Latest / The Media Odyssey / WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KIDS…CONTENT, THE AI LOOP, AND FRANCE TV UNDER THREAT

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WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KIDS…CONTENT, THE AI LOOP, AND FRANCE TV UNDER THREAT · The Media Odyssey

• Marion Ranchet: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Media Odyssey podcast. That is Evan Shapiro. Evan Shapiro: And that is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: We've been busy like crazy, and something incredible happened. Do you wanna tell us what happened? Evan Shapiro: Sure. we were both in Lisbon for Stream TV, and then we both went traveling across Portugal afterwards, you with your family, me with mine. And I was drunk at a farmhouse in Douro Valley, which is wine country in Portugal, and I got this email saying I had won a Webby. Marion Ranchet: Insane. Congrats. Congrats. Evan Shapiro: Thanks Marion Ranchet: The week before we said you wouldn't win. We said you were Evan Shapiro: I was convinced- We like, I was in fact, I had thought I... So the process of the Webbys, I had not really been this deep in it [00:01:00] before. And, I got nominated, and I was in the people's voice, and I was getting my ass kicked, and I saw that I lost on the 16th. And so that was it, and I had resigned myself to losing to this amazing creator who is body positivity, and she had won the people's voice. So I thought I lost. And then I got this email, and I emailed the Webbys. I'm like, "This is a mistake." They're like, "No, there's a jury award," and that's what I won. Oh, good. Creator Thought Leadership. Best Creator Thought Leadership, and I beat my, the person I had emulated part of my career around, which is Scott Galloway, which was, Marion Ranchet: Yeah, that's pretty cool. Evan Shapiro: That was one of my options for five-word speeches was I beat Scott Galloway, yo. So the Webbys, the awards are, on the 11th, and you can only give five words in your speech, and you have to upload the speech. Marion Ranchet: Oh, wow. Evan Shapiro: And maybe you get chosen to speak live there. I don't know that yet, but I had to upload my speech, and so I put up a lot of [00:02:00] options on social media for people to help me choose my speech, my five-word speech for. Marion Ranchet: Very funny. I have to say that it is winning for being a big mouth, and, you love that, right? Evan Shapiro: I do. It was, I think you and I, I'm a few years out ahead of you on this track that we're both on, a post-job in creator economy, and you know that there are these wins that you get that make you feel like you're doing the right thing, and this is the culmination of this part of so much work that I've been doing, and it really is incredibly gratifying. And there is no way, I don't think, I would have won without this podcast and without you and without everybody who listens. Marion Ranchet: Really? Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I don't think so. I think it's a, it was a culmination of things that we applied with, and one of them was working on this podcast, and the newsletter and LinkedIn, and there's no question I think you have enhanced- [00:03:00] my breadth as a creator, but also the community we've created here, as was demonstrated at Stream TV, which is just, that's what it's about. That's what this award was about. So credit to you, everybody who works on this podcast. Marion Ranchet: Cool Evan Shapiro: Everybody on my team, and certainly everybody who supports us on this podcast. Marion Ranchet: Oh, that's awesome. I love that. Cool. I've, won. I feel like I've won a little souvenir. Evan Shapiro: There you go. Marion Ranchet: I'll take it. Evan Shapiro: Absolutely. Take it. Take a piece of it. Absolutely. You deserve a piece of it. Marion Ranchet: Okay, cool. So we haven't done this remotely for a while. Of course, a lot has happened these last few weeks. So we're gonna be covering a couple of key, news, and you've dropped two reports. You've been busy, as well. Yeah. And you've been in Miami. So I think time to dig in, but perhaps the one thing we can quickly start with is we haven't done a live episode for the earnings. We had done that extensively in Q1 to wrap up [00:04:00] 2025 earnings. I have to admit, I've been a bit remote. So what have you seen in Q1, those initial results that we've seen from Netflix and others? Can you share what grabbed your attention? Evan Shapiro: Sure. I think, you could talk about all the big entertainment companies, and Disney hasn't given out theirs yet, and Warner Brothers and Paramount haven't given out theirs yet. Netflix was, I think, disappointing to the street, mostly on guidance on a moving forward basis. But I think it's irresponsible to focus on first quarter earnings without really just focusing on big tech because the entire world economy is now tied into seven or eight companies. And four of them released earnings last week, and it was really spectacular how much they're tripling and quadrupling and quintupling down on this AI hype bubble economy. Last week, you had Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Apple. So five companies, [00:05:00] right? Five of the most valuable companies in the history of the world. Together, they committed a new $725 billion in AI tech infrastructure investment for the coming year. Just for the coming year. And this amount, $725 billion, is more than the Apollo space