Latest / The Media Odyssey / VALERIE'S PLACE WITH VALERIE BERTINELLI
Transcript
- Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Hey, this is Evan. We've got a really special episode of The Media Odyssey Podcast this week. Marion Ranchet couldn't be with us this week because she had other plans, and so... fulfilling a lifelong dream of mine, that is Valerie Bertinelli. Valerie Bertinelli: And that is Evan Shapiro Evan Shapiro: Welcome to the podcast. It's such a thrill to have you here. I've been a fan for decades- Valerie Bertinelli: Thank you. Evan Shapiro: Embarrassing us both by our age at this point. And, you're obviously a legend in many ways, of television, of Valerie Bertinelli: I would say obvious is extreme, but yeah, but thank you. No. Arguably. Evan Shapiro: Icon. Icon. Valerie Bertinelli: I always say arguably. Evan Shapiro: I, Jesse, our producer, and I were [00:01:00] discussing this before the pod, and his parents are incredibly thrilled just like I was when you said yes to be on the pod. So you do have a legendary following. You- you've been in the popular culture for, almost- Valerie Bertinelli: Over 50 years Evan Shapiro: Certainly your entire, yeah, your entire adult life, right? Valerie Bertinelli: Yeah. I guess that is kinda crazy. I, time goes by, and you don't even realize it, that you're still kicking away at what you love to do, and I feel incredibly lucky that I get to do what, and be creative every day of my life. It's not often that we can do that. So I'm, incredibly lucky. Evan Shapiro: And we're incredibly lucky to have you here. We're, we... I could talk about your whole career. I could talk about a number of different things with you. But we're here to talk about your brand-new enterprise, Valerie's Place. And, I don't know how much you watch or listen to the podcast, but we spend a lot of time focusing on disruptors in the media space who are adapting to this new moment in what I call the [00:02:00] affinity economy. And I feel like Valerie's Place, your new project that you just launched earlier this year, personifies the affinity economy 100%. It is really exactly where the puck is going. Valerie Bertinelli: I think so, too. I think because it, there's so much media out there, and if I may be blunt, so many billionaires are bankrupting all of their channels that we love. So there's not many places to go where we live anymore. They buy up all these things, and they incur a lot of debt, and then they get rid of all of their content creators, which is, I feel like I've been a content creator since I was 12 years old, except I was making commercials. I was an actor. I'm still an actor. But I was making content, and I was doing things that I love to do, and, I was under the tutelage of Norman Lear when I first began, so I was very lucky. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. A legend, yeah. Valerie Bertinelli: That is a legend, no doubt. Not even arguably. But, Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I was lucky enough to meet him one time, but he's just an icon now. Valerie Bertinelli: He's just an amazing, sweet, kind man. Yeah. [00:03:00] And I just think that in this day and age, when we don't have a lot of control over our, image or whatever it may be. Image, it's such a tangled word because there's an image of what people have of you, what they believe of you, and then there's your true authentic self. And if you're like any human being, you're always looking for your true authentic self and trying to be the closest to that. And I think what I was able to find online is finding people that think the same way that I think, that are going through the same things that I go through. But I'm-- I was also held hostage by the algorithm and by what my content, what content got pushed out to the people that want to see it, and that's where Billy comes in. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And, you have this new platform called Valerie's Place. It's a direct consumer, entertainment platform, and you've worked with a company called Visible Things to launch this. And, [00:04:00] we're lucky enough to also have your partner on this, the CEO and co-founder of Visible Things, Billy Cooper, who is also himself pretty much of a legend in the television ecosystem. Billy, welcome to the show. Let's get into what Vis- what the fuck Visible Things is. Billy Cooper: For sure. Evan Shapiro: Why this partnership came to be, how you came to be this new kind of internet entrepreneur from a television background. Give me a little bit, about yourself and your co-founders, how this thing came to be, and how this fits with Valerie's new project. Billy Cooper: Sure. Okay, so I'm gonna date myself because I think, I was driving over here this morning, and I had the thought of why did we come up with Visible Things, or how did we come up with Visible Things? And there was a Saturday morning cartoon, Schoolhouse Rock. I'm sure all three of us remember what Schoolhouse Rock was. Evan Shapiro: Oh yeah, Conjuction Junction, and yeah. Billy Cooper: But my favorite one was Mother Necessity, which was necessity is the mother of invention. Yeah. And I think, that [00:05:00] became very clear to us. Mother Necessity. Yeah, Mother Necessity, what's your name? Anyway. Okay, nobody wants to hear me sing. I think it's all became very clear to myself, my other two partners, Andrew Greenberger and Willis Robertson. All three of us met at a company called 44 Blue. Andrew was the original showrunner on a show called Pit Bulls & Parolees for Animal Planet. I then came in as his number two. After season two, Andrew moved on to greener pastures. I then continued to run the show for 18, 19 seasons until it was Evan Shapiro: Wow. Billy Cooper: Until it was basically done. And when Warner Discovery merged and decided that the sort of outer fringe channels that aren't Discovery or TLC, it wasn't important to continue to do original programming. The music stopped, and we were all left without a chair. And so the idea was how do we capitalize on what we felt were the, our blood, sweat, and tears, our life work was [00:06:00] being thrown on the, I hate to call it the dumpster fire of the streaming wars. But it was one of those things where, you know, we felt like the content that we had made, the shows that we had made, there was still value there. And why not figure out a way to go to the create, the people that were involved in the original show, the talent that was the centerpiece of those shows, figure out how to get that show, the original show, and then make