October 28, 2024 • 32 mins
The founder, CEO and lead anchor of the insurgent progressive news brand shares his pre-election outlook on what it's been like covering the 2024 presidential race and discusses the state of the TYT business from his days as a YouTube pioneer more than two decades ago.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
which we speak with some of the brightest minds working
in the media business. Today, I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety.
As we head into the home stretch before the November election.
This is crunch time for the plethora of media companies
who cover politics, count among them a twenty two year
(00:27):
old operation based here in Los Angeles known as the
Young Turks. To talk about the business of TYT, I
am joined today by its founder, CEO and lead anchor,
Jenk Yuger. We'll get into it with him right after
the break. I am joined in studio today by Jenk Huger, who,
(00:54):
if you don't know the name from his work at TYT,
you might recall he had a brief run for the
Democratic presidential nomination that ended earlier this year. Certainly ask
him about that and the election, but today's focus is
on his work in the news space. Thanks for coming in, Jenk.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Thank you, Andrew, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So, just for the uninitiated, before you even explain what
TYT is all about, I actually want to talk about
the scale of your business first. In this day and age,
anyone can put a logo on a web page and
say they're a news operation. That's obviously not you guys.
So if you will paint a picture of the growth
you guys have achieved all this time.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, So we are at about twenty seven million subscribers
across all the platforms now, about eighteen million on YouTube,
six million on the flagship show, The Young Turks. But
it's now a network, so we have fast channels that
are on almost all the fast channel platforms. We do
everything from one minute TikTok videos to twenty four hour channels,
(01:55):
about at least a dozen platforms so far. So you
type iny or The Young Turks anywhere and you'll get
us and tyts for the network. Young Turks is for
the flagship show. And we've been around since the beginning
of YouTube. We're actually the first YouTube partner ever, Yeah,
which makes me the original YouTuber. So when I say
(02:19):
that we have twenty nine billion lifetime views, that's both impressive,
but at the same time, it's been a while, okay,
so I'm fair about it. In fact, we're the longest
running show in Internet history, so that's pretty neat, and
I feel good about those, you know, hallmark achievements and
the size that we've gotten to.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
And I would imagine in this election season, the audience increases.
People are paying attention like never before. You're seeing that.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, of course, election season views always go up, and
you know, we've got hundreds of millions of views every month,
and that feels great. But I'll tell you there is
a wrinkle to that, and that makes the story interesting.
We are doing something pretty different now than than almost
anyone online, and it's so new school that it's almost
(03:10):
old school, and it is costing us audience. Okay, so
that's where it gets interesting. Tell us about it. Yeah. So,
but we believe we're going to get a larger audience
in that. And so we're telling the truth. And you
might think, come on, jank, everybody tries to tell the truth,
and you don't have a monopoly on it, et cetera.
(03:30):
I understand all that, but do they So let me
challenge that way of thinking. If you go on MSNBC
or Morning Joe or The View and you say, for example,
the photo op that that Trump did at McDonald's was
actually a brilliant piece of marketing, they'll say, outrageous, you terrible,
how dare you? He's the worst. Right, you have to
(03:53):
be honest with your audience and you have to say
what he's doing right and what he's doing wrong, what
Kamala Harris is doing right, what Kamala Harris is doing wrong.
But when you do that, the partisans get very very angry.
You can alienate them.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
They won't come back because you said something they don't
like exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So what's happening online now, unfortunately, is everyone is giving
people what they want. And you say, wait, why is
that unfortunate because what they want to hear is not
necessarily what's true. So it's created a news industry that
is filled to the rim with people. Whether it's mainstream
media or social media and new digital media, they're all
(04:31):
giving the audience what they want. Oh, Trump is the best,
Trump is the worst, Kamma is the best, Kamala is
the worst, and no one's actually getting the truth. And
we're trying to give them the truth. And then that
alienates people and it's a dangerous strategy we have of
actually doing the news.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Well, but are you seeing signs of alienation? Do you
see people reacting because you're not queuing to a party
line partisan wise?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Oh? Definitely. And so it goes from ideology to partisanship.
