Ms. Rachel. Alan Chikin Chow. Mark Rober. Salish Matter. Barstool Sports and The Ringer. Usually when we talk about YouTube, programming, and Netflix, it’s YouTube-native (or at least YouTube-posted) content moving to Netflix.
But not this time.
Somebody Feed Phil, the long-running travel/food series hosted and exec produced by Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal, will stop premiering new episodes on Netflix in 2027 and make the jump to YouTube instead.
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This is a big deal: Rosenthal premiered the show on Netflix in 2018, and it’s now eight seasons deep, making it one of the platform’s longest-running unscripted programs.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Somebody Feed Phil‘s YouTube jump is part of a bigger deal between Rosenthal, his production company Lucky Bastards, and Banijay Entertainment. They plan to also release more unscripted content from Rosenthal across YouTube and other platforms.
In a statement, Rosenthal pointed to Netflix’s subscription price as a reason for the move. “One of the things I always loved about Everybody Loves Raymond was that it was free to watch everywhere,” he said. “We are thrilled to announce that Somebody Feed Phil will move to YouTube, where our message of family, friendship, food, travel, and laughs can reach the most people.”
Banijay Americas CEO Ben Samek told THR that Rosenthal expressed a similar desire to him.
“YouTube is a huge part of that strategy, clearly,” he said. “Our goal is to then build the rest of the digital ecosystem and distribution system with his content, both Somebody Feed Phil and his other content that we intend to produce.”
Samek also nodded to YouTube’s ever-more-impressive Nielsen figures, saying, “If you look at the numbers [for AVOD services], they’re only continuing to grow. Therefore, as revenue grows, the expectation of an audience to be able to get more of an offering will continue to grow. I think it’s a category, on the connected TV and AVOD sides, that will only grow in the level of production value and in revenues over time.”
That being said, Banijay isn’t abandoning the sort of traditional media connections that brought Rosenthal renown in the first place.
“Our relationship with platforms and with networks and channels hasn’t changed. That’s a huge part of what we do as a production company,” Samek explained. “To me, this is a new growth category where we can look to partner with talent. Whether it’s a show that came off of another platform or not, I think there’s a way for us as a production company to embrace those creators and those talents at different levels, to be able to support and produce content and distribute it.”
Like I mentioned above, the industry has been on a bit of a run with Netflix poaching from YouTube’s “farm league” of established content creators. Those deals usually involve independent creators who’ve spent years building their content library and audiences on YouTube agreeing to move at least some of that content to Netflix in hopes of reaching more audience members/making more money.
With this deal, we see the opposite. Rosenthal is a firmly legacy media figure who created one of 90s TV’s biggest sitcoms. Before he went to Netflix, he was hosting Somebody Feed Phil‘s predecessor on PBS. Now he and Banijay are trying to decouple from the Hollywood sphere and join creators’ space in an effort to capitalize on YouTube’s dominant viewership on TV screens and the pricey ad formats that come with it.
Will they succeed? Who knows. That’s over a year from now, which is like ten years in this industry. Call me in 2027.
