Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends, updates, business moves, and more from around the creator industry.

This week, a Fortnite legend returns, an Irish gamer rustles up some screams, and a long-running showcase of exemplary digital work rounds out 2025.

Creator commotion

Tfue is back on Twitch. The man born Turner Tenney was an OG Fortnite star, but his streaming career took a backseat as he focused more on non-gaming endeavors. Now, Tfue is back on Twitch. He said he’s “nervous” to resume streaming after going two-and-a-half years without a consistent schedule, but his passion for gaming has been reignited.

MrBeast plans to offer financial advice on a new channel. During an interview with Jon Youshaei, MrBeast claimed that he wants to help his fans increase their financial literacy. If those videos turn MrBeast’s money-managing fans into customers for his upcoming financial services venture, I’m sure he won’t complain.

The Young Turks’ YouTube channel turns 20. The progressive political organization was YouTube’s first partner channel and an early source of internet-based punditry long before Hasan Piker (a former TYT personality) got big on Twitch. TYT will celebrate 20 years on YouTube with a live event on its website. The festivities will kick off at 8 PM ET on December 22.

Pop culture minute

Jacksepticeye is an executive producer for an indie horror film. Shortly after Markiplier announced the theatrical release date for his film Iron Lung, his buddy Seán McLoughlin announced a horror flick of his own. Godmother, which features a cast of scream queens, will be a thriller set in the woods.

Take a good look, and what do you see? It’s a Dr. Seuss book, partnered with Blippi! Moonbug’s colorful character (portrayed by Stevin John) will celebrate Christmas through an official collab with The Grinch. He’ll invite his friend Meekah to join him for the second phase of the partnership, a Cat in the Hat video that will celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday. The videos can be found on both the Blippi and Dr. Seuss YouTube channels.

Kinigra Deon has the need for Speed. The creator-turned-independent-showrunner has thrived on Tubi, and her work with the AVOD platform is just beginning. In tandem with Spotter, Deon is bringing Speed to Tubi. The new original series will tell the story of rival street-racing crews in a gritty city setting.

Platform headlines

Vimeo’s “Best of the Year” class is as arty as you’d expect. In a year defined by an ownership change, Vimeo is taking time to celebrate its continued commitment to independent artists. With its Staff Picks, it has traditionally served as an arbiter of digital-age taste, and it carried on that role with its Best of the Year selections for 2025.

TikTok makes its app more accessible. Users who are sensitive to light and sound now have more control over their TikTok experience. Options to turn off High Dynamic Range and reduce motion effects will come in handy for those who suffer from migraines.

Snapchat’s Quick Cut turns your memories into a shareable montage. The app’s new video editing option is powered by Lens and turns existing libraries into a newer, snappier (pardon the pun) format. Quick Cut even syncs its creations with the beat of the background music — can CapCut do that?

The biz

Caleb Hearon inks podcast with Wave. The comedian with a big TikTok following is teaming up with digital entertainment company Wave, which will handle distribution, marketing, and ad sales for Hearon’s podcast So True. The first So True episode under the Wave umbrella premiered on December 18.

TikTok found time during the holiday season to restructure its ecommerce unit. The Black Friday weekend brought massive sales figures to TikTok Shop. To capitalize on those gains, the app is reorganizing its ecommerce and data science teams. One stated reason for the change is to encourage AI-related collaboration between teams.

PrestonPlayz hands over ad sales duties to Studio71. The experienced digital media company will get to work selling ads across the channels in Preston’s The Best Never Rest portfolio. That network reaches 90 million social media followers, including 17 million subscribers on Preston’s namesake YouTube hub.

The internet is a strange place

How did an unaffiliated streamer end up on the White House website? Financial expert Matt Farley says he has no idea why his stream appeared on a section of the website typically reserved for live broadcasts of the President’s addresses. Occam’s razor would suggest that someone in the administration is a fan of Farleys who pushed a button that wasn’t meant to be pushed.