new shows. Because people were still, Val can, you know, can attest to this. She had a show on Food Network for 14 seasons, 10 years. And when the show stopped, people didn't stop asking her, "Val, when are you going back in the kitchen to cook?" They didn't understand where did my Valerie's Home Cooking, they didn't understand why my Valerie's Home Cooking was gone. People just wanted- Valerie Bertinelli: Neither did we. Billy Cooper: Neither did, right, and so the idea was, how can we do this? And that was the genesis of the idea behind Visible Things, finding the ability to, giving creator, giving talent [00:07:00] the ability to connect with our audience in a direct way. And the thing, Evan, you were a network executive, and, I don't know if this was ever a note that you gave, but, on the television production side, on the showrunner side, one thing that we always heard was, "Here's one way to make your show more popular and get more ratings. Find an influencer." "Let's get an influencer in your show," or, "If you're pitching me a show, the way to sell this show is to put an influencer in it." Our idea is why can't the opposite be true? Why can't original, legacy talent, iconic talent, somebody like Valerie who didn't grow up with pointing an iPhone in her face, but is more accustomed to having the production support, a producer, an editor, a culinary, producer, all the sort of bells and whistles that come with a show, why can't they be in the space that the creators are in? So that's where we figured out Visible Things needs to live. Evan Shapiro: And especially when you look at what just happened this past weekend where you had two [00:08:00] YouTubers at the top of the box office list beating Star Wars, I think it, the worlds of creatordom and influencedom are merging into kind of the traditional careers of mainstream television and film talent. They're becoming television producers. Ms. Rachel is now on Netflix, and MrBeast is now on Amazon. Valerie Bertinelli: And let's not cut these people short. They're all creative people. They're making incredible content, which is why a lot of people watch it. Evan Shapiro: Working really hard. Valerie Bertinelli: And I think there's this feeling that sure they have millions and millions of followers, but they're not really working. Yes, they are. Do you know how hard it is to make content, especially by yourself? I've done it by myself. I did cooking videos by myself. Evan Shapiro: Without the infrastructure, yeah. Valerie Bertinelli: Without the infrastructure. It is so much not necessarily easier, but it opens up another part of your brain where you can just be even more creative because you have other people taking care of the other stuff that you're usually doing [00:09:00] 100%. So I've done both. I much prefer working with Visible Things than sitting in my kitchen alone and then editing, for a two, three hours afterwards on my phone. It's just so much better, and I get more content made more importantly. Evan Shapiro: And, it was Lear, Norman Lear, not King Lear, who told, who warned you Billy Cooper: Same. Evan Shapiro: about the invasion. Valerie Bertinelli: It would be a long time ago. Yes. I remember sitting with Ron and- Evan Shapiro: That this invasion of billionaires was gonna disintermediate talent from the audience. Wasn't, was that something he said too? Valerie Bertinelli: And you literally see it happening even with CBS News today and with all of these different, there's very few billionaires, and they're taking over the entire creative world right now, and it's really, for me, I think it's alarming. But, Evan Shapiro: And it's not in necessarily service of the art. It's in service of something else very often. Valerie Bertinelli: It's not, yes- Evan Shapiro: Or ego or whatever it is. Valerie Bertinelli: Because it's not in service of the art at all. It's in service of the bottom dollar, and the people that make the art are the ones at the very end of the food chain, [00:10:00] distributed the money to be able to make the art. Evan Shapiro: And, the last ones who get paid, right. Valerie Bertinelli: Right. So I think they're too worried about Wall Street and worried about the debt that they incur because they buy too many companies at the same time. Evan Shapiro: Billy, give me an elevator pitch on Visible Things. What actually is it? Is it, a studio infrastructure for creators or talent as creators? Billy Cooper: So Visible Things is we provide the infrastructure for talent and creators to build their own direct-to-consumer ecosystems. So we are the studio arm if it's needed, and we are also the distribution arm. So we have a technology stack that allows us to give a white, a sort of white glove, white label, individualized platform to each individual person. Unlike Patreon or Substack or things of that nature where it's patreon.com/ you know, whomever, and you're one of hundreds of one, one of thousands, what we've built for Valerie [00:11:00] is her own destination. It is a digital destination. It's called Valerie's Place. It's its own brand. It exists on web, on mobile, and very soon on smart TVs where, so your Valerie is not getting lost in the algorithm, and her audience isn't getting lost in the algorithm. It is a direct conversation that she's having with her audience. And so what Visible Things provides is exactly that. And so our tech stack is set up in a way where we can do, in success, two, three, 10, 12, 20 of these where each one is its own wholly owned ecosystem catering to a very, we call it a super fan audience. People could call it a niche audience as well. But it's really catering to Valerie's audience and giving them not only a space that they wanna go and connect directly with Valerie, but also give her a ability to connect back with them and have a real conversation. Valerie Bertinelli: It's much better than just going on Instagram and doing a live once in a while and talking to your audience. [00:12:00] I wanted to basically bring my book tour, if you will, to Valerie's Place so that I, we just had our second book group, on Monday, I believe it was, and we gather people. Evan Shapiro: And so is it like a live meetup? Valerie Bertinelli: It's a live meetup where I talk to people face-to-face. It's basically a Zoom like we're doing now, but we invite more people in, and these are for our top tier members of Valerie's Place, and we have a real conversation. It's not about me. It's about them. I hear about their lives. They get to release things from their chest about whatever this book meant to them, and I