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MEET THE MINDS BEHIND RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE · The Media Odyssey

• Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Who came up with the concept of drag race? Was it you, was it Ru? Was it all of you? Randy Barbato: Initially, when we first started talking about it, Ru was like, I'll do anything except for a competitive reality show. And so everybody developed something else and pitched it and Ru was like, we should do a competitive reality show. Evan Shapiro: Marion, I've worked with World of Wonder for a long time. I haven't worked with them in a minute. But I made some TV with them back when I was a television executive. Now I'm a recovering television executive. Do you know about them? Have you heard about them before? Marion Ranchet: So I have to say that I knew about the IP, but less so about the company itself. So I was excited to have them on board and get a feel for their story. Evan Shapiro: And the IP you're talking about of [00:01:00] course, is Marion Ranchet: RuPaul's Drag Race. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. A world. Yeah, a worldwide Wonder, actually from World of Wonder. Without further ado, let's bring on the two founders of World of Wonder, Randy Barbado and Fenton Bailey. Fenton Bailey: Hiya. Thank you for having us. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it's great to have you here. It's great to see you again. So what's fascinating about you guys is that you've been in business for 34 years. Is that right? Randy Barbato: Yeah, I think. Fenton Baily: Something like that. Last century. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. And it's odd 'cause you're only like 36 years old. But you really were one of the first people or first companies I knew of that produced content for television but yet had their own relationship with their audience and their community. So I wanna get into that, but first, let's start with how did you two meet and how did you decide to found what has become one of the most [00:02:00] successful production companies in TV history? Fenton Bailey: Well, that's very nice of you to say. It's like, we met, again last century, in film school. Literally the first day. Evan Shapiro: Which film school? Fenton Bailey: NYU. Evan Shapiro: Go Violets. Fenton Bailey: And what? Yes. And oh, I don't know. We just, actually our film teacher took one look at us and we weren't in the same class, but he is I'm gonna put you both in my class. And this was Arnie Baskin, he was this kind of like Truffaut-Kenneth Anger. He DPed for a lot of Kenneth Anger films. I dunno. He saw something in us, I don't think he was gay, but maybe he had gay-dar or was just you know. And then we became friends. Randy Barbato: Back then Fenton, on the first day of school, was wearing fluorescent leopard skin pants, high top sneakers, and he had his hair in a bun and had long diamond earrings on.This is truth. So it did seem we should, [00:03:00] and not only did we end up meeting that day and in the same class, but we worked on each other's films. Evan Shapiro: Big school. Randy Barbato: Until the end, and then we quit school at the end of the year. But we did for that first year of grad school. Evan Shapiro: How far, what year in your education did you drop out? Fenton Bailey: Year one. Evan Shapiro: Not year one, okay. Marion Ranchet: Oh, wow. Evan Shapiro: Wow. Randy Barbato: Uhhuh it was the grad program, right? So we had already Evan Shapiro: Which is supposed to be the professional program, which you both dropped out of. And then you dropped out together and then started a company right away? Fenton Bailey: Well, not exactly. I was very lucky, I got this scholarship to go to NYU and all I really wanted was to get to New York. So once I was there, it was like, the fees, NYU is not cheap and the scholarship wasn't gonna cover the fees. So to me it was like necessary to drop out. And then Randy was working on Madison Avenue as a, an ad exec, and I ended up getting a job on Wall Street [00:04:00] in an investment bank, Drexel Burnham, editing corporate videos. Like you know all about junk bonds and corporate takeovers. It was a really interesting time 'cause this was a sort of go-go eighties, but we both had these jobs and we lived on ninth Street in the East Village when the East Village was the East Village. Evan Shapiro: Rent. You gotta see rent in order to understand that right? And so how, what was the process of coming together and figuring out that you wanted to start a production company together? Randy Barbato: We always, we knew we always wanted to produce and write and mainly films back then. And so at some point we thought we need to quit these jobs. Which we did. And then we thought we'd start a rock or a pop band and we thought we'd become, 'cause we could very quickly become pop stars and make a lot of money and that's how we'd finance the production company. Evan Shapiro: That always happens. Randy Barbato: We were, we failed, but we [00:05:00] did get a publishing deal and then with that we bought our first fax machine. And that's how we set up World of Wonder was the money from that publishing company. Evan Shapiro: And what was World of Wonder designed to do from its launch? Fenton Bailey: Originally it was a record company because no record company would sign the fabulous Pop Talks. So we thought we'll have to start a record company. If you just have to build it and they will come. They don't always come. But that's how it, that's how it started as a record company. And actually to this day, it still is a record company. But then we moved into production because we also loved public access and these were like homemade shows that people just put on the cable systems because that was a requirement. If you wanted to be a cable distributor, you had to provide these channels to the public. Evan Shapiro: Still is a requirement. Fenton Bailey: To make, okay, to make their own shows. And it was, I guess that was YouTube in a way before YouTube. And our idea was these shows were so wackadoodle. [00:06:00] It was Manhattan after all, and we thought, why don't we get clips from these and put them into a sort of omnibus edition, make a clip show basically? And we got money from Channel 4 UK to do that. And that's how the whole TV thing really started. We also got our friends to host stories and segments and one of those was Ru as well. He was one of the hosts of the show called, our first show, called Manhattan Cable. Evan