Do we really want to call hockey rinks “boy aquariums”? That’s the nickname used in a TikTok trend that has divided sports fans. Is the meme a tip of the hat to good-looking skaters or a step back for women in sports? And should it be “aquariums” or “aquaria” anyway?

Neal Mohan limits the amount of time his kids spend on social media. The YouTube CEO is one of several tech leaders who understand the mental health risks of excessive social media consumption. It would be great if platforms could limit kids’ access to that sort of material, and we’re all trying to find the people who can do that.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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What if, instead of trying to hide the dislike button, YouTube put a less pejorative spin on its thumbs-down icon? That’s the question the platform is exploring via an ongoing experiment on YouTube Shorts.

According to the YouTube Support thread that catalogs ongoing tests, some Shorts users are seeing a new layout that reimagines the role of the humble dislike. Instead of keeping the dislike button on the Shorts sidebar, the experimental design moves it to a pop-up menu, where it has been merged with the “Not Interested” option.

Some users in the experimental group will see the “Dislike” title, while others will see “Not Interested.” YouTube’s goal, as stated in the Support thread, is to determine whether users use those terms “interchangeably.”

Though dislikes have long been incorporated into social media feeds, trolls and other bad actors have weaponized the thumbs down. Female creators have been particularly affected by those campaigns, as their videos are more likely to be dislike-bombed when compared to videos uploaded by men.

In 2021, YouTube responded to that concerning trend by hiding dislikes on its videos. Viewers could still give a thumbs-down to clips they didn’t care for, but dislike sums were taken out of the public eye and moved to creator dashboards.

That move was met with immediate backlash. Some critics raised moral questions related to the ethics of hiding dissent. Developers hastily built browser extensions that make dislike counts reappear.

Shorts was still a brand-new format when the dislike change went into effect, so YouTube’s understanding of how Shorts users perceive the button is incomplete. Though the dislike option initially appeared on the Shorts sidebar, YouTube announced months ago that it would start testing layouts that depreciated the thumbs-down.

The current experiment suggests that YouTube might have found a simple solution to its dislike problem. Rather than hiding its most negative form of public feedback, YouTube can simply rename it. The dislike button could become “Not Interested” in the near future — unless of course, users are not interested in that particular adjustment.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle
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Earlier this week, Netflix announced it had sealed separate but similar multiyear deals with two major podcast producers: Barstool Sports and iHeartMedia. Those deals will pull new episodes of shows like My Favorite Murder, The Breakfast Club, Bobby Bones Presents: The Bobbycast, Pardon My Take, The Ryen Russillo Podcast, and Spittin’ Chiclets off YouTube and take them exclusively to Netflix.

With that move, Netflix–which has long been rankled by YouTube’s dominant run at the top of U.S. streaming service charts–did two things.

First, it reaffirmed that despite its chief executives trying very hard to draw lines between their “premium” “spectacle” content and YouTubers’ videos, it continues to consider Google’s platform a zero-cost, incubating vat of new talent, ripe for plucking whenever convenient.

And second, it pitched itself as a direct competitor in the video podcast space, which till now had mostly been defined by competition between YouTube and Spotify.

As we wrote, Netflix didn’t ‘just’ pick up a smaller show, or decide to sign creators to launch new shows on its streamer. Instead, it went after big dogs that already make some of YouTube’s most-watched video podcasts, and will probably produce more in the future, given the financial runway and talent (and assuming video podcasts continue to be a thing).

But YouTube isn’t taking that lying down. On Dec. 18, a couple days after Netflix’s twin announcements, YouTube published a short, single-purpose blog post. That single purpose? To convey exactly how much podcast watch time YouTube is banking on TVs alone, and remind Netflix that it may take creators’ shows, but it’ll still lag behind on Nielsen’s charts.

“Looking back at 2025 as a breakthrough year for podcasts on YouTube, one thing stands out: viewership on TVs is higher than ever,” YouTube wrote. “In fact, viewers watched over 700 million hours of podcasts on living room devices in October 2025, up from 400 million hours from just a year prior.”

In addition, a YouTube spokesperson tells us the platform “has seen a steady growth of podcast consumption in a year filled with highlights.”