like hearing about people's lives. I don't want to talk about me all the time. If I'm a conduit for more people to gather at my place and talk about themselves and with each other, that's what I'm happy to do. Billy Cooper: It's an amazing thing to watch also because the thing that it become, we all we're all so separated right now with social media and the media, [00:13:00] the 24-hour media cycle and all this kind of stuff, and it's so hard to find connection to anybody these days. And so the thing that's great about all the people that are in Valerie's Place is they have already, when they start and they come in the door and they subscribe, they all have one thing in common. They all love Val, and they all grew up with her. They all, they all can relate to her. They watched her on One Day at a Time when they were 10, 12, 20 whatever years old. Yes, me too. They watched Hot in Cleveland. They watched her cook. They've read her books. all the things, and so but everybody brings that one thing, and that one thing is an instant jumping-off point. And and so the great thing about the book club that, that when Val came to us and we were ideating on what kind of shows we could do, 'cause we knew the cooking, that was a simple low-hanging fruit. Val was cooking. We knew that was gonna happen. But as we're talking to her we're like, "Val, what else goes on in your life?" And she says, I've been in a book club with my girlfriends for 30 years." And we were like, "Let's do that. How can we do that?" And originally it started with, originally it started with [00:14:00] just Val. We said, "Oh, let's do it with the ladies in your book club." And she said, "No, Let's do it with the audience." And so it became a different conversation because, yes, I- Reese, Oprah, their book clubs are amazing. They've done wonders for the publishing industry. But the thing that Val wanted to do was go take it a step further and make it a real conversation, and I think that was really cool. And the thing that's been great is we have publishers now reaching out to us and saying, "Hey, can Val do my book for the, can she do this next book for the next book club?" Obviously, we're keeping it in Val's interest, the books that she wants to read, the books that she likes, and but maybe soon we'll find that. Valerie Bertinelli: But it's really lovely, like the last book that we picked, the author said, "Hey, I heard you picked my book. Can I send you book plates signed? Can I do this? Can I make a video?" And it was absolutely lovely to have Alan Levy say something about his book, Theo of Golden, and, talk to our audience. So I, it's been lovely, and I'm, I just, I have a vision and a dream for how this and where this is gonna go in the [00:15:00] years from now. Evan Shapiro: And so, your platform is a membership platform, and the ones who get in the book club are like the super members to a certain extent? Billy Cooper: The, we call the VIP members. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And that's, when I say this is a kind of picture perfect example, the epitome of the affinity economy, that is very much what I mean, which is you're taking the energy from your five million combined followers on social, and you're creating a home for the super fans to come, and the economics wind up being substantially better for you with this kind of niche, smaller audience of super fans than just the click bait stuff that happens on social media. I think you phrased it, real social versus parasocial. Valerie Bertinelli: Yes. Evan Shapiro: Or some kind of point of view like that. Describe what that means, the difference between parasocial and social to you. Valerie Bertinelli: Let me just go back for a minute, 'cause I know this is, Billy and I are always like, I'm like, "Billy, can't we just make it [00:16:00] free?" Because I wanna, receive, but he's like it costs money to make the show. It costs money to hire people to do the show. It costs money for producers." So obviously money can't come from, the sky, so it, I'm always fighting, not fighting Billy, it's always friendly. He's like a little baby brother to me. But- Evan Shapiro: But it's the art and commerce, the battle at always. Valerie Bertinelli: But I'm just- Billy Cooper: No, absolutely. Yeah. Valerie Bertinelli: Trying to find that happy line because the economy sucks right now, in this economy with this administration, we're all in a shit show right now. Evan Shapiro: This beautiful, this big beautiful economy? What are you talking about? Valerie Bertinelli: Val, we said we're not getting political. Shh. Valerie Bertinelli: No, it's not political to say that the economy sucks. Evan Shapiro: Everything is awesome. Gas prices are low, eggs are low. Valerie Bertinelli: Or you go to the grocery store, because we have to go to the grocery store to make the food dishes that I would like to cook for everybody. But, now I'm, like, off on a squirrel, But I've, to get to your point about parasocial and social parasocial is when, [00:17:00] there's a slight wall between everybody, as you know, and you start having imagination dreams, fantasies about these people that you don't really know. You know what on camera. I've taken that wall down a little bit, for the last few years with my social media, where I've just decided I'm not gonna pretend I'm happy when I'm not happy. I'm just gonna be as real as I can possibly be with my audience. And once I started doing that, I started making more connections online, more DMs were coming in that, that said, "My God, I feel that way, too. How did you get through this?" Or, "What are you doing?" And I would be the same way. It's "I'm not through it. Do you have any suggestions?" And people would send me suggestions. So it's like having another friend to talk to that you open up your world in a way that, I still have my dear friends that I've had for over 30 years. I still have my family, my brothers that I bitch to. But I, there's, it's nice being able to make a difference in someone's life because they [00:18:00] have had a connection to you for a long time, but then they really get to know who I really am. So it was nice starting that, and we started to take the wall down. And with Valerie's Place, the wall is completely down because we'll just have a conversation for an hour about a book that turns into a conversation about something else, like my real book group does. I say real, but both book groups are real now. Like my original book group. Billy Cooper: Here, Evan, I'll give you a little anecdote, a little story of sort of the, our