So on the ideology front, when crime rose, we accurately
reported the crime rose. And that angered a lot of
leftists in our audience, and they said, how dare you
make the numbers basically fit your ideology instead of your
ideology fitting the facts. And so now they wouldn't use
(05:19):
it in those terms. They'd say, you're helping right wing
framing by pointing out the facts. Well, I don't think
you're helping your side by denying them, right, And so
they got very mad at that. And then we said, look,
I know the right wing is drumming up hatred against
the trans community, and we fight against that, and we've
been fighting against that when no one else was on
(05:41):
our side. We were fighting for trans rights, gay rights, etc.
And in fact, we held Biden and Obama accountable when
they weren't for legalizing gay marriage. And back then people
forget we were considered outrageous radicals for daring to criticize
Obama and saying he's got the wrong position on gay marriage.
They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You all want gay marriage,
(06:03):
but don't criticize the sainted, benighted Barack Obama. See even
as I say that, I guarantee you there's pete Democrats
in your audience who are a little rankled by that framing, Like, whoa,
what are you saying? Are you saying I'm biased? Are
you saying that Obama's not benighted? And that sounds like
a right winger? No, I just told you I hate Trump.
I'm debating eight pro Trump guys at once, right, and
(06:24):
I've done that all over media. But you lose credibility
if you're not honest, right, And now, don't get me wrong,
I'm not letting the right wing off the hook. Their
right wing media is nuts and they say things that
aren't anywhere near true. And Domanian has got what eight
hundred and thirty five million dollars to prove it right? Right,
So Fox is yes. So we're not saying Trump is great,
(06:48):
and the lunacy that the right wing media has, we're
knocking down every one of those mythologies, like Jesus Now
they're at eating cats and dogs like that's just right.
They hate the establishment. I don't like the establishment. We
could talk about that. I think that's an interesting topic, right,
But just because you don't like the establishment doesn't mean
(07:09):
you should believe lunatic conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Right, So it sounds like you're giving it to people
on the right and the left. But I think we
should make clear for those not familiar with TYT and
correct me if I'm wrong. You guys are on the left,
you guys are progressive. What is it like in this
election cycle speaking to a progressive audience?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Honestly's a tough business, but you have to do it right.
You have to give the analysis and then we give
our perspective, and our perspective is that of progressive populace.
So what does that mean? I think there are two
political spectrums. One that is hidden and that especially to
the establishment, that they're not even aware exists. The one
that we're all familiar with is left right. And on that,
(07:54):
let's just stick with the main show because all of
our hosts have different points of view, and there are
a lot to have different points of view. And TYT
as a network has a mission statement which is boldly
pursued the truth, challenge the establishment, and drive positive change. Okay,
so as long as you're fitting that mission statement, you're
allowed to have any opinion you like. You're an out
(08:14):
to have any politics you want right. So for the
main show, it's me and my co hosts Ana Kasparian,
and our politics is center left. It's not extreme left.
We take it on the extreme left all the time.
It's definitely not right wing. And it's not what mainstream
media would call moderate. But I think what mainstream media
calls moderate is not actually moderate. I think it's a
(08:35):
radical corporate agenda which brings us to the other part
of the political spectrum, the hidden part, and that's establishment
versus populist. And there we're very populist. We're on the
one end of the spectrum on that one.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And when it comes to establishment, I'm hearing perhaps you're
not just talking about government, you're talking about the media
that follows the government as well.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, definitely yes. So for people who have watched television
and makestream media their whole life, or read the New
York Times, when I talk about the establishment, they say,
what water? Okay, you know the old story about the fish.
You ask him how's the water, and he says, what water? Right.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
But in terms of your own company, which is for profit,
you take advertising, how do you not as you grow
fall into the same trap where you are beholden to
corporate America. And I also it's hard for me to believe,
given the scale that you've achieved, that political parties aren't
(09:37):
whispering in your ear what their agenda is as well.
So all this goes by way of saying, how do
you really keep yourself apart from everyone else? And say, no,
we're the antidote to the media problem.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, so this great question has interesting technical answers as
well as ideological answers. So one is that we get
a decent amount of our revenue from our members, and
so that way we say you're our bosses instead of
giant corporate advertisers or politicians, et cetera, and we serve you.