Those highlights include:

• YouTube surpassing 1 billion monthly active viewers for podcasts, which happened in February
• YouTube launching its own Weekly Top Podcast charts
• and YouTube rolling out an updated “Shows” UI meant to better organize series and give video podcast TV viewership a slicker feel

With all that in mind, it has been a banner year for YouTube on the podcast front (and some other fronts, too). And while we can’t say for sure that YouTube published this data as a direct rebuttal to Netflix’s poaching, the timing is certainly…coincidental.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, Netflix, YouTube by James Hale
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An internal memo sent to TikTok employees has confirmed a rumor that has been swirling for months: ByteDance is about to sell the U.S. version of its social video app to a White House-approved ownership group.

In the memo, which was viewed by Axios, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told his staff that TikTok U.S. will be sold to a consortium led by tech company Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Emerati-backed investors at MGX. The deal still needs to be officially rubber-stamped by the Chinese government (more on that in a bit), but Chew wrote that the deal is expected to close on January 22, 2026.

If ByteDance and the U.S. government can shake hands by that date, they will end a year-long regulatory saga that left TikTok’s Stateside operating status hanging in the balance. One of President Trump’s first actions after retaking the Oval Office was a stay on the law that would have forced TikTok to choose between a divestment and a federal ban. Trump’s negotiations with China took longer than expected, necessitating additional delays that tested the constitutional bounds of the President’s power.

By September, however, Trump claimed that the deal with ByteDance was essentially complete. Reports claimed that the U.S. ownership group would license TikTok’s technology to create a new recommendation algorithm for the spun-off app. Meanwhile, TikTok users questioned how the upcoming schism would affect their ability to watch American creators.

There are plenty of questions that won’t be answered until the new version of TikTok U.S. launches, but the internal memo outlined the ownership structure that will govern the new app. Oracle will serve as the shepherd for the U.S. user data, fulfilling the role it has sought since the days of Project Texas. Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX will collectively own 45% of the new company, Axios reported.

The price tag for the deal — $14 billion — has drawn scrutiny. Critics have wondered how an app that generates billions in revenue could sell for such a lowball number.

The memo also gives us some potential answers to that question. ByteDance will retain ownership of nearly 20% of the new business, with “affiliates of existing ByteDance investors” claiming close to one-third of the company. An important wrinkle is that “TikTok global’s U.S. entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.” Translation: ByteDance will still have access to TikTok’s ballooning ecommerce revenue.

Access to the app’s algorithmic recommendations and moderation tools seems to be the top priority for the U.S. ownership group. They will get the measure of cultural control they want without having to overpay for it, and the rest of us can be free from a regulatory battle that has seemed as if it will never end.

The last major hurdle is the Chinese government. Officials in Beijing previously indicated they would support ByteDance’s negotiations, but geopolitical friction has become an existential threat for the deal. If Trump wants to be known as the President who saved TikTok, he’ll need to be on his best behavior before January 22.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, TikTok by Sam Gutelle
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As social media creators become major players in Hollywood, Tribeca is officially recognizing their work. The company behind the annual Tribeca Film Festival has announced that social stars will be formally invited to present their work in the Tribeca N.O.W. category.

Beginning with the 2026 festival — which will run from June 3 to June 14 — creators will be part of Tribeca N.O.W. (the acronym stands for New Online Work.) With that decision, Tribeca will become the first major U.S. film festival to highlight creator-led productions alongside traditional festival fare.

Creators have until February 5 to submit to Tribeca N.O.W. “Storytelling is evolving—and so is Tribeca,” said Tribeca Enterprises Co-Founder and Co-Chair Jane Rosenthal in a statement. “For 25 years, we’ve been drawn to new forms of creative expression and the artists pushing those boundaries. Today’s creators are among the most inventive storytellers working in any medium. Expanding Tribeca NOW honors how audiences experience stories today—on every screen, in every form. That spirit of reinvention is what Tribeca was built on.”