own, sort of the experience that I've just genuinely had with Val in terms of the parasocial versus the social, and how Valerie's Place has crossed that bridge. So one, in one of the stories that Val was telling us about, and this is in her book, in her Getting Naked book, is when she was doing the finishing touches on her book, Val found a feather in the street. And Val, if I'm telling this story wrong, please correct me. But she found a feather in the street and picked it up, and it, saw it as a sign that she needed to like do a little more with the book, tell the story, whatever, all that sort of good stuff. And then, as we were [00:19:00] recording podcasts, as we started doing stuff for Valerie's place, there was one day that she was look, you misplaced it, right? Valerie Bertinelli: So the story is I asked specifically for a specific colored feather from the universe, whatever it may be. But I, do I do believe in signs. I have three loved ones that have passed, and they've sent different signs. And I said, "I specifically, I'm tired of seeing black and gray feathers. I wanna see a white feather so I know you can hear me, and I know where I need to go with this, that I'm on the right path." Literally, I was between 9th and 10th on 57th Street in New York, and I hadn't gone 10 feet, and there in everything I saw a little white feather, and I couldn't believe it. I knew that I was being heard and that I was being looked after and I was on the right path. And then, I lost the feather, and I was devastated because I do get attached to things, and not just people. I, things have meaning for me. I, it hasn't quite gotten to [00:20:00] hoarding, but it could be close. I have to keep an eye on it. But I lost the feather, and I was so upset, and I hadn't seen it for two weeks. I had it in my computer, and I was working on the podcast. And we come back, we had a long break. I come back after two weeks and, still a little, I said, "I guess I've lost the feather, but I know that you saw me, so I'm happy. If the feather comes back, I sure would love it to know that we're still in connect-" I started a podcast. We got to lunch and I hear vacuuming out in the other part of the studio. And I came back from using the bathroom, and I looked under my chair, and there was the feather, the exact feather that I hadn't seen for over two weeks. And that place has been vacuumed, it's been cleaned for the last two weeks, and the feather was still there. So I- Billy Cooper: And so where this then picks up, Evan, so she, so Val tells the story of the feather on the podcast. We were doing a live event, like it was sort of Val's, a book club, a book tour. So she'd done on show when she was selling her book. She went around the country was [00:21:00] selling her book signing autographs, whatever. And so we did a live event where people could come onto Valerie's Place if they hadn't been able to make it out to one of the events. Valerie tells this story, and then lo and behold, two weeks later, one of the Valerie's Place members sends her a, like a necklace with a little cylinder, glass cylinder to put the feather in Valerie Bertinelli: I had offhandedly said, I had, I'll just interrupt you for a quick second, Bill. I had offhandedly said, "Boy, I wish I had something so I could wear it with me all the time so I would never lose it again." Just said that, and I'm like maybe I'll look for something." And that's when that happened. Evan Shapiro: On the platform you said that, on the podcast? Billy Cooper: On the platform. Valerie Bertinelli: On the platform, yeah, on the podcast. Billy Cooper: And then during the pod- And so one of the members, one of Valerie's members sent her then, this thing, and it became a moment of connection for this woman who I think Val had met at a book, another event years ago, and she sent a picture and things like that. But when we put it out on social media that, we sent her the video of Val unboxing this thing and opening it, I think it, I [00:22:00] would, it's safe to say that this woman's life had been changed. She really had this genuine reaction. Val, she's emailed- Valerie Bertinelli: And she changed my life because now I get to wear the feather with me. Billy Cooper: And so that I think is just the sort of like little anecdote of how I think this direct connection can work, and why it's important for somebody like Val, other talent, other artists to cut through all the layers of streaming, networks, executives, da what, whatever, and then have that one-to-one connection. 'Cause not only do the talent, Valerie as talent wants it, but then also the audience craves it as Evan Shapiro: Well. The audience wants it, and that's, I'm gonna go back and push back on Valerie's pushback on making it free, because you have this outlet that other people are paying for the platforms, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or whatever, and you have a ton of free relationships out there, but there are fans that want more, right? Yeah. They want a deeper relationship. They want an actual social relationship. And what we have found out is [00:23:00] that they want to help you produce shows. They want the shows that you made, they want them back, and so they wanna be part of that, whole community and that process. And so this platform is perfectly situated to scratch that itch and provide that outlet for them. Valerie Bertinelli: And I think we priced it, reasonably as well. We've made it so many different tiers that if because of this economy and it's made it difficult, you can still get access to quite a few things for a lesser monthly fee. And the monthly fees are not dramatic. When you put it together per year, it's much less than what you would be paying for Food Network anyway, even with the big package and cable and DirecTV. Evan Shapiro: But now there's no network notes. There's no- Valerie Bertinelli: No. Evan Shapiro: There's no big machine. Valerie Bertinelli: I put on my son's band shirt the other day, and I was like, "Oh, wait, I should ask if I can wear this." I'm like, "No, I don't. I can wear my son's band shirt-" No, you don't ... because it's my look, my bully's not gonna care. Billy Cooper: And the other outcropping that, the other outcropping that we found and have been not a happy accident, but we knew it was gonna happen was [00:24:00] because people are paying to be inside of Valerie's Place, we've eliminated the trolls. And, Valerie Bertinelli: Yeah, most importantly. Evan Shapiro: That is the other element of it that's really good. Billy Cooper: And it is such a