Shapiro: So just to break this down, MNN, which still exists, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, on Time Warner, which is now Spectrum here in Manhattan. Still, it still runs and still takes community stuff. Anybody could go there and shoot. Anybody could upload or hand in their videos back then, and it became this melange of crazy content. This is the eighties now or early nineties. And it was, like you said, it was YouTube before YouTube, and then you sold this to Channel 4 as basically a montage show, and we'll get to Ru in a second. So one of the hosts was Ru but another one [00:07:00] was Elvira, right? Randy Barbato: Not Elvira, but we had, no, we had, there was Robin Bird, there was Lynn from Voyeur Vision there. There was Evan Shapiro: They hosted segments for you on your show? Randy Barbato: They had their own shows. We had other people like Lori Pike, John Bartlett, a lot of downtown artists and personalities who were just like in our Rolodex. We would just call them up and ask to do a piece here and there. Evan Shapiro: And you created this montage show for Channel 4. How did it do? Randy Barbato: It was a hit. Fenton Bailey: It was a hit because what we, we realized that if you sit down and watch an hour of one of these shows, that could be a little tiring. But if you just got a clip, it would just, you could often find these great clips within these shows and actually we used to call it clip-nology. We would take all these shows, create the bunch of clips, put them together, and the sort of thinking was it's [00:08:00] okay if you don't like what you are watching right now, 30 seconds, two minutes later it was gonna be something else. And it was just a sequence of clips. In a way, I think a lot of those things were viral videos. I'm thinking of Filthy The Dog, became a big hit. Filthy the Dog, woof, I am so filthy. Marion Ranchet: What year were we at this point in time? Because that's quite fascinating, you, it's social media TV 30 years ago it feels. Fenton Bailey: Do you know what it was? There was a lot of criticism of what we were doing because it was not considered either educational or entertaining in a, in what was considered entertainment. It was like WTF is this stuff? And it was seen as anarchic and dangerous and mindless and deliberately trashy. And all of those things were true. But they, all these clips were also just sticky. They, and we didn't really know ourselves, but we knew it when we saw [00:09:00] it. Evan Shapiro: And so this was your introduction to selling television and it was also your introduction to RuPaul, as you said. This is, one of the hosts or one of the presenters, I guess you would call it on British television, was RuPaul. Randy Barbato: That's right. Where we were living on ninth between Avenue B and Avenue C. There were drag queens who lived in our building. We were a block away from a club called The Pyramid Club, where all this amazing art was happening. It was a real scene back then. And then all the, there were art galleries, Gracie Manchin, the Limbo Club, all, it was happening all around us. Public access television was was also a reflection to the neighborhood we were living in. And so Ru was living in Atlanta, coming up to New York performing as a go-go boy at, I don't think he'd call himself a go-go boy. A go-go dancer at the Pyramid sometimes. Whatever it took to make some cash. He was making music. We were making music. We became friends, and [00:10:00] we kind of knew instantly that he was a huge star. So anytime we could put a camera in front of him was a good thing, was a, you know, was worth it. Evan Shapiro: And I think, Fenton, you said punk is kind, I'm sorry, Drag is inherently punk. So it was very much of the punk movement of that time, even though I would imagine that the punk scene and the drag scene weren't necessarily always that intersecting. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Fenton Bailey: They weren't intersecting, but they definitely coexisted. The same group would go to CBGBs, who'd go to The Pyramid. It wasn't like, Oh, you've got your punks and your drag queens and they were at war. We, that was actually a really interesting time in the sense that everybody was more or less together. There wasn't this sense of a division of identities stood are at loggerheads. It was a weird mix, and so there were skinheads and drag queens and trans people and artists and poets. Spoken word. It was, there was no,[00:11:00] I suppose you could say there was no barrier to entry really. Randy Barbato: And back then Ru was doing like gender-fuck drag. He wasn't doing, he wasn't dressing like a woman per se. He was, it was shoulder pads and jock strap and huge mohawks. So it was just expression. Evan Shapiro: So you knew this was a star. And I think when you see Ru and all their majesty, that's a little bit obvious. But while you lived in the East Village and you were part of this kind of punk art scene, mainstream television and even especially cable television, which was now going commercial. So in the early days of cable, there was no ads. It was just paid so you could almost get away with anything. But then you were starting to add advertising to it, and this is right as this is happening. How did you conceive of the show? Oh, actually, Drag Race was not your first show with Ru, right? What was your first show with Ru and how do you brave the [00:12:00] threshold to pitch that? I'm a recovering television executive. I know how anal they can be. How did really broach that with the kind of very conservative nature of executive commercial television? Fenton Bailey: This isn't a direct answer to the question, but I just wanted to share it and you can cut it out if it's too much, but, around this time we were doing Manhattan Cable, we had all these ideas of let's pitch this, let's pitch that. And we connected somehow with Stephen Chao, who was this television executive who was the bad boy of television. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Fenton Bailey: He was a Fox. He was Barry Diller's protege. Yeah. And he's given credit for inventing Cops, or at least green lighting Cops. And I remember being so annoyed because he basically came and poached Lori Pike from Manhattan Cable and gave her a job at Fox. And I was like, F.U.C.K. Because Stephen Chao was this visionary genius on the one hand. And on the other hand, he was like, you guys, you, [00:13:00] he was just, he was always, he would always take our pitches and he was always entertained, but he was never, ever gonna green light anything we pitched. And we were pitching drag and stuff like that. And it was a weird thing because he was fascinated, completely fascinated on the one hand, but on the other hand was like, you guys are nuts. None of this is ever gonna happen. Marion Ranchet: And you proved him wrong. So what happened next? Randy Barbato: On the success of Manhattan Cable, we spent some time like developing the notion of user generated television. And we did, in the UK we did Takeover TV which was, in the UK the idea of people making their own content was like blasphemous because it was all about the BBC. And what was exciting about all that was A, that we were doing it and it was popular, but we were meeting all this great talent that were still undiscovered and many of them went on to be hugely successful and we didn't have [00:14:00] anything to do with it other than like coming up with a platform and being selfish enough to wanna see them on TV. So we grew that idea. And like Fenton said, got used to "no." We got used to the word no. That is why we're successful is we never took no for an answer and just kept pitching. And in fact, I think, Ru's first, the RuPaul Talk Show, I feel like Jeff Gaspen, Lauren Lasek, like they came to us. They did. It wasn't like this formulated show beforehand. Ru did the, was a presenter on the fashion awards and he was like, he was the moment of the entire, Evan Shapiro: This is VH1 Fashion Awards? Randy Barbato: The VH1 Fashion Awards. Remember that? Yeah. I do. Yeah. Yeah. And Fenton Bailey: it just, and I think this is it just so happened they had a studio space and they weren't doing a lot of originals, but they had this studio space. It smelt really [00:15:00] bad. But they didn't know what to do with it. And they were like, we could try doing a few specials, right? They did a four specials, Randy and I think had Diana, we booked Diana Ross. Evan Shapiro: And these were individual specials with Ru and a guest? Randy Barbato: Yeah, it was the beginning of the talk show and then that kind of proved it and then it was like formatted and perfected in a way. And Ru was like, Ru was built for that. And there was a great team in New York and Michael Rourke was the showrunner. And yeah, it was, we did a hundred episodes. Evan Shapiro: Wow. Wow. And that was, so that was on VH1. And then you conceived of the, who came up with the concept of Drag Race? Was it you, was it Ru, was it all of you? And that all rhymes. Randy Barbato: Yes, it was. I would say it, it was a lot of, there were a lot of iterations to land there, but Tom Campbell was definitely a driving force. He's a creative, [00:16:00] Chief Creative Officer, Fenton, at World of Wonder? Fenton Bailey: He is our Chief Creative Officer. Randy Barbato: Yeah. And initially when we first started talking about it, Ru was like, I'll do anything except for a competitive reality show. And, so everybody developed something else and pitched it to Ru and was like, we should do a competitive reality show. Evan Shapiro: What time in the competitive reality show evolution was this? What were other? Fenton Bailey: There was Top Model. Evan Shapiro: Top model, okay. Fenton Bailey: Project Runway. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And so this was the drag spin on that format? Fenton Bailey: Yes. Those, the thing about Drag race is as a format, it is itself like a drag queen in the sense that it takes bits and pieces from everywhere else, collages them together, puts them in a, spins them around, spits 'em out. So you know that without question, we owe a debt to pretty much every reality, competition, elimination show out there, and a lot more shows, other shows besides that. Evan Shapiro: But as you said, dragis like a statement on [00:17:00] society. So this show is a statement on that format. Fenton Bailey: Yeah, drag is prescient in a way, also it's very much a mashup kind of culture of taking bits and pieces and remixing them and re-purposing them and doing stuff with them. It's very meme-like or Randy Barbato: Yeah, but also because of that, it's why it's more compelling and more successful than all those other shows, which we love so much. But to survive as a drag queen, you need to be able to master so many disciplines, number one. But then number two, you need to have, you need to be built of steel. Like it is not easy to be a drag queen. It wasn't back then in 2009 at the beginning of drag race, and it certainly isn't today. It's just, so you know, it's the kind of tenacity of spirit that virtually all drag queens come with, our dream for a TV show, and then on top of that, being able to be a designer, being able to be a [00:18:00] comedian, a performer, a makeup artist, all of those things. Fenton Bailey: And a marketer. You have to do your own marketing, you have to engage your own audience. You have to cultivate and grow your own audience. In many ways, the drag queens are the sort of advance guard of social media and of creator culture. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I think you look at creator culture and I have this conversation with young filmmakers and young artists all the time, and they're like, you mean I have to be an artist and I have to market my own stuff as well, and I have to be my own business manager? That seems really hard. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? This has always been the case. And drag queens, I think are the, you're right, the kind of quintessential creator because they do all of that stuff. And then they have to hang their own posters in the bathrooms of the clubs that they're in in order to sell out the shows on the weekend. So it, it is very much, the leading, and I think drag culture has been at the tip edge of all culture. If you wanna see something 10 years later, look at drag [00:19:00] culture 10 years ago and you can basically see where the puck is going. But even then, so you had Viacom at the time, really embracing the Ru show and then it seems like they were very into this competition reality show, but they didn't put it on VH1, they didn't put it on MTV, they put it on the gay ghetto of Logo. And it still was a massive hit, overperformed the whole network right? Fenton Bailey: We were so lucky in retrospect that's the way it played out because the show spread really essentially only by word of mouth. And we also had the room, it was a channel, the budget was so small and the channel's footprint was small. That it wasn't like all eyes were upon it, it wasn't