Tribeca N.O.W. kicked off in 2014 as an early showcase for artists who were releasing new work online. One of the category’s biggest success stories to date is High Maintenance, a hit web series that moved to HBO with an assist from Tribeca.

The creators behind High Maintenance were TV vets who chose to operate online. That career path has been typical for Tribeca N.O.W. entrants up to this point, but organizers have slowly brought social-native creators into the fold as well. In 2018, for example, YouTube stars like Ari Fitz and Matt Steffanina participated in a N.O.W. Creator Market that took place within the Triangle Below Canal.

That market was part of a broader, long-term effort to unite the Tribeca Film Festival with the creator economy. After hosting a Digital Creators Market in 2016, Tribeca teamed up with Whalar Group in 2024 to bring a creator vertical to its eponymous event. The 2025 edition of the festival made even more space for creators, and that trend will continue into 2026.

Tribeca is inviting creators to screen Hollywood-grade work, and those social stars are rising to the challenges. Success stories like the RackaRacka horror flick Talk To Me have turned creators into hot commodities for buzzy distributors like A24 and Neon. Chris Stuckmann fed the creator-to-director pipeline with his 2025 horror film Shelby Oaks, and gamers like Markiplier and Jacksepticeye are poised to continue that trend into 2026 and beyond.

Tribeca is positioning itself as one of the leading voices championing the creator-filmmaker movement. If the Creator N.O.W. update goes well, YouTube might be more than the Oscars host in 2029 — it could find its homegrown talent on the nominee list, too.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, Tribeca Film Festival by Sam Gutelle
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In 2025, creators started occupying prominent positions in the broader pop culture sphere. Fixated wants to keep the good times rolling into 2026, so it has restocked its war chest as it heads into the new year. The talent management firm that works with creators like Sketch and the Botez Sisters has announced $50 million of follow-on funding from Eldridge Ventures.

The transaction equips Fixated with a deep reservoir of available capital, which the firm plans to deploy across divisions like representation, content, distribution, and creator infrastructure. The company also plans to onboard new leaders in creative, operational, and technical roles.

According to a press release, Fixated’s ultimate goal is to become “the industry’s definitive vertically integrated creator and content machine.” Its creator partners, who collectively reach 140 million subscribers, are integral to that mission.

“Legacy models aren’t broken, they’re obsolete. We’re not here to upgrade, we’re here to transform the industry,” said Fixated Co-Founder and CEO Zach Katz in a statement. “We’ve built a new model that raises the bar for creators, platforms, and brands. With this capital, we’re scaling infrastructure, locking in strategic acquisitions, and adding senior firepower to expand monetization, increase production, and fuel long-term growth.”

Katz, the former President and COO of FaZe Clan, teamed up with TalentX veteran Jason Wilhelm to launch Fixated in 2024. The firm’s genesis was informed by a simple proposition: That two execs with strong digital representation experience (and deep creator rosters to match) could build a new type of management firm. That renaissance is powered by creator-owned IP, which is a main pillar of Fixated’s operations.

Eldridge Ventures led a $12.8 million funding round that landed in Fixated’s coffers earlier this year. Now, the venture firm led by Chairman and CEO Todd Boehly — who is also the Chairman of prestigious London football club Chelsea — is deepening its investment in Katz and Wilhelm’s company.

In a statement of his own, Boehly described the current creator economy infrastructure as a “fragmented” system. His investment will help pave the proverbial roads and bridges Fixated will use to lead creators down the path to success in 2026 and beyond.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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YouTube and Billboard can’t agree on the best way to count digital viewership for the latter company’s pop music rankings, so YouTube is taking its proverbial ball and going home. The video hub has chosen to withdraw its data from the Billboard charts as a protest against recent adjustments to the music publication’s weighting formula.

Viewership data from YouTube was first factored into the Billboard charts in 2013. The move seemed uncontroversial on the surface; with its embrace of YouTube, Billboard accounted for the shifting media diet of the average music consumer.

Immediately, however, the YouTube data warped the charts. Baauer’s ‘Harlem Shake,’ an unassuming EDM tune that happened to be the soundtrack for a tidal wave of memes, shot to the top of the Hot 100.