supportive- Evan Shapiro: This is a safe place. Valerie Bertinelli: It is a safer place for everybody, not just me. I don't have to do any blocking. I don't have to... Facebook is probably- Evan Shapiro: There's no moderator. Valerie Bertinelli: the worst of it where people can be incredibly rude. So I try to stay away from Facebook. Evan Shapiro: People are rude on the internet? I hadn't heard that. Valerie Bertinelli: The comments section as much as I can. Yeah. Yeah. But another thing that he said to me recently was, 'cause I'm a member of Substack, and I follow a few people and I pay for a few accounts that, my girlfriend is an amazing writer, and she's on Substack, and of course I pay to be a member to her Substack. But he said, "People are paying 10, 15, $20 a month for Substack, and some people don't even write for more than once a month." And the amount of content that we put out, and I'm always like, "Billy, we gotta make more content. I want people to be fulfilled." And he's the same. He wants to make sure people feel like they're making the right decision by being here, and that they feel like they're getting [00:25:00] what they're paying for. Evan Shapiro: And what's interesting is you can give member benefits like coming to a book club with you that don't cost you anything, right? 'Cause that live stream is probably the least expensive thing that you're producing. And people really love it. I, one of the benefits I give out on- Valerie Bertinelli: I do too. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, one of the benefits I give out on my Substack newsletter, Media War and Peace, which you can both subscribe to right now, is the ability to ask me for a one- Billy Cooper: You have a discount code, right? You have a discount code, Evan? Valerie Bertinelli: You have a discount code? Evan Shapiro: Yeah. I'll give you a, I'll give you a discount code. but what, one of the benefits you get is if you're a subscriber for six months or more, you get to ask me for a one-on-one meeting whenever you want. Valerie Bertinelli: Wow. Evan Shapiro: Man. That's great. And, people really do dig it. And, not everybody uses it, so the breakage is huge for me. But people, they wanna ask for help on their careers or whatever, and that's, it's a great benefit. But you're not just providing this. Valerie Bertinelli: And don't, Evan, don't you feel like you get something out of it, too? It's not a one and this is where it turns into not parasocial. It is [00:26:00] purely a social relationship because we are both benefiting from the connection we're making as human beings. That's the most important thing to me. I'm, I'm not the only one benefiting here. I want them to feel like they're getting a benefit as well. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, and I learn something from each one of those conversations. Something new comes out of it in every case. Even if it's just "What do you like about my newsletter so I can improve it?" Or whatever it is. But then very often it's, something about the world writ large. But you're providing these services where they get access to you, but you're also, to your, to both of your point over the course of this conversation, you're making a shit ton of content. So you're making actual television shows for this platform on a regular cadence. Many of them, right? More than one. Cooking show. Billy Cooper: Yeah, so we have, so there are currently, obviously we, one of the sort of core theses that we realized with Val was we, and this was she tasked us with this. She said, "I'll do this if you guys can do this," which was she wanted us to get Valerie's Home Cooking licensed back from Food Network, which we did.[00:27:00] We are in the process of launching all seasons of Valerie's Home Cooking on- Evan Shapiro: How much did David Zaslav charge you for that? Valerie Bertinelli: Too much. Billy Cooper: We're not gonna talk about that. Evan Shapiro: $1 billion. Billy Cooper: Yeah. Yeah, no. So yeah, he's sitting there with his, with his cats. Yes. The, yeah. His hairless cats. Valerie Bertinelli: Hey. No, no, dissing cats, please. Billy Cooper: No dissing cats, no. Hairless cats, yeah. No, but so that's the and part of the reason we wanted to do that was part of what Val was talking about: the value. So when someone opens up Valerie's Place, instantly they have access to 172 episodes of Valerie's Home Cooking. So that right there that's worth five bucks. Evan Shapiro: Wow. Billy Cooper: Yeah. Five bucks a month. So that's the, and then not only that, you get all of the recipes that are searchable. You can watch the episodes, you get Valerie's recipes that she owned. They're her IP. They're now part of Valerie's Place. And then beyond that, so we, now have three different cooking shows. One cooking show is the sort of- Standard, [00:28:00] ITK, In The Kitchen, or Stand and Stir is what we call it, and it's called Now Val's Cooking. And so that's Valerie with her, and she's just making the dishes from her. She's diving into the archives of her cookbooks. New stuff, old stuff, whatever, and that's just her cooking the way everyone's accustomed to it. Another show we did, which is called Reheated, and so it's Valerie and her longtime culinary producer, Sophie Clark. And Sophie was the one behind the scenes helping Val make all of the dishes, all the recipes, all of the everything that was part of Valerie's Home Cooking and also part of Valerie's cookbooks. And so this is an opportunity- Valerie Bertinelli: She's also my recipe developer, so she's very integral- Evan Shapiro: Oh, wow. Valerie Bertinelli: to my cooking world. Billy Cooper: And so what Reheated is, it's an opportunity for us to pull down the curtain on what goes into making a cooking show. We show, we, it's, all the bells and whistles. We, when we're doing Reheated and we're doing Val's Home Cooking- Evan Shapiro: How do you shoot it and all that kind of stuff? Billy Cooper: And then the, yeah, how we shoot it, the test kitchen but also we rent, a, yeah, we rent a prep kitchen that goes in Val's garage. like we, it shows, [00:29:00] it's in Valerie's garage, and they're out there cooking the prep stuff. And so we do the swaps, but we show the swaps. Evan Shapiro: That's cool. Billy Cooper: So it's really a sort of fun behind the scenes. And then, what we're filming today actually is a show Valerie came up with on her own called Meals for One, and this is just, this is what she did before we came along, which is her, her phone, and making herself lunch or dinner. And that's kind of- Evan Shapiro: But