Noel Miller on why TMG Studios is breaking into fictional podcasts–and why it won’t touch gen AI

“If we’re the last human-led media channel and everything else is prompted and generated in a data center, well then so be it.”

That’s Noel Miller, the Viner-turned-podcaster-turned-podcast-company-owner who launched TMG Studios in 2021.

Five years later, TMG Studios has a roster of 11 shows across various niches with various hosts, and is navigating the era of shortened attention spans, generative AI, and platforms’ constant push for more video podcasts.

One of its newest productions, Superior Exotics II, ventures into a still mostly untapped area of audio entertainment: fictional podcasts.

Fictional shows–sometimes 100% scripted, sometimes a mix of scripted setup and improv performance, and sometimes entirely unscripted–hearken back to early days of radio dramas. While there have been occasional standout hits (Welcome to Night Vale was an early one, The Magnus Archives, Wolf 359, and we could count TTRPG campaign recordings like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role), fictional podcasts are less populous than talk show-style ‘casts, probably because they require a rarer skillset and often lengthier effort to make.

But Miller sees opportunity here.

“I think two people talking about their lives has little value these days,” he tells Tubefilter. “It’s just not that compelling in terms of media. So I think [exploring fictional podcasts] comes from a place of: What is a podcast? What is a YouTube channel? There’s no hard lines anymore, it’s all this weird amorphous thing. So to step into semi-scripted, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

Superior Exotics II stars comedians Milo Tucker-Meyer and Kyle Chase as “employees” at a down-on-its-luck Orange County convenience store. Forty-minute episodes are recorded live during their “shifts,” and follow the development of their characters along with a rotating cast of “customers” who pop through the doors.

The bones of the show–its setting, planned guest entrances–are fictional, but the meat is all improv. Miller credits Tucker-Meyer and Chase for imbuing Superior Exotics II with their star power, and says TMG Studios is looking for similar quick wit and camera presence as it expands its roster.

“When we’ve partnered with talent, we’ve gotten a lot of great partnerships, and they’re very hand-selected for a reason,” he says. “A lot of them have very storng on-camera presence that a major studio might not give a chance because they want it to go through so many filters.”

He wants TMG Studios to “spotlight everyone we’ve brought into the network” by making them “a core part of these projects we have up and coming.”

As for future talent signings, “I think a step toward [producing more scripted projects] is building relationships with talent we believe can hold their own on camera in a fictional and performative capacity,” Miller says. “We really feel strongly about creating, for lack of a better comparison, these Avengers moments where you can take people from very different aspects of the internet and put them in a place that is fictional.”

Conceptualizing fictional/semi-fictional shows begins with “really building our base and who we execute ideas with, because it all hinges on the people who can build the world,” he adds.

With the aforementioned platform pushes for video podcasts, and now the idea of scripted shows also on video, we wanted to dive deeper into Miller’s assertion that there are no barriers between formats anymore. When would a project like Superior Exotics II stop being a podcast and start being a YouTube series–or a full-blown TV show?

“I just think there are no more defining lines. They are continuously eroded,” he says. “That’s why I believe old media institutions are struggling, because they’re accustomed to rigid structure. They control distribution, so you distribute like this. That person is an actor, and here’s the manicured path to acting. But the internet democratized this process. It completely destroyed it.

“So in a world where everything is clickbait, everything is ragebait, people don’t trust what they watch, people believe false media is real and vice-versa, when you’re asking what is a YouTube video, what is a podcast, there are no boundaries. That is,” he says, “simultaneously demoralizing and very exciting.”

From there we got into generative AI, and Miller gave us the above quote about TMG Studios being the last bastion of 100% human-made media.

Generative AI feels inescapable right now; it’s certainly seeped into the workflow for plenty of creators, and viewers can’t be on big-tech-owned YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram for more than a couple seconds without getting pinged about trying out their latest AI feature.

Miller is clear, though: gen AI has no place at TMG Studios.

“I think human creative independence is very important these days,” he says. “I never want to romanticize the work we do because when you’re trying to do creative that’s not a slop farm, it’s a fight. You’ve got to dogfight in the algorithm to get people to stick around. But because we’re committed to it, I think it’s that much more rewarding for us.”

Superior Exotics II is airing now on TMG Studios’ site and on its own dedicated YouTube channel.