The chart-topping performance of the ‘Harlem Shake’ exemplified the inherent flaws of Billboard’s formula. The song didn’t owe its popularity to intrinsic qualities, but rather to its role in a viral fad. In theory, any other EDM song with a big drop could have been the soundtrack for that meme. The ‘Harlem Shake’ just happened to occupy that role.

The importance of the Billboard charts depends on their ability to accurately reflect cultural tastes, and with a 2018 update, the publication tried to move closer to reality. It increased the weight of listens that came from subscription-based streaming services (such as Apple Music or Spotify), thus limiting the importance of ad-supported streams on platforms like YouTube.

A recent blog post published by Billboard forecasted future changes to the formula. Beginning in 2026, on-demand streams of both the ad-supported and subscription-based varieties will be weighted more favorably in comparison to album sales.

That change will actually tighten the ratio between ad-supported streams and subscription-based streams, but the update doesn’t go far enough for YouTube’s liking. The official stance of YouTube Head of Music Lyor Cohen is that “every play should count equally,” and since Billboard won’t commit to that equilibrium, YouTube is pulling its data from the charts.

“Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported,” Cohen wrote in a blog post. “This doesn’t reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription.”

Rather than working with Billboard, YouTube is promoting its own music charts, which it updates on a weekly basis. Cohen wrote that the in-house charts identify “what music is making waves on YouTube,” but given how much the platform seems to be exaggerating its viewership numbers these days, it’s fair to question whether the accounting of those charts is any more fair than Billboard’s version.

Ultimately, in the fragmented pop culture reality we live in, it’s hard to say whether any particular track can dominate the zeitgeist. Both Billboard and YouTube use flawed methodologies to inform their estimates, and working separately from one another won’t change that truth.

Filed under: Articles, Billboard, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle
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As gaming platforms like Roblox become video hubs, YouTube is engaging in a bit of tit-for-tat. The company that launched a gaming library titled Playables in 2024 is now beta testing an AI-powered tool that makes it easy for creators to develop and launch their own video games.

Playables Builder, as the tool is known, was developed using Google’s Gemini 3 AI model. Users feed the tool text, image, and video prompts, and it does the heavy lifting on the coding side. As its name implies, Playables Builder is designed to deliver its completed titles to YouTube’s gaming hub.

In 2023, YouTube moved to capitalize on its long-prominent gaming category by collecting a host of casual titles for Playables. The hub officially launched about a year later and has since leveled up through the addition of multiplayer functionality and other improvements.

A separate trend has seen YouTube creators become more curious about the ins and outs of the gaming industry. Interactive YouTube games date back to the platform’s early years, when enterprising creators used annotations to design choose-your-own-adventure narratives. Recent games with ties to the YouTube community are a bit more sophisticated than that. The critic known as Dunkey, for example, has worked his way into a competitive industry with the launch of a game publishing unit called Bigmode.

Even if YouTubers want to become game devs, the launch of Playables Builder is also an effort to keep up with Roblox, Fortnite, and other game creation platforms. An innovative licensing program has made it easier for Roblox users to work with IP owners to build indie games that attract millions of players.

The culture of Roblox games has even made its way onto YouTube. One of the most successful Roblox titles of the year, Steal A Brainrot, ended up as one of YouTube’s top trending topics of the year.

If brainrot is being used as the inspiration for video games, then YouTube — the spawning ground of many Gen Alpha memes — has a golden opportunity in its hands. It’s no surprise that Shorts feed favorites like Sambucha are among the first creators to gain access to the Playables Builder.