you're not shooting on a phone now. You're shooting it with a bit more of a crew. Billy Cooper: No, we're staying, no. Meals for One we are staying true to Valerie's original vision. Valerie Bertinelli: I have a very particular vision for this particular show, and I want it to be the same. It's a very different take on cooking. It, it's just, it's more me not talking so much. It's more about the music and the graphics and just what you would see. If I'm home alone cooking, I'm not up looking at the camera and talking to you. But it's more it's supposed- Evan Shapiro: So it's basically we're a fly on the wall in your kitchen to a certain extent. Valerie Bertinelli: Yes. And I want, I want you to, I want it to relax you. I want you to watch my videos and have me [00:30:00] cook something for you while you get to sit and watch and get relaxed. Billy Cooper: And then, yeah, and then obviously we have the book club. Yeah, no, and then we have the book club, and then we also have, we started a podcast with Val where she, it's called Get- it's Getting Naked The Podcast, which is an outshoot of her book, where she's having real, genuine, honest conversations with mental health professionals, other celebrities, Valerie's friends, anyone connected. And these are it's not only helping Val's sort of mental health journey on her own, but also then sharing how she's doing it with other people and, all that kind of stuff. So I think it's a great piece. So the last thing that we're doing, and this is a sort of exclusive, and I don't know, Val, if you wanna give it or you want me to do it? Evan Shapiro: Breaking news? Valerie Bertinelli: You go ahead, Billy. Billy Cooper: Okay. So one piece of Val's legacy that we all love so much is her career as a sitcom icon, and I say icon because Val, you are an icon. Evan Shapiro: I agree. Billy Cooper: Yeah. And one, obviously one show was One Day at a Time. The other show was Hot in [00:31:00] Cleveland. Evan Shapiro: Hot in Cleveland, yeah. Billy Cooper: And so we are launching a, I guess the only way, it's not a recap podcast, but it's a revisiting podcast of Hot in Cleveland hosted by Val and the, showrunner, executive producer, Todd Milliner, called Still Hot in Cleveland. Evan Shapiro: Oh, yeah, I know Todd. Valerie Bertinelli: Yeah. Billy Cooper: Yeah. Yeah. Still Hot in Cleveland ... Still Hot in Cleveland, premiering on Valerie's Place in the coming months. We actually record it here at Val's house, but in a very special secret location. Val actually had a pool that they converted into a wine cellar, and so it is the coolest space, yeah, it's amazing, Valerie Bertinelli: It's a really cool space. Yeah, so- And I don't drink anymore, so at least it gets we can do something with it. Billy Cooper: And so yeah, and so it's Val, it's Todd, it's conversations about the show, conversations with their guest stars or co-stars. Obviously, Betty White, talking about Betty, what she was like when she was there, And all these sort of- Evan Shapiro: Talking about a legend. Billy Cooper: Yeah a legend. And it's also [00:32:00] the thing that's great about Still Hot in Cleveland, and we've done one episode so far, we're doing more, and all that kinda good stuff. As a lover of the sitcom genre, it is a love letter to sitcoms. It's a love letter to sitcoms, which I feel like is a, especially in the three camera Norman Lear, you know, Jim Burrows type sitcom, it's a, it's a dying Valerie Bertinelli: It's a dying art, actually. Dying, yeah. You don't see a lot of multi-cams out anymore, doing the single camera. Evan Shapiro: It's interesting. I was just talking to somebody about this last night. If you look at some of these, I think more successful podcasts, Shoes Off podcast, a couple of others, they've actually zoomed out, and it's shot much more like a three camera sitcom than, or like even Call Her Daddy and things like that to a certain extent. So I do feel like the mentality is making a comeback, but both of you had to unlearn certain elements of high-end [00:33:00] professional television production for this new- Billy Cooper: What do you mean? We're professional. Evan Shapiro: No, but you're, there was a lot more fat in the television shows that you worked on than the shows you're working on this platform. So you had to reimagine the production workflow to be a much lower budget, much shorter turnaround and things like that. Valerie Bertinelli: It's more of a, it's more of a skeleton crew. I don't have a wardrobe assistant. It's all my wardrobe out of my closet. Evan Shapiro: You don't? I do. Valerie Bertinelli: This is my wardrobe. I bought this at H&M. There is that. Would I love for there to be a wardrobe budget? Of course I would. But I also, I care about the economics of it just as much as I do about the creativity and my comfort. And I'm always telling Billy that when Billy is coming to me with anything. I'm like, "Don't be afraid to tell me anything, because if we don't have the budget for something, let's just not do it right now, or we'll do it a different way." Because I care about everybody profiting and not [00:34:00] stressing about what we're doing. We're supposed to be having fun in this part of our life. We're not supposed to be doing anything except having fun and being creative and putting stuff out there. Billy Cooper: And Evan, to that point, the one thing I will say is, yes, we are doing this, on a lower-end budget and things of that nature. But, in success, and just to give you what our ultimate goals are with Val, so Valerie has, and what we've modeled our business on, Valerie has five million followers across social media. Our goal is to reach the sort of core super fan, the one percenters. Not, the one percenter, the 1%. And the 1% of Valerie's social media following is 50,000 followers. 