like it had one episode in which to succeed or fail. And it's almost like Evan Shapiro: There was no marketing campaign that build expectations and performance. It just performed. Fenton Bailey: It just performed. And it had the, it was [00:20:00] given the time to perform. We laughed about it 'cause we'd say no one, they forgot to cancel us. Because it was like just over there. Randy Barbato: It also gave us the ability to structure a pretty good deal just in terms of retaining IP outside of the US. It also gave us the opportunity to hone our marketing and social media skills because it was really important for us to spread the word. And it also, we discovered this audience that we had so much in common with and who were loyal and had a deep connection. And so that was the springboard for a lot of our future in many ways. Marion Ranchet: And so, yeah, speaking about international, so you kept the IP so you could do whatever you wanted. What did you do? In how many markets have you been able to produce? I think you said that you did not license the format. You really still very hands on in [00:21:00] every iteration outside of the US. Is that correct? Fenton Bailey: Yeah, it took a few years before we were able to get an original version up and running. Some of the earliest ones were Thailand and Canada. And then in 2019 the BBC in the UK, we launched Drag Race UK and we definitely felt that the key would be to be able to produce these with local partners. Every deal is slightly different. The other thing that we did is that we launched our own streaming subscription network Presents Plus because that is a place where you can see every version of Drag Race, and now there's something like there's 17 different. International versions and there's about five different format versions. So it's quite a lot. And what's interesting and very fortunate for us is that people in other countries want to see versions other than just the [00:22:00] one in their country, because I guess because drag itself is so strongly visual and it's, it isn't so language dependent as some things might be, it's again, it's this sort of viral-memeable approach to creativity that isn't really language restricted all that much. Marion Ranchet: And I think you said that you did not copy and paste the format in every market. So every market really made its own version of Drag Race. And so I then, I guess I understand why that can. Still be appealing regardless of where you are in the world. Do you have a couple of example? 'cause the UK is often the next market for any US company. So where did you go next from 2019 onwards? I'm thinking about markets where there's that language barrier, not so much for the audience, but for you, right? It means that you need to find a local partner, et cetera. So can you tell a bit more about that? If it's France, it's okay. But you can choose another country if you, Fenton Bailey: [00:23:00] oh my God. The French version is like Couture darling. Yes. It really is the general stereotype that the French have this super fabulous evolved idea of visuals and fashion. It's true. Marion Ranchet: I love it. Fenton Bailey: It is jaw-droppingly spectacular. One of the other things we said is, look, in doing an international version, don't look for, don't try to imitate Ru, don't try to replace Ru. There is no replace. Ru is Ru. And so when it comes to the show, think of a host or even a combination of hosts that will work. We're not too fixed about that. So in Thailand for example, we had Art and Angina. There was a two-for. In Canada, it's Brooklyn, but three others altogether. It's more like a federal decision making process. It's, it depends. And of course, down under, it's now Michelle Visage, so it's different for every. Randy Barbato: Just going [00:24:00] back to the thing you commented about finding the partners to do this. It is, so that is why the show is an international success. I'm sure actually most of our partners subscribe to Media Odyssey because they're all very like plugged in. They are they love drag, but they're also, they're attuned to the world and to media and to what they're doing and that, they're part of the WoW thing, the WoW family. And so that's been super. it was like, I don't think we had originally designed to find part it just, there was no other choice. That's the way it ended up having to be, and we're really lucky it was that way. Marion Ranchet: Like a kind-spirit kind of approach, right? It's your baby and yeah, and it's fascinating. I have to say that I've noticed that a lot of your partners are actually public service broadcasters and I find this amazing. [00:25:00] I think again, whether that's the BBC in the UK or France Televisions in France, they do have an obligation, a mission to be as representative as possible. And of course, I'm not surprised to see them making that jump, that leap of faith with you guys. And I think on the French market, it's been, a hit success. We had another edition this summer and I think the final was seen by 700K people in the middle of August in France, when usually we don't watch TV. So I think that says a lot about this. Evan Shapiro: Right? The French don't do anything in August. But I do wanna, sorry, I wanna lean back. Marion Ranchet: He has to do that, but it's too, it's cheap shots. Evan Shapiro: Well it's true isn't it? Marion Ranchet: I'm calling cheap shots. Fenton Bailey: But I just wanna just very quickly wanna shoehorn in here the fact that last year, the Olympic ceremony in Paris. You had Nikki Doll, who's the host and several of the queens from Drag Race France, and of course there was all that bali-who and uproar and people freaking out. But at [00:26:00] the same time, billions of people saw that show and you, the sort of ancillary point I wanna make is that I think that what we encounter most as we go around different countries and saying, what about Drag Race in your country? We run into the same old arguments that, oh, the audience isn't ready for it. Or, oh, it's a threat to masculinity or just this sort of underlying vibe. Whether it's homophobia or right wing, radical, right wing mindset, ultraconservative. There are a dozen excuses, but they're all essentially the same excuse. And so the process is really about finding those kindred spirits because TV France, they, I don't think they were sure. It took them a few years to entertain the idea, and no one, I have to say was more surprised by its success than TV France. They were like, what? And often it's the kids of the [00:27:00] executives who educate them, who tell them, you should really check out this show. Evan Shapiro: I wanna leap back to something that Randy said, which is, they're all your partners seem to all be students of the industry. They all are very aware of not just popular culture, but the, what the trends are and what the important shifts in the media landscape are. And then you said that they listened to this podcast, which I am very thankful for. But on the flip side of that I would say the same is not just true of you, it's truer of you two than it's ever been of any other producers I've ever met. Back when we first worked together on a show called Man Shops World, you were doing your own social media before social media was social media. You had this WoW Report newsletter that you would send out. And I got on the mailing list and I'm like who, what is this? This is a newsletter via email, this is before newsletters were a thing, and now Marion and I both have a newsletter, but this was before the platforms of newsletters. This was just an email that you wrote and sent to everybody, and you then [00:28:00] cultivated your own online community through your website directly to the consumers itself. And I think, there's, on the one hand, RuPaul's Drag Race has now become an international phenomenon, and I think it's easy to say that's because of Ru or because of the format or because of the rising popularity of drag, but you were really one of the reasons why drag has become popular and your direct relationship with your community, your direct relationship with your consumer before that was cool. This was decades ago. Was I think one of the big reasons, or is one of the big reasons that the show has lasted as long as it has. What made you wanna do that originally? How did you come up with the premise of going directly to consumers? 'cause now you look at WOW Presents which is a direct to consumer streaming business built on your own IP that you run yourselves, which is very rare for a production company your size. What was the, what was the genesis of the idea of going direct to the consumers? Having this conversation with your own community, [00:29:00] cultivating this community, turning it into something larger than just a mailing list, but a fan base and really leaning into fandom. Where did that idea come from? What, how do you continue to get excited and continue to manage that? What's the whole premise of where that came from? Randy Barbato: I can tell you initially it wasn't from a commercial point of view. Initially, I think there was, it was almost altruistic in that we were excited about pop culture and media and wanted to share ideas. It started in the simplest of ways and, but then I think getting feedback, it became clear that this was part of our business and we could turn it into something else. And we actually, before we started WoW Presents Plus we actually. Built with Tom Wolf, who's our chief, other officer operating blah, blah, [00:30:00] blah, technical guru, whatever. And he actually built and before YouTube even, we built a platform to put original content on. It didn't quite work. So it went from us just wanting to share to us thinking, oh wait, there's more to this, and it did fit in with our history of wanting to meet other people who were just making stuff. Remember, like when we first started a hundred years ago, you really, there was no access to media. Like to get something sold, like there were big gates at the studios. You had to, your parents had to work there or something like that. We were such outsiders and we were gay on top of that. So we were gay out there. Evan Shapiro: You're gay? Randy Barbato: Yeah, totally gay. We were, we aren't anymore, but back then we were. No, I was. Fenton Bailey: I think also, Randy's absolutely right, it came from a creative passion versus a business plan. We just didn't have that. [00:31:00] And I think it was one of our sort of thinking about it. One of our models was, Andy Warhol, who was in the eighties in this sort of latter day phase of his career. And he had done the factory and he'd almost, in a way, a lot of what he did was a prototype of this. He had a group of characters around him and he was putting out content and, one of, he always said, business is the best art. And I think it is a, it's not really comes from a business point of view. It's a let's do something point of view. And in that respect, I think it's all quite punk. It's this idea of just making something out of nothing. Plus I, another sort of takeaway for us has been that we've seen, we've got the massive streaming wars now, and we've seen that you have these massive entities battling it out, and yet you feel the audience isn't quite getting what they might want out of it. Everybody's [00:32:00] so busy calculating what the audience demographic is and what the algorithm's telling them, the actual needs of the audience somehow get overlooked. We always felt there was an opportunity with, it's a word I don't love, niche because just niche always seems a way of patting it on the head. But specialty, you could say specialty. Evan Shapiro: And I think the, go ahead. Sorry, Marion. Marion Ranchet: No I love that word specialty streamer or you're fan-focused or community focused streamer versus the mainstream, right? Who's trying to service everyone? And by doing that, to your point, very often they end up, I wouldn't say not service anyone, but yeah. Evan Shapiro: It's how you get this monoculture where nothing stands out and everything looks the same. And I, someone said to me the other day a young film student, I said, they said how do you not get pigeonholed as niche? And I said, don't worry about it. Your fandom is your fandom. Cater to your fandom and everything will take [00:33:00] care of itself. And again, Randy and Fenton, you were the first person I, you were the first two I ever saw who did this. And I remember taking a note. It's why I wanted to have you on this podcast. I remember taking a note while I was still on executive going, that's the thing. That's absolutely the thing. I started writing a blog after I saw you writing your newsletter because of that. And by the way, and then Andy started his at Bravo, and he's now much more famous than I am. In particular, the, your ability to cater to your fandom directly to them is, I think, one of the reasons why you've been so successful. But now you have this direct to consumer product that very few, even big studios and production companies have. A, how's it going? You're