YouTube is launching a closed Beta test for Playables Builder, a prototype web app built using Gemini 3 where users create games with short text, video or image prompts. we’ve partnered with YouTube Creators like @sambucha, @AyChristene, @goharsguide and @Mogswamp to start making… pic.twitter.com/1Gx0v4oZFA

— YouTube Gaming (@YouTubeGaming) December 16, 2025

Though the Playables Builder is still in a closed beta for now, YouTube is on the lookout for users who are interested in test-driving the tool. If you think you fit that description, you can apply for access to the Builder by clicking here.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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TikTok Shop doesn’t exactly have a luxury reputation. It’s been called the “dollar store of the internet” thanks to its hordes of cheap and on-trend items, purpose-built and advertised for scrollers to experience a frictionless one-click buy. It’s also become a favorite locale for dropshippers hawking overpriced AliExpress tchotchkes. And there’s a whole genre of YouTube haul videos that just revolve around ordering questionable products (often in the beauty or tech niches) to see if they’re real or a scam.

That’s not to say some legit brands aren’t making TikTok Shop work for them. e.l.f. Cosmetics, for example, is all over it.

But all of this boils down to one thing: The people spending collective billions on TikTok Shop are used to adding low-priced products to their carts.

So where does luxury fashion fit into that framework?

TikTok first dipped its toes into the Louboutin world back in 2023, when it introduced a “pre-loved luxury category” for shoppers in the U.K. Now it’s making a real effort to appeal to U.S. shoppers–who’ve become steadily more accustomed to social shopping over the past couple of years–by listing high-ticket, secondhand items.

How high-ticket? We’re talking Hermès and Chanel bags (some of which are listed for up to $11K) and sneakers from Louis Vuitton and Nike. Just ahead of Black Friday, TikTok Shop added watches from brands like Rolex and Cartier.

“Many well-known watch brands have been symbols of luxury, affluence, and status for decades, making them desirable and collectible pieces that can be passed down from generation to generation,” TikTok wrote in a plying post to users. “Access to these pieces is also limited—top brands only make so many high-end watches per year, making a secondhand purchase a preferable option for many. And because of the noteworthy nature of these items, we know it’s extra-important to provide assurance that you’re getting real-deal, authentic timepieces from vetted, trustworthy sellers.”

To be clear, TikTok itself is not selling these luxury items. Instead, the handbags, shoes, watches, and more come from a “curated list of US-based sellers.” As Vogue explains, merchants who are approved to sell pre-owned luxury on TikTok Shop have to submit official certificates of authenticity, either from trusted third-party agencies or from a brand’s in-house authentication office, within 24 hours of a sale being clinched. If the seller can’t produce that proof, the order is cancelled and the buyer gets their money back.

This might give some buyers comfort–but other platforms that have claimed to employ similar standards, like shoe reseller StockX, have still run into serious issues with counterfeits.

To reassure shoppers that luxury items are legit, TikTok is relying on the people who built its platform into the short-form powerhouse it is: content creators.

Vogue reports that over the last few months, the TikTok Shop team has been personally reaching out and matchmaking content creators with some of those “curated” sellers, setting them up for brand deals that advertise TikTok Shop’s luxury resale quarter. Miriam Young, a talent manager at DBA, told the outlet that TikTok Shop looks for smaller, fashion-focused creators with a proven record of strong conversions. If they’re picked for a deal, they’re asked to host a 30-minute TikTok Live (no surprise there) with the secondhand retailer, and get between 20 and 30% commission for items sold.

This strategy has helped to move more than 20 Birkin bags on TikTok Shop so far–which may not sound like a lot, but trust your local former fashion writer, it is serious dollar and culture value. New Birkins are enormously expensive and notoriously rare; they aren’t sold to the public and you usually need a long-term relationship with producer Hermès to be granted an opportunity to spend hundreds of thousands or even millions on a bag.

Secondhand Birkins still cost more than cars: on reseller Madison Avenue Couture, the lowest-priced secondhand Birkin is still upward of $11K. Its most expensive, an infamous diamond-encrusted Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile version of the Birkin 25, is $450K. We don’t think anyone dropped $450K on TikTok Shop, but expect its items sold in the $10-20K range.