program, the Marshall Plan post-war, and the Manhattan Project combined. And it's also reframed the AI economy and therefore really the global economy right now around Anthropic versus OpenAI or Microsoft versus Google. And it's just spectacular. Now, look, they, all had really amazing earnings too. These five companies are gonna wind up owning the infrastructure of AI to a certain extent, and they are making as much money on enhancing their own businesses using AI as they did [00:06:00] on the first version of the internet or the last version of the internet. They're all improving their cloud businesses, and in the case of Meta, improving the amount of time spent on their platform, not necessarily selling directly, AI. Both Google and Microsoft have perfected the AI embedding in a suite of software services thing. But inside all of this, the spectacular earnings and cloud and computing sales and all this other stuff, this circular economy is being cemented even further. Google's revenue from its investments in AI outperformed Google. Think about that for a second. Google's revenue from its investments were sixty percent of its net income. Amazon made this huge bet on infrastructure, AI infrastructure, but it's bound into an investment in Anthropic, which has to round-trip [00:07:00] these revenues back to it. Meta is laying off eight thousand people to buy a thousand chips. So it's a, it's, we can go with, through them one by one, but look deep into the earnings reports, the words that they use about themselves and where they're putting their money, and it's this, it's still tripling down on this circular loop AI economy. Data centers that they're gonna use and sell to themselves and contracts between each other, and really in the middle of this is a swap. OpenAI is now out of vogue. They missed their numbers in 2025 for users and revenues, and now the darling is Anthropic. Now, we've talked about this before, and I will stop monologuing in a second, but this is the very much the difference in between selling AI directly to consumers, which is a bullshit nonexistent business, and cloud computing, replacing software, replacing SaaS with [00:08:00] corporate B2B business stuff, which is exactly what Claude is allowing Anthropic to doing. But this is just trading one darling for another that they all own together, right? And it's the latest in vogue, another trillion-dollar valuation raise. People are clam-- they're tripping over themselves. They're stumbling over themselves to invest in Anthropic because of this one piece of fucking software, the latest darling. And I think we're gonna see this cycle repeat itself over and over Anthropic is raising money at a trillion dollar valuation. They will probably go public in fourth quarter of this year if the trajectory holds. But are they worth a trillion dollars? Ooh. As much as Meta? More than Disney and Netflix combined? I don't know. Marion Ranchet: What's tricky is that the business model isn't dry yet, and this thing you're saying about OpenAI getting, being out of vogue, I don't know if you've noticed a number of creators on [00:09:00] LinkedIn who are pushing people to stop using Claude and start using, the other way around. Stop using ChatGPT Evan Shapiro: Stop using OpenAI Marion Ranchet: Start using Claude. They're being paid, by Claude and Anthropic. Evan Shapiro: They're all being paid. Marion Ranchet: They have to. Evan Shapiro: This is all being paid. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. It's crazy. So it's it's Ruben Acida, I think he has almost a million followers on LinkedIn, and I see him, and every single thing is like, "Stop this, do that." And so the question, and to your point, I think, that's very much the B2C element, and I'm not super familiar with what Anthropic does, aside maybe from defense. Evan Shapiro: Well no. So, Marion Ranchet: Do they have a defense contract? Evan Shapiro: Yeah. They have massive, massive defensive defense contracting, and they're in bed with some unsavory figures. They're all... Did you read the... You know what happened since last time we saw each other and last time we spoke? Did you read the, Ronan Farrow profile [00:10:00] of Sam Altman in The New Yorker magazine? Marion Ranchet: No, I haven't. Evan Shapiro: Holy fucking shit. It's like a horror novel. Marion Ranchet: Are you joking? Evan Shapiro: It's like a Stephen King novel. No. Marion Ranchet: Oh, wow. Okay, you need to send it. Evan Shapiro: You have to read it. Marion Ranchet: I haven't seen it. Evan Shapiro: You get... I will. It's paywalled, but- Okay ... it is worth the fucking read. First one, Ronan, Farrow is one of the greatest investigative journalists- Yeah ... living. He's really, good at this, and he spent a long time talking to everyone, including Sam Altman, about Sam Altman. And the guy, I, don't wanna toss out the word sociopath and pathological liar lightheartedly, but it's his own team talking about him that way. And frankly, it's the whole ecosystem of these tech bro malignant narcissists, back room dealing. Inside the Microsoft earnings is a reinvestment in Stargate, which sounds [00:11:00] Orwellian and is. It's a partnership between all of these companies and the government signed by the current president of the United States- and crypto bro, Donald J. Trump, and in partnership with Sam Altman and all the, Anthropic guys and everybody else. And Anthropic is getting these huge, defense contracts. It's how, by the way, Google's, earnings were bolstered tremendously by two major investments, Anthropic and, SpaceX. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Also now an AI company by default. It's very circular. It's very, you have to read the earnings of these companies and see how they're all connected to each other. And personally, I am not an investment expert by any stretch of the imagination. I do not invest my own money. I do not where, know where it goes. As you, you know my wife, you know I do not invest. I pay no attention to what we're invested in. But this current dependence on this AI for [00:12:00] as much of the American growth story, and therefore the global growth story, just really concerns me. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. It's definitely unhealthy. The question is that is it any different from, past iteration? I'm not sure. Evan Shapiro: No, it's very similar to the dot-com bubble. Yeah. It's extremely similar to the dot-com bubble. That's my, that's my headline from first quarter earnings so far, is great stories for these five companies. These five companies, if they take, if Anthropic can't fulfill on its contracts or OpenAI can't fulfill on their contracts, if they owe these five companies and the three other companies, NVIDIA, Oracle, and a couple of others that are basically the backbone of the AI economy, the entire global economy falters in a dot-com bubble sort of way. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: I still feel like we're in danger of that. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, speaking of being in danger, so something that I wanted to draw attention to because I think it's. So you talk a lot [00:13:00] about public service media and, you value this right from afar. You've seen attacks being, made at, the, small portions of public service media, companies that you have in the US. And so what's been happening for the last six months in France, only the French market and perhaps, in some key territories in Europe people are really pa- paying attention to. But essentially, Evan Shapiro: Yeah, Marion Ranchet: a right-wing party, in France you can, when you're part of the parliament, you have this thing where you can draw, so to say, a commission. And because they're right wing, initially they were looking at drawing a commission that they would be able to head off, et cetera, on immigration. Yes, of course. They actually decided to swap it for a look at the French public service media, God save us. And so they spent the last six months, [00:14:00] interviewing the CEOs, the staff, but also the entire production ecosystem, et cetera, around, France Television, which is our public service broadcaster, which is a massive group across, TV, radio, et cetera. It's the equivalent of the BBC. And so it's been six months of, biased question. There's actually a complaint that's been filed today against this commission and the guy who's been, embodying it, which is, I won't say his name, it doesn't really matter. But saying that he was actually being fed questions by Vincent Bolloré. Vincent Bolloré is like our French Murdoch, and so they've been feeding supposedly questions to members of that commission, et cetera, et cetera. It's been just [00:15:00] an absolute nightmare. Lies, and Evan Shapiro: And he owns a right-wing television outlet that's in direct competition, right? Marion Ranchet: Oh yeah. He's everywhere. He has his hands everywhere, Canal+. Now there's been a big thing, at Grasset, which is a publishing company. He has Europe 1, which is a radio station, Le Journal du Dimanche, which is a newspaper. He's knee-deep in the media ecosystem. Evan Shapiro: And across the rest of Europe, you have Berlusconi building his own kind of multinational empire of news and information. Yeah. But so then in context of this, something else that happened while we were out of the country was, France Télévisions made a partnership with YouTube. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Do you feel like this is in part a counterattack, doing what we've been trying to push them to do, which is go directly to the younger consumers and,cultivate a [00:16:00] communication with people who are feeling disaffected by, mainstream media? Marion Ranchet: So no, because I think it's been, so I say that France Télévisions has learned to love, quote, unquote, YouTube. Initially Delphine Ernotte was calling it a threat, a few years ago. And but last summer, really at the top of the TV season, which is in September, she shared a very streaming-first, approach. That was a few weeks after, the Amazon deal where France Télévisions was actually distributed within the Amazon Marketplace. And so she was talking about they would, the fact that they would be investing more into YouTube. And even then, it wasn't really, it's not like they were sitting doing nothing. They already had over 100 channels, et cetera. Were they doing it the right way is a different question, but, it's been in the making for quite some time. And I think that deal, given how complicated it is, because it's unlike the BBC, France [00:17:00] Television- Evan Shapiro: Was in the works all last year that probably. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly. France Television can sell ads. Evan Shapiro: We can ask Pedro about that when we see him. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, we can ask him. But, they can sell ads, right? So it's not a partnership, like the BBC. France Television, they have skin in the advertising game in 2020- was it 2024? That's the number I have. It's half a million. It's 5% of the advertising pie. Then you have the commercial broadcasters, and then of course you have the digital giants, the Amazons, and the like. So it's been, in the making for a long time. Evan Shapiro: But now with the Amazon deal and now this YouTube deal, and then you look at even TF1, which is not a public broadcaster, but you look at their deals with both YouTube and Netflix, it feels as if the major broadcasters there are learning that they have to go directly to these younger consumers in order to, on one, in one case, fight against the right-wing counterparts that they have that are using [00:18:00] parliament to go after them. And on the other hand, just basically to stay alive commercially in the market, this is the best way forward, yeah? Marion Ranchet: So there's a few things, right? Of course, I think, they mentioned 20K hours of content on the segment of news alone. That's a lot of content. So of course, you know- Evan Shapiro: And nightly as the news goes up, they're gonna be putting it up on YouTube. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I do think that- Evan Shapiro: That's, a huge shift. Yeah, and that- And one of the first broadcasters in Europe to do that. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I think on news it's a must. It's a year away from the French presidential election, which will take place in May 2027, which is gonna be eventful because, there's no one really in the middle, and so you have the Evan Shapiro: Same here. Marion Ranchet: You have very strong extreme left and right. So I think they said a few things, right? Target younger audiences, disinformation, et cetera. So a few things where I have my doubts. It should be done, [00:19:00] especially when it comes to news. Their ability to fight disinformation with YouTube, I think YouTube, I'm saying it very often, is very hands-off. And so it's they're gonna leave France Télévisions to use tools to that effect, but it's not like they're gonna be very supportive of any effort in that space, and I'm not sure how good their track record is. That's number one. Number two, they're gonna have to deliver on that deal at a time where they're being squeezed financially, and so that's also the topic, of that massive commission is to say, "We want a billion savings." And believe it or not, when it's a recommendation, it doesn't mean it will turn into law, although he's gonna try to, do that. But he wants to use that money he's gonna save on, so cleaning debts, it's where we have a lot of debts in France, so I get that. But to restore the French buildings and [00:20:00] et cetera, in between this and, democracy and, disinformation, I'm gonna lean towards leaving those buildings to crumble and, protect that. But, what's been very tricky is that he's, he wants to do massive cuts, and I think it's gonna be a great segue into the kids portion of everything because public service media, like in any other European country, they are investing, heavily in kids' content. But they can't do that in the markets. Evan Shapiro: They're really the only ones who are doing it. If right now, and we're segueing to this report that we dropped, I, dropped with Common Sense a couple weeks ago while we were actually away. Right now, there's a r- there's a retreat in kids' content investment amongst the streamers and across commercial media, and the public broadcasters are now funding more than 50% of kids' content worldwide. The one thing I will say before we segue out of that is your [00:21:00] right wing is looking for a billion dollars in cuts to public broadcasting in France. Our government just took it away. They didn't ask. This president just went and took a billion dollars in funding away from public media in the US, both across radio and broadcasting, and most of that was cut from local public broadcasters, so PBS's affiliates around the country. And it most adversely affected those who have the least resources to pay for premium streaming. And so public broadcasting is very often the best and sometimes only way they can get kids content that isn't directly on YouTube. Yeah. And so it was a major, major damage to the ecosystem in the United States. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. A few things, right? A lot of people are saying in France that he was actually inspired a lot by [00:22:00] what Trump did. The only thing is that, if it Evan Shapiro: Oh yeah, all the populists get together at their freaking bigoted club and- Marion Ranchet: The balance of powers and the way the democracy is in France is it's not like he can decide out of the blue to just do that. However, could the next president do actually that? That's a big question. A few of the things, we don't pay a license fee in France anymore, right? So it's not like it's costing us monthly anymore. Indirectly, it's costing us. Evan Shapiro: But it is. The taxes do go to pay for it. So you are paying for it. Marion Ranchet: Of course. But you know how much it is? It's like 57 euros per year in comparison to a Netflix subscription, which is now, what, closer to 200 now? So... Evan Shapiro: Alright, so it's 57 euro per year, which is about 60 bucks per year US, right? Yeah. Yep. Per person in France to pay for your public broadcaster. You know how much, per capita of the government- Marion Ranchet: Nope Evan Shapiro: goes to fund public media in the US? Take a guess. Marion Ranchet: I'm saying [00:23:00] five, five bucks per person Evan Shapiro: $3. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Three American dollars, $2, two, 2.75 euro per capita, and a big chunk of that was just rescinded here in the US. And so you wanna see why the state of democracy is weaker in the US than it is in many European countries? It's that. It is specifically that. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: So yeah, I think we should probably segue to something that is funded more often now by public media than any other source is kids' content. And so I dropped this report. I, think, and I said it in the report, it's the most thorough and comprehensive landscape analysis of kids,' certainly US kids' content that's ever been dropped, but we did take a look at other sources as well. We interviewed a dozen experts, including Joe Redfern and Emily Horgan, our friends, and other folks, from Hasbro and, [00:24:00] Sesame Street Company. So we are, we have a really good cross-section of big brains, but we also went to a dozen different data sources and cross-tabulated them against each other for the first time ever. You saw this. You took a look at it. It's been read and chewed on a lot on social media. I'm ready to answer any questions you have for me. Marion Ranchet: It makes me wanna cry. Two things, because it does say, so one, that number on, the decrease, the 25% decrease from, I think that was Ampere, on, the kids' home. Evan Shapiro: That was Ampere Analysis, yeah. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly, so that, that means SVOD came in, started investing heavily, then pulled back, and that's leaving everyone stranded. You see kids flocking to YouTube, but when you speak to people within that ecosystem, they're telling you it's very hard to actually monetize that audience.[00:25:00] So it's the catch-22. I came out of this thing and I was a bit desperate. The only thing that was making me hopeful was the co-viewing index, which is something that I spoke a lot about in the RTL Video Report that I did a few weeks back. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah Marion Ranchet: Which I think I love the fact that people are going back to this is family time, this is shared time, et cetera, and I think there's a massive opportunity there. But yeah, I was a bit down reading this, to be honest. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, just to, to tap on all of those data points you gave. There's this huge increase in demand for kids' content. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Which is counterintuitive to what I thought because Millennials and Gen Z-ers are having fewer babies Period. End of sentence. That's fine. And so I thought demand overall was down, and I thought that was the reason why the kids' content ecosystem. We interviewed these experts, and th- if you did a word cloud on the, we asked everybody, "What's the state of kids' content [00:26:00] production on the planet Earth?" If you did a word cloud, it, the number one word used was "fucked." "Existential crisis," a "critical juncture," a real problematic point in the economic feasibility of producing kids' content on the planet Earth, and you nailed it. Around 2018, 2019, 2020, there was this massive uptick in demand from the big streamers for high-quality premium kids' content. At the same time, there was this massive influx and massive outpouring of content for kids on YouTube, and there was money to be made there. Marion Ranchet: No. Evan Shapiro: And then a convergence of things, a confluence of things happened. One, the laws changed and got much tougher to make money, and advertisers started to steer away from putting money into kids' content on YouTube, and the streamers recalculated around kids' content from being an acquisition tool to a retention tool. [00:27:00] And so they stopped commissioning and wholly owning a lot of content. Bluey is not owned by Disney Plus, even though it's their biggest show by far. It is owned by BBC Studios or controlled by BBC Studios and produced by a small studio in Australia. And so what's happened is the ordering of kids' content has gone down twenty-five percent since its peak in 2022. There are one in four shows that were commissioned in 2022 are no longer being commissioned, and most of that cutback has come from the big global streamers. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Simultaneously, the economics of making advertising dollars on YouTube for kids has bottomed out. Yeah. It is very low CPMs, and it's, the fill rate is terrible. It's very complicated and difficult there. Simultaneous to all of this, YouTube is now being watched on the television set, and your report with RTL was really good at capturing that the living room is now for families [00:28:00] co-viewing time. what's happened is Millennial and Gen Z parents now care more about where their kids are watching video and television, so they are watching more of it with them simultaneously. This is all tracked in, in, in the data in the report. All of those trends all kind of happened at the same time, along with this major shift in generational parenting. There is a new generation of parents on the planet Earth, and they're watching a lot, they're watching YouTube together with their kids. And they're watching way more on Netflix and Disney Plus and all those other sort, BBC Kids, PBS Kids, with their kids on the television or on the iPad. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: That's you. You raised your hand. Marion Ranchet: I'm the oldest millennial, I'm a parent, and guilty as charged. You've just described exactly how. So can I say that in your data, regardless of this data with Common Sense [00:29:00] or the one you did with Precise TV, in both cases, we're talking above 80% of kids watching YouTube. My kids are in that 20% bucket. They're not. It's not allowed. Evan Shapiro: They're not allowed to watch YouTube? Marion Ranchet: They're not allowed. Evan Shapiro: Wow. Ever? Marion Ranchet: The only time when they can do it, and they've done it this weekend, they've done it with my husband, which, he's a millennial, too, and he was showing them shreds. Do you know those videos where you take clips and then someone redoes the singing, but in a very stupid way? So that's what they were watching. So yeah. Evan Shapiro: Together on YouTube? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: When you get together and you watch stuff with your kids, what are you watching? Marion Ranchet: So we do movie nights, every week, and we usually, we mostly use streamers because we're in the Netherlands. If I were in France, and when we are in [00:30:00] France, they watch French Television. And speaking about France Télévisions, this report is saying that France Télévisions should shut down France 4, which is the kids channel, which actually caters to 3.3 million kids every month. That's what he wants to- Evan Shapiro: I didn't, Oh, this guy in France. Yeah. Okay. My report did not say that. Marion Ranchet: No, not your report, this report. Again, this is one of the recommendation, right? And we're seeing, that those, audiences are eluding to broadcasters, of course, let's just cut the channels, the platform, all of those initiatives that these guys have put into to keep addressing that audience that is moving to social, to YouTube, et cetera. It's just Evan Shapiro: So that was one of the problems that I identified, is that more and more of the weight of high-quality kids content from trusted sources now falls onto public broadcasters worldwide. PBS Kids [00:31:00] here in the US, BBC Kids in the UK, France Television in France, ZDF and ARD in Germany, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so one of the recommendations was fully fucking fund public broadcasting because the people who are most served by high-quality, free kids programming from public broadcasters are those who can least afford to pay for Netflix and Disney+ and all the rest to get Cocomelon- Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And to get Bluey, although you can get them on YouTube now. What's also fascinating is YouTube is now, at least for US parents, 88% of US parents say their kids under five prefer YouTube over any other source. I do wanna ask you about what you're watching there. You said movie night, and what Common Sense Media does here in the US, one of their biggest missions, is to provide information about kids' content to [00:32:00] parents so that they can watch things that are age-appropriate, and not have their kids watch things that are not age-appropriate. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: What was interesting is whether most of the stuff watched on Netflix and Disney+ and Peacock and all the rest, all the places where you either pay for or it's regulated, most of the content was age-appropriate. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Even the movies, and actually even especially the movies. Moana was a number one thing. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I saw that. Evan Shapiro: SpongeBob SquarePants. K-pop Demon Hunters was deemed appropriate for an age that I didn't realize when we went into this, but it was for family audiences, right? And it was, what was fascinating to me with this study, showed was that somewhere around 70%, 70% of all views of K-pop Demon Hunters was 17 and younger. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: 50% was 11 and younger. Did you watch that movie with your kids? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Nope. [00:33:00] Evan Shapiro: You didn't? Marion Ranchet: I did not. My boys were like, Evan Shapiro: Why not? Marion Ranchet: No way. They, have a- Evan Shapiro: Oh, it's not really for them, really. Marion Ranchet: They have a nickname for it. They call it K-Poop. K-Poop Demon Hunters. Evan Shapiro: What about Stranger Things? Did you watch Stranger Things together? Marion Ranchet: No, actually I haven't. I watched with my oldest. We started Wednesday, didn't finish. Yeah, I, am, so Common Sense, I know them, despite the fact that it's a US company, exactly for that, which are that platform where you can check ratings, et cetera. I haven't used it in a while. I've been using, a French equivalent most recently, but I'm very careful with that. I agree with you, and that's why, YouTube is not, here just open bar in our house. And if I were to allow my kids to use it, I would ask them to use the YouTube Kids portion. But I know that very quickly [00:34:00] it is, preventing my kids from watching things because they'll, a lot of time actually that age appropriateness, can go a bit too overboard. So it's, it's tricky. But hence why, to your point, there's that co-decision-making happening a lot, at least Evan