50,000 followers paying an average of $7 a month, that's $350,000 a month, times 12. That's a lot of money. And in success, what we've told Val is that we retract- Evan Shapiro: That's $4 million a year, yeah. Billy Cooper: Yeah. In success, we tell Val, we told Val, she has a stack of shows that she took to Food Network and all the other places, Travel Channel, whatever, [00:35:00] ba, all, and they all said, "No, Val. Stay in the kitchen. Keep cooking." We've told her that in success we will be able to make those shows, and we'll be able to do it the way we wanna do it because the subscriber base is paying for the budget of those shows. And then, yes, she will get the wardrobe assistant. She will get the, all the things that she wants. Evan Shapiro: And don't you find that the audience, don't you find that the audience understands that? They understand oh, our subscription is helping Val make this content. Valerie Bertinelli: I would hope so. That's, yeah. I would hope because that makes them feel more a part of it and more, again, it, it cuts the wall between parasocial and social. Billy Cooper: Yeah. And I, do think, yes. And, that's, we are still in the early stages. Val- we launched, just a couple, three months ago. May 1st. Valerie Bertinelli: March 1st, so- Billy Cooper: March 1st, and we considered our first couple months we were in beta test. Only the past month did we launch with apps on, or the apps on iOS and the Google Play Store. And so I think now we feel like we're out of beta test, and we've been that way for about three weeks. And I think, yes, we're starting to see the growth that we were expecting. So you know, [00:36:00] yeah, and so it is a ongoing- Evan Shapiro: And what's your marketing other than Val's, other than Val's channel, is there a marketing budget, or is it all organic? Billy Cooper: No, there is not a-- No, it's all-- We are going for all organic social. We, you know-- and the way we've done this is, yes, there's, so we call it our funnel. So at the top of the funnel is Valerie's social media. Wolfie's mom is Val- find her on Instagram, on TikTok, on Instagram. Below the Valerie's Instagram and her socials is the Valerie's Place social. So in the span of six weeks, we went from zero to a couple. We have, I think, currently about 300,000 followers across social media, all the platforms. So in six weeks, Valerie, the power of Valerie and its Val- and Valerie's Place grew those accounts to 300,000. So now Valerie's marketing her way. We now market to the, the Valerie's Place social media, and then we get them in, people sign up. We do event, live events. Sometimes it's, we'll do a live, and it's free if you, if you give us your email. And now we have, a [00:37:00] marketing list 50 thou-- Yeah. So now we have 50,000 emails that we market to, and then we have the people that subscribe. And then, so it just becomes more and more and then ultimately, once we have them inside the funnel, inside the Valerie's Place, then, hopefully we can get them to subscribe. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And it follows that whole concept of I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than nine million people's 10th favorite thing. And that concept there allows you to set these realistic metrics. When I talk to people about this shift towards the affinity economy, the, downside of it is you can't, you're not-- the old Hollywood system that we all kinda grew up in is over, and those big checks and that whole infrastructure is disintegrating in front of our eyes. Valerie Bertinelli: Although those have been gone for a long time. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, The difference though is you- Valerie Bertinelli: I still have yet to make the same amount of money that I made on the last two years of One Day at a Time, which ended in 1983. I have never made that per episode since then. And it's been, I've done multiple [00:38:00] shows, I've done hour shows, I've done movies. Hot in Cleveland. Yes, Hot in Cleveland was on a small cable channel, but I've never, had the same paycheck as I did back then, and the paycheck has gotten smaller and smaller. I'm not complaining and because- Evan Shapiro: one of the reasons, though- ... Valerie Bertinelli: somebody out there making money, and it ain't me. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. But, but the economics, especially when you talk about shows that are, like, six episodes now, right? I just watched a really great show called Half Man. It has six episodes. That's the whole season. And- Valerie Bertinelli: Isn't that crazy? Evan Shapiro: I'm sure some people got paid on that, but think about the crew, think about everybody else. That's a much shorter television season than 20, you made, you were making 22 a year back then, right? That's the other big upside of that. But the other major component of that is fragmentation. In 1983, there was basically no cable still. Then cable came in- Valerie Bertinelli: Yes, we had four Evan Shapiro: And then streaming came in. Valerie Bertinelli: I think at my luck's ending, we had a fourth channel. Fox had just started. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, Fox. Yeah. Yeah, Fox. You were on CBS and that, and everyone's "Oh my God, a fourth television channel. Holy moly." I- [00:39:00] "What are we gonna do?" Crazy. Yeah. And then cable came, and then streaming came, and then actually social came in the middle of all of that. So now the radical fragmentation of attention and audiences is why the economics don't work anymore. But what's great is you don't need- Valerie Bertinelli: That's not, Evan, I have to push back kindly on that. That's not why the economics don't work anymore. I think we have plenty of, I love that we have more variety and we have more places to go, and I, wish every channel well. And I, and I hope to see more of what I'm doing, and I hope Visible Things can do more what I'm doing with other people. But the economics aren't working because there's only a few, it's just like in everything else. There's a few people, one or two people at the very top, that are hoarding all of it, and it's not trickling down because there's no such thing as trickle-down economics. There is nothing being given to the content creators, the creatives, all of the, and you can go into any other way of doing this. There's no, there's no money trickling down [00:40:00] to people working at Amazon and, stuffing boxes. There's no, no people that are building cars, they're not getting the same amount of money as the people that are, as the CEO that didn't even invent the fucking car. There, that's why the economics aren't working. It's not because there's too many channels. It's because too few people are hoarding all the money. And I'm not angry- I or, at all. Billy Cooper: Yeah. And I think the other thing, and I think the other thing also, Evan, that I think Val, we've talked to her about, and and I think I even mentioned this to you, is you know, YouTube's great. Spotify's great, and we actually use them as part of our top of funnel with Val's podcast. Marketing. Yeah, exactly. Marketing. But you're renting your audience. Yeah. At the end of the day, YouTube, their job is to get you not to watch Valerie's content. Their job is to get you to watch what's next after Valerie's content. And