putting all your various versions of RuPaul Drag Race on there and Drag Race on there. And you have the international rights to the American show that you can put on there as well. But you're also acquiring content, producing content specifically for [00:34:00] that platform. Tell us, how's that going? Is it going well? And if so, why? And what's the business strategy around WoW Presents Plus and how you operate it inside your studio. Fenton Bailey: Randy? Randy Barbato: It's going really well. Marion Ranchet: If I can, do you listen to the podcast Smartless where Jason Bateman makes the longest questions ever? I think you've learned well. Evan Shapiro: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So she's Will Arnett telling me to shut the fuck up, but that's because I called the French vacation. Marion Ranchet: No, but yeah, I think it would be helpful. Evan Shapiro: No, and I'm also trying to buy them time to think of their answers. Marion Ranchet: Yeah exactly, because that, that, that was a big ass question. Fenton Bailey: It is going well. That is the short answer. And Tommy Wolf has been really instrumental in, it's not a fixed thing. It's continually developing. And since we launched it, we've added a lot of different features. So we can now do [00:35:00] live, and we did live from the pink carpet at DragCon. We have a sort of all access, which is like a sort of premium tier that connects with our store, our merch store, and with live events where you can get discounts on tickets for Work the World or for DragCon or for the new Drag Race Experience that we're launching. We also have WoW Now, which is behind the paywall, but it's a linear channel on the streaming network where you just stuff loops. 'cause sometimes dunno about you, but sometimes you wanna watch something, but the effort of finding something to watch is so overwhelming. You just wanna turn something on, and so we just put it on a loop. That's WoW Now. Randy Barbato: We have an unbelievable 96% of customer retention since we started WoW PP. That's Evan Shapiro: Really? How long has it been up and running? Randy Barbato: Statistic I think. We have something like over 1900 hours of [00:36:00] original content, separate from all the Drag Race stuff, and that's either produced or stuff that we license. We've increased our, the amount of content we're licensing. And that's where, we did license Elvira's catalog. We licensed, recently Licensed Absolutely Fabulous, Ab Fab. Fenton Bailey: We, Randy, we licensed Elvira. Absolutely fabulous. Evan Shapiro: So you're licensing content. So Elvira, L Word but you're also producing Fenton Bailey: Not The L Word. Sorry. He broke up when he said he was gonna say Elvira. But it's on L, it froze. Evan Shapiro: That's where El from before. Okay. So you're, you licensed her library and a whole bunch of other stuff, but you're also producing originals there. But did Randy say that you have 90 plus percent retention rate over the last six years of your subscriber? Randy Barbato: No. He said 96%. That's what he said. Evan Shapiro: Wow. Wow. And that's, those of us who talk about the churn-pocalypse [00:37:00] know that's a really impressive number but it does seem like you're super serving your fandom in a way that very few. Streaming services do. And that's, I think, forget niche. That's the power of the hyper serving the fans. And you're, you just produced a documentary that's gonna go up on there. Fenton Bailey: We we produced a documentary recently called Dear Viv about The Vivienne, who was the winner of the first season of Drag Race UK. And it's a very sad story. The Vivienne passed away earlier this year, but we were, we thought, oh, we really should make a documentary about the Vivienne. And we were just able to do that in that moment as opposed to the traditional model, where you'd be like, let's make a deck, let's make a sizzle, let's go out and pitch it. This process, in addition to costing a lot of money, takes many months, six months, a year, 18 months easily. And then a decision can be another, how long but we would just say, we'll say let's do this. And as we're doing it, we'll go out and get partners. [00:38:00] We found Crave in Canada. The BBC came on board as a partner. And we're able to produce stuff quickly, and I think that's so important. In this moment of what seems like almost universal unscripted paralysis, it's great to be able to actually just go and do something. Evan Shapiro: You're green lighting yourself. You're not sitting around waiting for the green. Fenton Bailey: We're very tough. Randy Barbato: We do say no a lot. You say no a lot, Marion Ranchet: You say no to yourself. A lot. Interesting. Evan Shapiro: Because you know your audience. Fenton Bailey: Yeah. And as Randy says, No is the beginning of Yes. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Apparently you're not taking no for an answer. Nice. And so as this episode goes live, we're a week away from MIPCOM and I think you have some news, right? A brand new original that you are putting out there. Do you wanna tell us more about that? Fenton Bailey: Yes. So we MIPS coming up as you say, and we're excited because [00:39:00] we, Alan Cumming just won the Emmy for Traitors, of course. And Alan is just such an inspiration. In addition to being a brilliant actor, he also has this club that he started in his dressing room when he was playing the MC in Cabaret. And people would go Studio 54, see him in Cabaret, go up to his dressing room for a drink. And that was so successful that he then ended up acquiring, excuse my language, the Cock. Okay. In the East Village renaming it, so it's okay. He renamed it Club Cumming. And it's like a home, it's a small club, but it's a home for incredible performers and artists who are either outside of the mainstream or seen as a sort of too wacky. And it struck us, Alan is very much the MC of this club. He's the driving force of this club and Cabaret set in 1939. It feels a little bit like 2025 is 1939 again. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it does. Yeah. [00:40:00] Fenlton Bailey: You know where we are politically and we, Alan was like, can we make a TV show about Club Cumming? And we were like, are you kidding? That would be amazing. And Alan has agreed and we've we've shot this six part series and in the course of producing it, we've found partners with Crave in Canada and BBC Scotland. And we'll be launching it next year on, Randy Barbato: And just to add, it's directed by this phenomenal director Jeremy Simmons, who we've been working with since the beginning of time. And he did Man Shops Globe. Ah, Evan Shapiro: Ah, Chop Swirl. Randy Barbato: So you know, part of the family. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's amazing. But you did take this show around, right? And you did try to sell it to some traditional gatekeepers. And despite the fact that Alan Cumming has been on huge television shows on CBS and just won the Emmy for Traitors, which is one of the biggest hits in the UK right now and here you couldn't sell the show, right? Randy Barbato: That's correct. Fenton Bailey: [00:41:00] There a couple of places you would've thought of course they're gonna do this. If only to keep in the good graces of your star host. Evan Shapiro: And yet, what was the excuse that these gatekeepers gave you for not buying this fabulous show with this fabulous host? Fenton Bailey: Without, I just think some of these platforms have their own filters and maybe in some respects they're narrow, specific, they're specific. I'm not gonna say narrow. Marion Ranchet: Specific, very PC of you. Fenton Bailey: Now look, here's the thing. Club Cumming is a creative collaboration. It is in some respects like Drag Race in the sense that although Drag Race is a competition, personally, I think one of the strongest aspects of the show is the camaraderie of these queens working together. Yes they're vying for the crown, but they're all really together in the workroom, sharing their lives and their stories, and there really is a warm heart to it. And I think it's very much the idea of. [00:42:00] Club Cumming. It's not wine night gone wrong with people throwing things and, behaving badly. It, so the conflict and drama is really, it's creative versus this sort of ultra personal, ultra nasty stuff. And so for that reason, I do think it is perhaps in the reality universe, an unusual proposition. Randy Barbato: I think he's being very politic. I think that is partially true, but I also think that given what's going on in the world and well in America, and given what's going on television, both broadcast and cable, I think that some people perceive it as a hot potato. Nobody said that. None of them, they were they're the most gracious passes and so carefully worded to avoid us pointing the finger, which of course we never would. Evan Shapiro: But that, and you are a gentleman of the first order in that way. But, you had to wait [00:43:00] for the culture to catch up with Ru in order to get Drag Race even on the air in a lot of these countries. And I think what's been proven over the last 30 some odd years between the two of you is that you see where the culture is headed. You know where it is today and you see where it's going and to not necessarily jump on something wonderful because you're afraid is very much where the television industry is stuck right now. The fear, you just watched the Jimmy Kimmel of it all in the episode we're dropping this week. The fear of just maybe saying the wrong thing at one moment or another, or having someone perceive that what you've said is the wrong thing has now frozen the industry into paralysis, and yet you continue to make culture happen by your own terms because you have a relationship with your audience. And that's what I think is both brave, but also like incredibly visionary from a business standpoint. Forget the art perspective. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. They [00:44:00] invented without realizing realizing it, the creator playbook 30 years ago. And you've been applying it day in, day out. And I think that's a great segue into the question of the week, right? Which is, actually we can all weigh in, but we try to bring people like you on the pod to expand other people's horizon, so to say. And so my question for you is, what would you tell producers today in the way that they should conduct their businesses based on what you've done? Or any tips yet that you can share. And I think Evan and I, we can also weigh in, but we'd love to hear from you of course. Fenton Bailey: Maybe the first thing you do is flee the country. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, that is tempting. Evan Shapiro: I'm trying. I'm trying. Marion Ranchet: Evan is more in Europe lately than he is here, so he keeps calling us Socialist, but he loves it. Evan Shapiro: No, I wanna be a socialist. Marion Ranchet: You wanna be a socialist? Evan Shapiro: You keep dragging me back. Fenton Bailey: But I do think there's a couple of things. I really don't want to talk about President Chaos, [00:45:00] but one of, I was reading Michael Wolf's book. He has written several about this person, but I was reading the latest one and he was talking about this idea that in this person's mind, the media was the campaign. The campaign was the media. Clearly this person had no policies as such. He had a whole project 25 agenda, which denied exist, denied having anything to do with which was a lie, but I don't wanna get into the weeds of that. I think the takeaway that the media is the thing it's similar to today people are saying people don't watch full shows, they only watch clips. The clips are the show, and the show is the clips. The promotion is the show, and the show is the promotion. It's all one thing. Rather than separate silos of, this is marketing and promotion. This is the show. It's all of a piece. And I do think that is a piece of, I take away advice for anyone doing [00:46:00] anything. It's like you can't just be a director. You can't just be a writer. You have to be all of those things. You have to think perhaps more like a drag queen. You need to find your audience. You need to curate your audience, nurture your audience, and be continually reinventing the way you engage them, because that's the key. It's not necessarily about watching a show. It's about the audience being, they're not just watching. They need to be engaged. Evan Shapiro: I think you hate him or like him, he's very good at this. The current president. And to a certain extent, he is probably the most powerful drag queen in the world. He very much understands that, to your point, Marsha McClean, that the media is, the message in the message is the media, and you don't need the gatekeepers to get to your fans. You can go directly to them. So again, hate him or love him, there's a lot to learn from 'em. Fenton Bailey: Just one tiny note though, I wouldn't credit him with any conscious knowledge of any of these things. And I think that [00:47:00] anytime you compare