Shapiro: Yeah, in your home, absolutely, and it does seem like millennial parents and Gen Z parents are substantially more aware of when their kids are watching, what their kids are watching. But two phenomenons are definitely present. YouTube for kids under the age of eight has become a digital babysitter. And it has the least amount of co-viewing- Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Of any other platform, thing number one. Thing number two is the economics that have really shifted on YouTube have made it difficult for the next Cocomelon or the next Bluey or the next Moonbug or whatever it is to come [00:35:00] out and find an audience. It's very difficult for audience, for producers to make the economics work, on YouTube, without that advertising support. And so there are two recommendations there that I made in the report. And this is all, there's ton more data in one place about the kids' content economy than you will find anywhere else that I can see. From Ampere, from GWI, from Precisify, from Parrot Analytics, from TubeFilter, from all our data partners out there in the ecosystem, and it is available for free on my Substack newsletter, Media War and Peace. I hope you check it out. But the recommendations I hope we check, they check out most, and I wanna check your intelligence on this because you're right, YouTube in Europe is very different from YouTube in the United States. The relationships with the broadcasters are different, et cetera. Thing number one was YouTube Kids needs to be curated differently because the [00:36:00] pay pathway is probably one of the best ways for kids' producers to get the economics back that they're looking for traditionally from advertising. And so if Kids, which is a subscription product, were curated, and kids' content on YouTube Kids is human curated. It is not algorithm curated. And I believe it needs a reexamination. I don't think it's been updated in some time, and I think they have the opportunity to build the next version of Disney Channel or Nickelodeon there if they curate it and share the revenue with the producers who need, we need these producers. We need them to survive. We need them to find the economics that they had a couple of years ago and get back to being able to build. And it is a multi-flowed, Pedro Pina said this the other day, is like, "Just the best way to win on YouTube is to ignore YouTube and not make all of your money there." Absolutely, but first you have to be able to find an audience. [00:37:00] The merchandising that is the backbone of kids' content can only be made if you can find a sizable audience, and YouTube Kids is gonna be the best place for that. What do you think about that recommendation in particular? Marion Ranchet: So I did not know that YouTube was actually curating that portion. I think you had i- the s- a set of rules, and depending on how you're uploading content, you're showing up, yes or no within that Evan Shapiro: No, 'cause they couldn't imagine. They couldn't be held responsible if something snuck through, right? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And so it has to be curated ultimately, there has to be a human at the till. The algorithm then takes over and makes recommendations, but it- Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: You can't get something in there if humans aren't approving. Marion Ranchet: The thing is that YouTube, the- As I said before, they're very hands-off, so I'm not sure, how they can actually, lean in and be more proactive there. Evan Shapiro: I think they have to reexamine it. I think it needs that whole ecosystem because it is going to wind up being the best way for kids producers to make [00:38:00] money. I, it's unfortunate perhaps, but it is the truth. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: But and crucially, they, not just directly from subscriptions, but also from merchandise sales and things like that. So I put, I'm urging YouTube to reexamine the way it runs YouTube Kids because I think they have a responsibility to fix it, and secondarily, I think they have a huge opportunity to make everybody a lot of money, frankly. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, no, absolutely, agreed on, taking charge a bit more. I don't like that hands-off approach with a lot of things. I would say that aside from the curation, of course it's the monetization piece, and right now I'm not seeing what they're trying to do to better support a kids channel. Evan Shapiro: I don't see it at all. I don't think anybody sees it. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And that's the problem. Marion Ranchet: And I, and what I love about that premium portion, and it could be that is there a skinny-kids bundle? Is there a skinny, you know- Evan Shapiro: You can subscribe just to the [00:39:00] kids product. Yeah. Absolutely. You know- it depends. It's different by territory. Yeah and the membership, and that and, then so that was the other thing. So that's the YouTube portion of it. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: So another recommendation was to the producers themselves, fucking explore different ways to make money. Yeah. Membership in particular on YouTube is a way. As soon as you get to 5,000 subscribers, you can start to charge for a membership, and you can put whatever you want behind the paywall. Yeah. Two, revenues besides advertising and subscriptions, so Patreons and things like that. Three, AI as a part of your production. If you look at Steven and Parker from ToonStar, massive hit. Profitable. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: I think they're 300 or 200 episodes in. There is absolutely no way that show would have been made or could be made at a profit without AI. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: But they write the show and perform the show with humans. And AI is active in the [00:40:00] production. Animation Plus is another one that to take a look at of subscription products and things like that as an example. And then lastly, if you lean into the brands, Hasbro Mattel. These are big brands. Lego. There, these are big brands that are on YouTube that are developing content there and then selling content to other platforms. I think working with brands directly is gonna be another way for individual independent producers to find the economics that they need to be sustainable and survive and thrive in the kids' content economy on a moving forward basis. Marion Ranchet: Speaking of, when we were at Stream, I saw, Gregory Dreis. I don't know if he was one of the experts that you interviewed, but so from Animage, and he's building and he mentioned it, back at Bloom. Evan Shapiro: So he's an ex-Googler. He's an ex-YouTuber. Marion Ranchet: Exactly, and so he's building essentially a place where kids' companies can actually [00:41:00] come to that. I think it's a JV with Hasbro. Evan Shapiro: It is. Marion Ranchet: And they will put all that smart brain into boosting monetization 'cause he's a very smart guy. But one thing that I will say, and then maybe we'll need to wrap up for this week, but it is that all of those things you are, describing, everything relies on the producers. And what bothers me a lot, whether that's YouTube and streamers, is that everyone is going risk-free, right? YouTube is not investing anything up front. Streamers wanna, they don't want to commission, they want a license, so no one is taking chances, no one is taking the risk, and everything is on the producers to- You're saying that they need to be more than just producers, and I agree with that, but, you know- Evan Shapiro: I will disagree with you in two cases. One, the public broadcasters, as we discussed, they continue to fund and they continue to experiment. PBS Kids- Marion Ranchet: They are becoming the only one, and they're under attack right [00:42:00] now, and and as we know, it Evan Shapiro: And then I would also, I would also look at Mattel and Hasbro and Lego, and there are some big brands out there that are, and by the way, BBC Studios is investing heavily in this space right now, and they're building out what I think is a really good flywheel around this space. So you're right, the people we would expect, one of the most valuable companies on the face of the earth in the history of humankind, Google should be investing more. Now, what they'll say is, "We built the platform and we paid for that." But you're right. I, and I call on them to look at it. And then the streamers, l- and, this is my last recommendation, and I, and we will, I will let you go. But the, to your point, I think my point in, at the end of this report was streamers, you're not investing in these franchises at your own peril. Disney's losing out in billions of dollars of revenue because they don't own Bluey. Netflix doesn't [00:43:00] really own a kids franchise the way that they could, and it would, long term, that is gonna be in their own best interest. Yeah. You agree with that. That's- Marion Ranchet: Agreed. These kids that everyone is, we're letting them down right now, right? They're gonna be the next viewers, consumers of the next 20, 30 years. I just don't get it. It's very ... As you can see, I'm very annoyed with, threats to democracy and, misinformation and, really sacrificing, kids in the mix. Anyway. Evan Shapiro: So two things. One, that's why I wrote this report the way I did. It was meant to be an alarm bell. I think it was read as such by people in the industry, or at least that's what I'm hearing. Two, I dropped two really good case studies on how traditional companies can think like creators, but one of them is TF1 and Gaspard G talking about their collaboration on how to bring news to the next generation. That's on my Substack as well. Good to see you. Marion Ranchet: [00:44:00] Yeah. Good to see you, too. So what's coming up in the next few weeks? I think we have a few remote episodes we're gonna do, but you're gonna be at Stream TV back, back in June. We're gonna be back at the Lions. We're cooking a couple of cool episodes there as well. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, we, at Stream TV, we actually have a conversation between, Animage and Hasbro about their joint vventure. We will also have Common Sense and PBS Kids on stage talking about the Kids Landscape Report we just discussed. I'm gonna be at the Upfront with DirecTV next week, and then we're gonna be at Cannes Lions with some amazing stuff. We'll talk to everybody about that in the coming weeks. Marion Ranchet: There's so much happening this spring and so much coming up, this summer as well. It's been good talking to you. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, great to see you. This has been the Media Odyssey podcast. Thank you for listening or watching. That is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: And that is Evan Shapiro. We'll see you next [00:45:00] time.