then the, and you sell ads, what's after that. And to, no, but the way they sell ads is to keep you engaged and send you something else. And so it becomes a, it, you, lose the, you lose the conversation, so to speak. Evan Shapiro: But the one point of differentiation that I would make here, I [00:41:00] agree with everything that you're saying. And Val, I just, I love your voice, so thank you for coming on this podcast. But the, I think what a lot of creators who are, the creator economy has shifted dramatically. There's this concept that I have to become the mis- next Mr. Beast or the next Dhar Mann, and those are one of ones. They're, first of all, they're, the top one tenth of one percent of creators out there. Valerie Bertinelli: That's like becoming the next Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep. It's not gonna happen to everybody. Evan Shapiro: You're just as likely. That's exactly right. Billy Cooper: Yes. And by both Dhar Mann and MrBeast, in order to up their game, where did they turn? Reality TV producers. Valerie Bertinelli: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. That's true. Sean Atkins is now at Dhar Mann. But I do I, one of the things I think has shifted, especially in the creator economy, is you don't need 400 million followers anymore to make the revenue work to a certain extent. 50,000 subscribers on a pay service does very well. Dropout is a case [00:42:00] study, that I use a lot. I don't know if you know who Sam Reich is, but it's a, it's not terribly dissimilar build than you're going through right now. The lesson I think that you- Valerie Bertinelli: I love Sam Reich. Evan Shapiro: He's, I love Sam. Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah, he's amazing. And his dad is also amazing. Billy Cooper: Even Instagram caught onto that. Yeah, what you're saying, and Instagram caught onto that just a couple weeks ago. They said it's less about how many followers, it's more about the engagement. And so Val we were even saying we watched our Instagram go crazy when we first started with Valerie's place. It went from zero to 100,000 to 150,000, whatever, and then it like stalled, and we were like "Oh, what's going on?" And then all of a sudden it became that, oh, Instagram changed their thing. They don't want, you don't want followers, you want engagement. Oh, that's nice of you. Evan Shapiro: So I have two questions for, I have two questions for you to wrap this up. One, what the fuck does this all mean? I'll start with that. Billy, like what does this mean for the performers out there, the showrunners out there, the producers out there, the writers out there? What, if you, had to capsulize it into an elevator pitch [00:43:00] again, you have three floors. Go. Billy Cooper: Wow, no pressure. For me, I think what this all means is that in order for talent and producers to control their fate, they need to control the content and control the conversation with the audience. And so I think what we're trying to do is we're trying to give the tools needed to do just that, to own your audience, and that's the elevator pitch. Valerie Bertinelli: And, may I just put, 'cause I'm always the advocate for the audience, and for the audience to feel like they own you, they're a part of you. Evan Shapiro: I agree with that. All right, one last question for you, Valerie. You have, it's the last meal you're gonna cook. What is it? Billy Cooper: Can I make a guess, Val? Valerie Bertinelli: Yeah, go ahead. Billy Cooper: Her mom's lasagna. Valerie Bertinelli: Oh, that's very sweet. But no. Billy Cooper: Okay. Evan Shapiro: Fuck mom. Valerie Bertinelli: I love a good [00:44:00] lasagna. Billy Cooper: No, no. Valerie Bertinelli: What I'm doing, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to sear a steak, a rib eye, to medium, medium rare, and I'm gonna saute some greens to go along with it. I just love that meal, and it's the easiest. It takes me 10 minutes to make, and it's delicious. It's high in protein, and I'm a carnivore. Evan Shapiro: I am too. Billy Cooper: Oh, Val, aren't we making steak today? Valerie Bertinelli: We are. I'm very excited about it. Yeah. Billy Cooper: We're, making, yeah, we're making steak in about 20 minutes. Valerie Bertinelli: Yes. I'm sorry you can't be here. And we're making my mother- my ex-mother-in-law's version, Mrs. Van Halen's version of ketchup stumble. Evan Shapiro: Mrs. Van Halen's version of steak? Yep. That's amazing. Yep. And what's your son's band's name, by the way? Valerie Bertinelli: Mammoth. And they are on tour right now. They're opening for Guns N' Roses in Europe, and I'm about to go see him in two weeks. Evan Shapiro: Holy shit. Valerie Bertinelli: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Oh my God. Holy cow. Yeah. That's incredible. Billy Cooper: Evan, if you have not checked out, Val's son Wolfie, if you have not checked out his stuff, he's amazing. we were just [00:45:00] tell- Val, we were talking about- Evan Shapiro: I, did. I, tracked it for a while and then I just kinda lost the thread. Billy Cooper: No, there's a video, Val. Evan Shapiro: But I will definitely tap back in. Billy Cooper: There's a, there was a video that just came out of him doing the Valerie call that- Valerie Bertinelli: He was showing the different techniques of tapping Billy Cooper: of tapping, of how Ed used to do it. Yeah. And it's, you guys named him Wolfgang. He's Amadeus. He is a, like he's no joke talent. Valerie Bertinelli: He records at 5150 now. He lives in his childhood home and, he writes everything. He sings everything. He plays the, he starts on the drums. He plays the drums, the bass, the guitar. He does everything by himself with his producer, Elvis, and Jeff, the engineer. So it's, he is a one man band. He's- Evan Shapiro: So you got Wolfgang and Elvis. Valerie Bertinelli: Yeah. Elvis is an amazing producer, and those two are great together. Evan Shapiro: And it's really, it's a shame that your family doesn't have any talent in it. Valerie Bertinelli: I don't know where he got the musical talent, but it wasn't from me. Evan Shapiro: I think I have a clue. Valerie Bertinelli: Yeah. Probably. Evan Shapiro: I really appreciate this. [00:46:00] again, I can't tell you how much of a thrill this was for me, and I hope we can share a meal at some point soon. Billy Cooper, thank you so much. Thank you, Evan. This has been the Media Odyssey podcast. That is the one and only Valerie Bertinelli. Valerie Bertinelli: And that is the one and only Evan Shapiro. Evan Shapiro: Thanks a lot. We'll see you next time