him to, and I think it's always a disservice to the thing you're comparing it to. Evan Shapiro: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. I'm just trying to call him a drag queen 'cause I'm hoping that'll make social media blow up. Fenton Bailey: But your point is completely Evan Shapiro: He wears enough makeup to be a drag queen. Randy, same question. Randy Barbato: Well, you know, failure is okay. That's important for young people, young producers. I just think failure is a great thing actually. We failed way more than we succeeded and we just keep failing. But the other thing is, in this particular time, I think that it's okay to retain joy and for joy to be part of what you do because I think visibility is the number one thing and there's a lot of people who are like, who I know who are in our business, who are like ready to just give up and or who feel like they have a responsibility to just produce overtly political [00:48:00] content. And I think being joyful is political. Being visible is the most political, especially for my people because it's very difficult right now. It's crazy to think about all the battles that I thought were behind us are starting up all over again with a kind of vigor and momentum that some people are just not coming out. And I think it's important to leave the house and to keep making stuff even if it fails or gets to people, like that's the beginning of something and I'm so happy about South Park. Fenton Bailey: Oh, so brilliant. I also want to add, you should read my book. That's my advice. Marion Ranchet: Hey, can you sign it for us? Can you bring, can you bring two copies at MIPCOM? Evan Shapiro: What is he gonna put those in his suitcase? He could send them to me. Randy Barbato: Bring the T-shirt to Fenton. [00:49:00] Bring the T-shirts, bring that, bring the little merch. Marion Ranchet: Anything you can put in your suitcase, bring it on. No, but it's fascinating and it's interesting what you guys have been saying that, 2025 feels 1939 a lot, and last week I was at an event by BBC Studios here in the Netherlands, and they had Mark Gatz, maybe you know him he was behind Sherlock, and so he's launching a new show called Bookish. And he's playing a gay bookkeeper who's also a detective. I think it's not pre-war it's after the war, but I could be wrong. And he said exactly that those stories needed to be told right now more than ever because he felt history was repeating all over again. And I love what you said Fenton about leaving the IP alone a bit and being more open as to how people are consuming. I think we're being a bit control freak in this industry, we're building something, whether that's an IP, a platform, and we want people to [00:50:00] behave a certain way. And I like the idea that you are putting forward, that is, however you are finding us, however you wanna, consumers, is that just a clip? Is it the full thing? Regardless of where this is, how it should be? And I think that's an amazing lesson for any producers as well, because if their main goal is to be on traditional TV or wherever with the big box, et cetera, yeah, I think times are tougher. So having a non-linear success is is definitely the right way. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And I think, I double down on what Marion just said and what you guys said as well. But I think if my lesson, and this is something I say when you are not present, when you know existing production companies with a long history or new artists and directors and producers are coming up, when they ask me, so what should I do? I say, go study World of Wonder. Because over the last 30 years, the cultivation of their fandom. Their ability, your ability to go directly to your consumers, [00:51:00] your ability to empower yourselves without necessarily relying on the Hollywood industrial complex to ratify you and to give you the permission to make your stuff is entirely reliant and derived from your ability just to understand your audience and know what they want and go where they're going without waiting for the machine to catch up. Fenton Bailey: I would just thank you for that, but I would take it one step further. We just produced with Linus O'Brien, the director, this documentary Strange Journey. The story of Rocky Horror. And it was so interesting because Linus made, is the son of Richard O'Brien, who is the creator of Rocky Horror. And there's this wonderful moment in the documentary where someone's asking Richard about the legacy of Rocky Horror, and he says, he says, the thing is, it's not mine anymore, it's, it belongs to the fans because as you probably know, the success of Rocky Horror, the movie, [00:52:00] which was a failure when it came out. Was because they did these midnight screenings and out of that came this shadow cast idea of people dressing up as the characters and talking along and talking back to the screen and interacting with it. And that shows us that the fans are really the creator culture. They're really in charge. So it's not the you know that movie thing, that THX thing that they play at the movies. The audience is listening. The audience really isn't listening. The audience is actually in charge. And I think that's, it's very different, but it's really exciting and it's the logical evolution of media over decades and I, that gives me hope because no matter what fascist is in power right now, they're not gonna stop people being people and who we are. And gay people have always existed and always will, no matter what anyone tries to do. Straight people make [00:53:00] gay people. There's no other way gay people are created. So go figure. Evan Shapiro: And that's exactly why we wanted to have you here. You understand our culture. You understand the media in a way that very few people who do what you do do. And it's really unusual. It's very special, and the culture owes a huge debt of gratitude to the two of you. So thank you for that. Thank you for being here. Marion, this was as promised a great episode of our podcast. Marion Ranchet: Good job guys. Fantastic. Loving it. I wanted to spend more time with you guys. We need to spend some time in Cannes. Let's make it happen. Evan Shapiro: At Cannes. Yes. We must do that. Drinking anything we want. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening everybody. That is Marion Ranchet, Marion Ranchet: And that is Evan Shapiro. Evan Shapiro: Thank you so much for listening or watching the Media Odyssey Podcast. We'll see you soon, hopefully at MIP. Marion Ranchet: Cheers.