OpenAI Bought TBPN. I Saw This Play Before in 2006 at Viacom.
Storytelling creates moments but infrastructure captures value. OpenAI is repeating a mistake I watched from inside MTV Networks twenty years ago. TBPN is likely doomed in the long term.
The most interesting detail of OpenAI’s surprise acquisition of online talk show TBPN is the rationale, which was outlined in a Substack post. TBPN has “built a real presence not by chasing scoops, but by leading on ideas – exploring the why, the how, and what’s next. The opportunity is to support and scale that, especially for developers and entrepreneurs who are building with AI.”
TBPN had captured a small but valuable audience—70,000 viewers per episode across three-hour weekday shows on various online platforms.. The Wall Street Journal reported it earned around $5 million in revenue from advertising last year and was on track to make more than $30 million in revenue in 2026.
OpenAI’s move is analogous to its short-lived business plan to integrate Sora into the ChatGPT app last month—putting TBPN video one-click away from a global audience of 920 million weekly active ChatGPT users will help the show to grow and OpenAI to drive the conversation around its brand.
TBPN founders were rewarded with an extraordinary sales price in “the low hundreds of millions”, according to The Financial Times. In exchange they gave up advertising sales, sponsorships from third parties and editorial independence.
Something I previously wrote about OpenAI’s move to integrate Sora into ChatGPT applies here, too: “OpenAI’s move confirms that storytelling creates moments but infrastructure captures value.”
OpenAI is defining those moments as both scoops and “idea-driven conversations”. It argues where those conversations happen and who drives them “matters”.
This point also echoes something I wrote on Wednesday.
