon remains the only tech company that has like really gone all in on sports. And so do I think YouTube will try to get more probably, but I don't know what that is. Like if you could sell the, if FIFA sold the global rights to the World Cup YouTube, if I were YouTube, I would spend literally any amount of money to get that. Yeah. But whining and dining, just pure bribes to FIFA, YouTube as the home of the World Cup. It's like 50 million, 50 billion dollars. Sure. Like we'll make sure that's like a drop in the bucket for them. Yeah. Well, but that probably won't happen. No, I don't think so. Did we answer whether or not, I feel like you guys are talking about what not to quote Jurassic Park, but we've been, we've been preoccupied with what these companies could do and not what they should do. Like do you think Netflix should be doing this and YouTube should be doing this or you think that you just not be doing any of it? The creator stuff to me makes sense for Netflix, if they are selective about it, like the problem sometimes with Netflix and they're doing it with in the pods too is like they struggle sometimes to figure out like what is the appropriate scale and to create sort of critical mass in an area, they end up doing a lot of deals and it should feel special that you're on Netflix. And increasingly with these pod deals and these greater deals, it's feeling less special. Yeah. I think that they should try to do ones where they both bring on the videos they've already put up but sort of try to come up with a new spin on it. The need to kind of embrace some of these creators of large followings is sort of a no-brainer for Netflix. For YouTube, I think what they're doing now for now also makes sense like big live events people will go to YouTube for I don't think it's going to make sense for them to try to make the diplomat. Yeah. The economics just don't work. I mean, Craig and I were talking about this last week about how there's this feeling that sports documentary program is going to go over to Netflix because you can get a brand to put up the money to create the programming and then you put it on YouTube and monetize it there. But a brand is not going to pay for a hundred million dollar ten episode drama series starring Carrie Russell. It's just not going to do that and the guilds are not going to let people spend less money just because the platform is YouTube and not Netflix. So these shows are going to be prohibitively expensive right now and to the current models to put on Netflix, maybe someday, but right now it just doesn't make sense to do this kind of thing. I mean YouTube Swallowed has swallowed certain aspects of television, right? It's, you know, it's kind of YouTube slash podcasting is they've swallowed the late night show. They've sort of swallowed daytime, a lot of daytime, a lot of that stuff is there and Netflix has kind of swallowed prime time, right? And now they're both kind of nibbling into the other's lane. YouTube has swallowed the people falling down genre and a lot of music consumption. Yes. All right. Thank you. We are back with the call sheet, Craig, just as quickly as we posted our interview yesterday with the Paramount top lawyer, we have a ruling on the issue of whether to grant a temporary restraining order. The judge said she is indeed granting the TRO in the Paramount versus California case. But you thought this was possible, if not likely, that there would be an initial 14-day pause. Yes. And that's exactly what we have. 14 days. She can extend it by another 14. And the interesting thing is that she has set a August third date for the hearing on the preliminary injunction. Now that is the much more serious and interesting hearing because if that is granted, it means the judge believes there's a likelihood of success on the merits of the case and the injunction would be in place for the duration of the litigation, which would be very bad for Paramount because obviously they want to close this deal before the ticking fee kicks in in October, which would cost them $650 million per quarter. And that money goes back to who, the shareholders? The shareholders of Warner Discovery, because it was part of the negotiation. And as we talked about with Megan, they're arguing that that would be irreparable harm to them and the judge doesn't seem to be into that. Interesting, there is a 14-page ruling with this TRO decision. And my interpretation of it is it's not great for Paramount. I mean, it's still early and she is inviting argument on all of the issues. She does say that there has been a "strong showing" specifically on the issue of wide release film distribution, which I actually thought was among the weaker arguments in the state's case. Remember, there were three markets where the states claim that there is market inappropriate market dominance. television distribution, wide releases of films, and they so-called block
Buster releases of films. She's only focusing on one tier, the wide release of films because that's all it takes is one to get yourself a teara. And do you think she is just basing this off of past mega mergers like Disney Fox and is is that data just too strong? She doesn't really tip her hand here. She's just saying that the presumption here of illegality under the Philadelphia National Bank standard is there where the combination of these two entities would give them a, I think it's high 20s, perhaps even 30% of a market. So she's just saying, listen, based on what I'm seeing here, this invokes the Philadelphia National Bank standard and we've got a deal with it. So I'm granting the TRO. Well, so it's only you thought this was going to happen. So now that it has, does this change your opinion at all on what you think, how do you think this will end up? It does actually. In my prediction, I'm not going to predict who's going to win because we have not seen all the evidence. We've not seen the arguments. That's what this is this preliminary injunction hearing is for. But I do think that the states enter this hearing at an advantage. They now see what this judge is looking for. And there's a very interesting footnote in the case where she specifically says that the whole argument about market efficiencies based on streaming, you know, this entire market of television is now moving towards streaming and this merger is pro competition when it comes to streaming. She is rejecting that argument, essentially saying you can't make a argument about another market, the market for streaming, we're dealing with the market for these specific three markets that have been alleged and streaming is not part of that. Right. That's what Bonta said. He's like, well, we're not, that's not an issue we're focused on. Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's a little bit more nuanced than that because it's basically just saying you can't argue that another market is efficient when we're litigating the efficiency of the market at issue. But it doesn't mean that streaming will not come into the discussion of what the market for television distribution is if we get to that. I'm surprised because obviously you, you know, the paramount went hard on this and the whole notion that streaming is hovering over all of this. Interesting issue would make that ruling that she doesn't want to talk about streaming. Could this just lead to a minimum guarantee of wide releases and blockbusters per year that parent warning amount needs to make? Well, you're, yeah, you're getting towards the remedies and the potential settlement here, but we're not there yet. I think the paramount side may have a little bit more fire under them to, to settle this now. But you know, if you're Rob Bonta, maybe you are excited about that preliminary injunction hearing because if you get that, then you have super big leverage over paramount. And what do you think the odds are of that happening in conjunction? I don't know. I mean, I think they go into it with an advantage. That's all I'm going to predict. I'm not going to say whether who's going to win here. Hopefully when you're obviously you are at, you are not in your regular spot. You are off at the airport. I'm at a Matt Bellany undisclosed location. Yeah. You are getting, you're off for some medical tourism for a week. But when we come back and it's August 3rd, we will have this studio with and perhaps then we'll have a clear picture. All right. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest Lucas Shaw, producer Craig Horbeck. All right. It is Jesse Lopez and Stefano Sanchez. I know one of the you will see you one more time this week.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Netflix is aggressively acquiring top YouTube creators and podcasters to boost engagement, with deals including Nick D. Giovanni, Hot Ones, and Miss Rachel, which are already performing well on the platform.
While YouTube does not face immediate financial harm from these moves, there is growing concern over brand perception—especially as creators move to Netflix, which undermines YouTube’s positioning as a peer to traditional television.
The shift reflects a strategic battle where Netflix gains access to viral content and creator audiences at lower cost, while YouTube struggles to compete on scale and prestige, though it remains dominant in engagement and user reach.
Summary:
Netflix is expanding its content ecosystem by securing exclusive deals with top YouTube creators and podcasters such as Nick D. Giovanni, Hot Ones, and Miss Rachel, leveraging their massive followings to drive engagement and viewership. These moves are effective in the short term, with shows like Miss Rachel performing well and costing significantly less than traditional programming.
However, YouTube remains resilient, with strong user engagement and ad revenue growth, suggesting minimal immediate financial impact. Despite this, the shift challenges YouTube’s brand identity as a premium, TV-level platform, raising concerns about perceived devaluation of its creative ecosystem. While creators benefit from additional income, the broader industry sees a strategic realignment: Netflix gains access to viral content and audiences, while YouTube resists the trend by focusing on live events and premium programming.
The economic model suggests that large-scale, high-budget content like major films or live sports is still out of reach for YouTube due to costs and industry gatekeeping. Meanwhile, a temporary restraining order has been granted in the Paramount vs. California market case, signaling early judicial skepticism about the merger’s market dominance, especially in film distribution.
Though the full outcome remains uncertain, the ruling gives the state a strategic advantage and suggests potential regulatory scrutiny of media consolidation. Ultimately, both platforms are evolving—Netflix targeting creator-driven content, and YouTube attempting to maintain premium credibility—while maintaining distinct, complementary roles in the streaming landscape.
FAQs
Netflix is signing exclusive deals with top YouTube creators like Nick D. Giovanni, Rhett and Link, and Hot Ones, offering them additional revenue by making their content available on Netflix, including original adaptations or compilations.
While some top creators are moving to Netflix, YouTube does not appear to be losing significant viewership or engagement. The impact is limited because most creators are not exclusive, and YouTube's core business remains strong.
YouTube appears to be divided on the issue—while the platform doesn't face immediate financial harm, there are concerns about brand perception and the optics of creators leaving for more premium platforms.
Yes, initial results like the success of 'Miss Rachel' and compilations from Salish and Jordan show that the strategy is working, with strong viewership and low production costs.
It's unlikely that YouTube will shift to becoming a premium home for major films or live events due to economic and brand inconsistencies, though it has already gained traction in areas like music and lifestyle content.
Netflix aims to boost engagement and attract fans by leveraging the massive reach of popular creators, offering them new monetization opportunities while expanding its content library.
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