With Birkin sales, there is clearly some sort of market on TikTok for luxury items–but we are curious if the dollars of the few will outweight the cheapness of the many. After all, the kids are really digging “thriftmas” this year…

Filed under: Homepage Feature by James Hale
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There may not be any golden statuettes on display at YouTube HQ, but the platform just earned a different type of Oscar win. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organizes and votes on the Academy Awards each spring, has announced that YouTube will be the official host of the Oscars from 2029 to 2033.

YouTube’s bid for the Academy Award broadcast rights was no secret. A Bloomberg report published this past August revealed YouTube’s Oscar ambitions; in recent years, the platform has spent freely to acquire the rights to big-name events, such as the exclusive NFL broadcast it hosted at the start of the current football season.

The 2028 Oscars, which will double as the ceremony’s 100th birthday, will bring an end to ABC‘s uninterrupted, five-decade run as the gala’s broadcaster. Starting in 2029, YouTube will take the reins. The initial rights deal between the Academy and Google’s video platform will run through 2033, though there is always a possibility for the agreement to be extended beyond that point (if we still have Hollywood by then).

“The Oscars are one of our essential cultural institutions, honoring excellence in storytelling and artistry,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said in a statement. “Partnering with the Academy to bring this celebration of art and entertainment to viewers all over the world will inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy.”

As with its other forays into mainstream culture, YouTube will have to figure out how its creator community fits into its Oscars broadcast. On one hand, YouTube should be proud of its contributions to cinema, especially as creators like RackaRacka and Chris Stuckmann become in-demand Hollywood filmmakers. But if YouTube beats the creator drum too fiercely, it risks alienating the traditionalists who don’t know MrBeast from Adam (and prefer to keep it that way).

These days, the Oscars don’t have much of an audience for YouTube to alienate. The ceremony’s viewership has plummeted since its turn-of-the-millennium highs. If YouTube can keep the Oscars’ Nielsen-style ratings above 20 million, it would be a marked improvement over recent traffic numbers.

There’s one potential solution to those declining ratings that YouTube seems eager to strive for: It wants to turn the Oscars into a year-round event. As part of the distribution deal, the Academy is working with the Google Arts & Culture initiative to digitize the Academy Collection and enable access to select Academy Museum exhibits. The result of that partnership will be “a true hub for film fans,” as the Academy put it in its official press release.

Internet video platforms have become important repositories for film buffs, so it only makes sense for YouTube to play a bigger role in the industry’s annual festivities. We may not see Mark Rober replace his buddy Jimmy Kimmel as a perennial Oscars host, but the YouTube Oscars are likely to be different from the shows that came before — and that’s kinda the point.

Filed under: Academy Awards, Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle
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Netflix is poaching YouTube‘s podcast business.

In case you’ve missed it, Netflix is mighty discontent with YouTube these days. Why? Because Google’s video platform is dominating Nielsen‘s streamer watch time charts. Those charts used to be for Netflix, Max, Hulu, etc–the big, deluxe-production services that pour millions into making original series like Stranger Things.

But in 2023, Nielsen began counting YouTube, with its lifeblood trove of UGC content, as a streaming service. As a result, for the last almost three years running, YouTube has been the #1 streaming service in the U.S. by sheer watch time. And Netflix (especially co-CEO Tod Sarandos) is not happy about that.

YouTube got a slight break earlier this month, when Netflix cited its dominance to defend the proposed Netflix x Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition. Netflix’s defense boiled down to, But look! YouTube is so powerful we couldn’t catch it even if we did do one little merger that will absorb one of the single largest entities in Hollywood! (We’ll see how that goes over with regulators.)

Apparently, though, Netflix is just overall feeling the takeover mood, because this week, it announced separate but similar video podcast deals with Barstool Sports and iHeartMedia that will pull new episoeds of shows like My Favorite Murder, The Breakfast Club, Bobby Bones Presents: The Bobbycast, Pardon My Take, The Ryen Russillo Podcast, and Spittin’ Chiclets off YouTube and take them exclusively to Netflix.

Both deals center around new episodes of the shows. Those will go to Netflix, along with “select” older episodes. The rest of the series’ catalogs will remain on YouTube.

