YouTube’s secret weapon for winning the TV streaming wars: its top creators

Preparation for the stunt took weeks. Building a tank. Training with Free Eaters and Wizards. Developing a filming schedule.

The end result of that effort, a new episode of YouTube star Michelle Khare’s series in which she tries to recreate Harry Houdini’s deadliest trick, has since garnered more than 4.5 million views on YouTube.

gave Final product It has production quality that would rival anything on “traditional” TV (in fact, magician David Blaine attempted a similar stunt for a 2006 prime-time ABC special), but Khare’s Produced the episode myself for the YouTube audience.

Khare said in an interview, “Because we release so infrequently—unlike a typical season of television, it’s about 10 to 15 episodes a year—and in each of those episodes, we create a unique community. representing,” Khare said in an interview. “So for example, in this video where I try Harry Houdini’s deadliest magic trick, we’re entering the magic community. And so as creators, we have as hosts and our team. And the sameness of the amazing artists working on the project. So every event that we do, we want to lean into that community and hear from that community about how they want to be represented, and that really informs a lot of my participation, production, hosting, post, etc. does.

It’s a level of care that Khare, and other top YouTube creators, believe needs to be closely watched by The Powers That Be, whether from the world of advertising, or the world of awards, YouTube. Shows are not eligible for Emmy Awards or other honors. Khare notes that each episode can take about a year from ideation to upload, with other challenges including learning how to be a NASA astronaut, or a chess grandmaster, or a runway model, or the present. Learning to be a treasure hunter myself. .

There seems to be one group that has bought in: viewers. YouTube is marking a year as the most-watched streaming platform on Nielsen’s Gauge chart, which tracks what users are watching on TV, and the platform says That only in the United States, 150 million people are watching TV sets every month, a total of 1 billion daily hours.

That’s an impressive number, and it’s due to the breadth and depth of the platform’s creators, including action and adventure, children’s programming like Ms. Rachel, and talk and comedy shows or long-running genres. It covers

When Conan O’Brien wanted to promote his new Max show, he went on an adventure, where he was grilled by host Sean Evans while he was quickly downing spicy wings (O’Brien later expressed some regret). that his mouth “really hurt” ) ; And hosts Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal are frequent NBC guests.

“There’s an interesting thing that’s happening with this: There’s been talk for a long time about the integration of what we would traditionally call user-generated content and then the traditional media space. And the evolution of technology has been that. is what really drove it forward,” says McLaughlin. “It becomes a situation where the consumer is faced with two choices and in the interface with which they are interacting on the television, there is no fundamental difference between the Amazon Prime logo and the YouTube logo. There are, two choices, but that content is developed very differently. How to behave?”

“We’re not making consumer-generated content. We’re making independent television,” Neal added.

For McLaughlin, Neal, and Khare, if the content is connecting with consumers, and they’re watching it on their TV sets, then maybe it should be in the mix for Emmys, or other high-profile honors.

“Those awards shows are really one of the ways that we collectively, as a culture, agree to celebrate things that are really connected. And we’re like, hey, this stuff is connecting. is,” says McLaughlin. “If you really look at the amount of engagement and the amount of cultural influence that’s happening on YouTube and how it’s influencing the culture, well, that’s where it’s at. That’s where it’s at. It’s moving and that’s where it’s been for a while and we feel like that should be celebrated.”

Khare adds, “I think what’s really cool about it is when you turn on Apple TV or Roku or whatever, you watch Disney+, you watch Hulu, you watch Netflix and YouTube. , the app is there.” “We’re all very close to the big streaming services, and so I think, the way we look at a lot of what we do is that there’s always an act-based ad break before the ad break in traditional TV. And there’s tension and whatnot and to me, having constant cliffhangers and moments to keep the audience engaged is just a good story.”

Me, McLaughlin and Neal (sometimes joined by legendary crew members or surprise guests) play games or take on odd challenges, asking “Will it be an enchilada?” One day (in which legendary chefs try to turn unexpected ingredients into enchiladas) or another day trying to cut objects perfectly in half with crazy tools. They release new episodes every Monday to Friday, with an aftershow () every day on another channel.

They have also used their main channel to launch others, such as Mathical Kitchen, led by chef Josh Shearer. And the pair say they plan to launch a new six-episode series on their original Rhett and Link channel later this year “It’s really leaning towards the most creative things we want to do. , basically making a TV show for YouTube,” says McLaughlin.

“We were making videos a decade before YouTube existed, right? So we were always looking for an audience, and we didn’t know we were waiting for YouTube to be invented,” says Neal. are “We didn’t have opportunities to get in front of an audience. You know, we didn’t understand any of the traditional channels. So we created our own opportunity and saw that YouTube allowed us to connect with audiences and iterate very quickly. provided capacity.

YouTube has scaled both in terms of audience and business. The video platform says it paid its creators more than $70 billion between 2021-2023, helping create real-world businesses from fictional entertainment to Mr. Best’s North Carolina campus. Got it.

“[We are] Creating something that has a reliable point of contact in the same way that a TV show is, it’s like, hey, this thing comes out at the same time every single day. This is very reliable programming. You can depend on it, you can incorporate it into your routine, you know,” says McLaughlin.

“We play by the rules of TV which work to our advantage. So the scheduling and the consistency and the daily content was something we wanted to be involved in,” added Neal.

“And then once we had that stream of content that was really working and connecting, then we started building a team that was, you know, 12 years later, really a TV broadcast team. looks like,” McLaughlin continued. “Now at Mythical, there are about 100 people working on everything we make, and when we’re shooting we’ll probably have 40 or more people in the room with us who you can hear laughing. But they are also doing their job.”

But the platform also allows for real-time feedback, something Khare, McLaughlin, Neal and Mr. Best say helps improve their own creative output.

“YouTube is unlike a TV show, where you do the pilot and then they greenlight the entire season, and then the season is delivered to the audience,” Khare says. “On YouTube, we get live feedback with every episode. So if we release an episode and people don’t like or dislike something about episode one, we adjust it in episode two. can, which makes it a much more nimble and participatory environment and we’re lucky to be able to marry that with television quality.

“I think there’s that level of connection and it’s not just that they’re interacting with him in real time,” adds McLaughlin. “When you take a look at Michelle’s show, it’s like, yeah, it looks and feels like something you’d see on television, but you feel different about it, because she’s not just some host. who joined the show to make some network

“It’s his world that he’s built, he’s got an incredible team, but as he’s built it all, it’s his, not just someone on the screen, you actually interact with the product. Chatting what he has created,” he adds. “So when people see us on the street, they’re like, I’m communicating with this thing. I’m communicating with you but I’m communicating with what you’re talking about. make, whereas when you go to someone who was in a movie, it’s someone who was in someone else’s movie.

Next week, YouTube will host its annual Brand Cast Up Front event at Lincoln Center. Last year’s event, which forced many competitors to pivot amid the WGA strike, many media buyers said YouTube made the most successful offering, leaning in large part on its creators, who Spreads food and fashion, sports and entertainment.

This year the platform will follow a similar agenda, though it will do so with a year atop the Nielsen gauge.

“I think the beauty of what we do is that the only barrier to entry is the upload button,” says Khare. “And when that’s the only barrier, it allows for a level of honesty and intimacy that traditional cannot be obtained by means.”

YouTube is betting that it translated accordingly to its ad business, and its creators have it to thank.