I am traveling today so this email will be short.
First, I have gotten good feedback on Wednesday's essay, "The Linklater Problem". It is a longer essay that's intended to provoke discussion, and it will make for a good, short weekend read.
Second, some housekeeping: My predictions for 2023 will be published in my monthly opinion essay/"column" for The Information next week, and we're aiming for Wednesday.
Next week will be the last three mailings of 2022. As per usual, if anything "seismic" related to any of the Four Trends happens over the holidays, then I will write about it.
For these three mailings, I plan to do the following:
Monday: Revisit my Predictions for 2022 from last December
Wednesday: A summary of lessons from the Four Trends of Q4 2022, and
Friday: Some key trends I'm considering for Q1 2023.
Key Takeaway
YouTube creators "would make Walt Disney proud" with their flywheel business models. And YouTube is opening the black to make it easier to understand why.
Total words: 800
Total time reading: 3 minutes
Jason Kilar's WSJ Opinion Essay
Former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar emerged eight months after his farewell press tour with an opinion piece on "the Chaotic Streaming Wars – and How This Hollywood Story May End". It's a conservatively written piece that doubles down on his vision of "three must-have general entertainment streaming services", predicting "Expect two or three major mergers and/or acquisitions involving entertainment companies in the coming 24 months".
It also fleshes out some things he had told me in a Twitter exchange back in August: "Beloved characters and worlds matter. So too does community.” He argues in the piece "Those entertainment companies that earn robust, authentic digital relationships with customers have the chance to deliver profoundly positive experiences and financially meaningful results."
I was surprised by his description of YouTube and TikTok as "widespread new habits" – they are increasingly perceived by audiences and advertisers as "premium content". I asked him on Twitter why he hadn't described them as threats to Hollywood. He responded that he agreed that they are "absolutely" threats and added: "Anything that earns a consumer’s investment of time is a competitive threat. And it is not just time but money in some cases too."
He added that YouTube and TikTok creators understand the business opportunity he describes in the opinion piece: "One of the biggest opportunities in entertainment is to delight the biggest fans in ways a one-size-fits-all model is not designed to do."
He then suggested they may understand this opportunity better than Hollywood: "The emerging roster of modern creators clearly gets this and has leaned into it from the start. Walt Disney would be proud of them." Of creators he follows closely, Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast was on his list, and Blumhouse he follows for Hollywood innovation.
The 0.1% of YouTube Creators
MrBeast has been a frequent example in my writings on why Hollywood's future may lie in the creator economy. But, what has never quite added up to me is, if there are 2MM creators in YouTube's Partner Program, and Jimmy Donaldson is in the top 0.1% of earners, then there are are 2,000 other high-earning creators we should be discussing.
Who are they?
I asked a friend at YouTube and he pointed me in two different directions. First, YouTube's 12th Annual Streamy Awards took place recently. The Streamy Awards "honors excellence in online video and the creators behind it in over forty-five awards categories."
He said the nominees and the winners reflect some good examples of the top 0.1% of earners. He also pointed me to a blog post, "A year on YouTube: 2022’s top trending videos & creators in the US." It offers an overview of the videos that went "mainstream" in the U.S. in 2022.
As either a weekend activity or as something to do over the holidays, I recommend both as rabbit holes to go down that offer a better sense of how "premium content" is emerging and evolving on YouTube as we head into 2023.
But it also reinforces the disconnect between what Kilar is seeing – "A constellation of small flywheels" in the tradition of Walt Disney – and the frequency of MrBeast as an example of those flywheels. There is so much more going on, and heading into 2023, YouTube is becoming less and less of a black box.
If you're wondering where it's all headed, it's becoming increasingly easier to get answers.