The Barstool deal is multiyear, and covers video versions of new episodes from Pardon My Take, The Ryen Russillo Podcast, and Spittin’ Chiclets. Audio versions of episodes will continue to go out across platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

“We’re thrilled to team up with Barstool Sports and bring their top video podcasts to Netflix,” Lauren Smith, Netflix’s VP of Content Licensing and Programming Strategy, said in a statement. “This partnership broadens how our members connect with Barstool’s leading sports voices and delivers exactly what our members crave: unfiltered commentary, sharp takes and undeniable humor. We look forward to giving fans another exciting way to engage with the conversations they love on Netflix.”

In its deal with iHeartRadio, Netflix snags video rights for new episodes of more than 15 shows, including aforementioned The Breakfast Club and true crime show My Favorite Murder, as well as Joe and Jada, Chelsea Handler‘s Dear Chelsea, The Psychology of Your 20s, and This Is Important, hosted by Adam Devine, Anders Holm, and Blake Anderson.

“Audio podcasting has been the fastest-growing medium over the past 20 years, and now we’re thrilled to expand that experience with an exciting new category–video podcasts,” Bob Pittman, CEO of iHeartMedia, said in a statement. “Netflix has a leading video-first service, and this partnership perfectly complements our strong audio foundation. Working with Netflix—an important leader in entertainment—gives fans one more way to connect with the personalities they love and opens the door to new audiences, including viewers discovering these shows for the first time.”

As video podcasts grew in the lockdown and post-lockdown years, YouTube and Spotify emerged as top destinations–but these deals prove Netflix wants to make a splashy entrance into the domain. It didn’t just pick up a couple shows–it picked up major producers whose series are among the top-watched on YouTube and elsewhere. It’s going big, and that might pay off for it. We’ll find out when these shows hit its library in 2026.

Filed under: Homepage Feature by James Hale
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YouTube has spent the past few months turning public figures into AI-powered chatbots. Now, the Google-owned platform is giving some creators the same treatment.

As discussed on a Google Support page, a “small group of creators” has given YouTube permission to scrape their likenesses to train AI doppelgangers who look and talk like the individuals they’re based on. The test is part of the rollout for Portraits, a product that fosters conversations between AI facsimiles and the fans of the figures who inspired those bots.

Portraits began earlier this year, when Google started using its Gemini large language model to develop AI personalities that resemble real-world humans. The first test subjects for that effort were motivational speakers and business leaders, who leant the likenesses to Google’s experimental effort. So if you want some advice from author and podcaster Kim Scott, you can seek her out in real life — or, for the next best thing, just connect with the Portrait version of her.

Thanks to the expansion of Portraits, participating creators will be able to streamline interactions with fans. “U.S. viewers 18 years or older watching YouTube on desktop may see the option to ‘Talk to Creator’s Portrait’ on a participating creator’s channel, where viewers can engage with the creator’s Portrait by asking questions and exploring topics related to their content,” reads the Google Support post. “We’ll be monitoring feedback in response to Portraits closely and we’ll keep our community updated on any related news.”

The rise of powerful generative AI programs has encouraged tech companies to compile diverse chatbot libraries inspired by a diverse array of likenesses. Meta arguably led the charge on that front when it introduced genAI characters that resembled creators like MrBeast and Charli D’Amelio. In 2024, Instagram followed up Meta’s effort by getting to work on a program that turns creators into chatbots (with the consent of all involved parties).

Meta has speculated that creator-inspired chatbots can reduce work demands by handling fan interactions that would otherwise pile up in inboxes. That use case certainly applies to YouTube as well, which is one reason why Google has advanced its own chatbot development program.

Even as Google goes full speed ahead, its CEO is wary about the amount of resources that are going into chatbot development. Earlier this year, Sundar Pichai told the BBC that “irrationality” has informed the ongoing AI boom.

Irrational or not, AI investments are still flowing. YouTube’s Portraits have the potential to give creators a piece of that action, and if the feature increases YouTube’s lead in the chatbot referral department, I doubt Pichai and co. will complain.

Filed under: Articles, Artificial Intelligence, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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