And so when you tie your financial incentive to your audience,
(10:14):
you're better off than if you tie your financial incentives
to other factors that can then lead you in a
direction that isn't true.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
But just interrupt for a second. How big a chunk
of the revenues that you get come from subscribers as
opposed to advertise.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
About a third? Okay, so that's a significant chunk. So
if you lose a third of your revenue, you're in
a lot of trouble. Ye, right, but if you gain
more subscribers tyt dot com slash join. If you gain
more subscribers, then that's the audience saying at a boy, okay,
this is the news that makes sense. And by the way,
(10:49):
if it doesn't make sense to you, that you don't
join it.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
So now, but we do get advertisers, and so what
do we do. Number one, we do mainly programmatic, so
we are not directly tied to the advertisers. It goes
through a third party, so they don't care what we're saying,
and we don't care what their corporate position is, and
so it gives a good distance, so you're not overly
influenced by that. The other thing that happens, there's a
(11:13):
giant hidden advertising base again that we don't see much
talk of in the mainstream media, which is the politicians themselves.
So in the last cycle, they spent seventeen billion dollars,
almost all of which went to ads in mainstream media.
And so that's one of the reasons why they don't
speak out too harshly against politicians because politicians are some
(11:37):
of their top advertisers, they're top clients. We don't do that,
so you will see political ads on TYT, but they
went through a third party, and so there's no influence
on us at all. In fact, a lot of times
you'll see Republicans running ads on it. We don't endorse that,
and we don't care. You can say whatever you want
to our audience. Our audience is open minded, open hearted,
(11:59):
and we know how to tell reality from fiction. And
so if you want to run the ads, that makes sense.
Tons of undecided voters there, but we're not soliciting that. Now.
Sometimes we do direct ads and I'm happy to do it,
but generally speaking, it's with more progressive outlets or outlets
that we agree with. So good example is Aspiration, longtime
(12:21):
sponsor of ours. They're a financial institution that is more progressive,
so they don't put your money in fossil fuel companies,
whereas the major banks do. So we love Aspiration. They
created a green marketplace where there's eighty two other good
guy companies and so if you're a good guy company
trying to do good in the world, oh, we love it.
And that's the alignment we want. Because we're trying to
(12:42):
set up win wins.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I say, I say, well, we will have more with
jenk Uger after the break, be right back and we
are back with Jenk Huger, CEO, founder lead anchor of
the Young Turks and the Tyt Empire. Jenk, you'd referred
(13:04):
earlier to your seminal role in, you know, the formation
of pro content on YouTube. YouTube, is that still sort
of the main platform because you are doing other things,
You're on podcasts, you're on the other social media, But
is that still the main attraction.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, that's where two thirds of our subscribers are. That's
where the line's share of the audience is for the
whole internet. Really, if we're you know, looking at it holistically,
YouTube is the giant, and so we go to where
the audience is. It's always been on YouTube, and it's
still on YouTube today, but we are on all the
other platforms, and sometimes different platforms, depending on how they
(13:46):
set their algorithms, will spike. So for a while we
actually had more viewers on Facebook than we did on YouTube.
But then Facebook decided to deprioritize news because the Republicans
yelled at him too much. So, actually, to be fair
to Facebook, both sides yelled at them too much, and
they're like, well, we don't want the headache of dealing
with these politicians who demand that we cheat on their side, right,
(14:09):
So I get why they did it, but snap's a
big outlet for us. The fast channels are a huge
outlet for us. So our strategies be everywhere. And that
is juxtaposed, for example, to the Joe Rogan strategy, which
is just be in one place so he aggregates and
to be not only to be fair, but to give
him credit. In terms of business strategy, when you aggregate
(14:32):
all your viewers in one place, it seems bigger than
it is, so people look at it and go, who
I see a million people downloaded that stream? Right, Oh
my god, that seems gigantic.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
But that's the only place you can get it. It's
sort of like an artificial scarcity.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I guess yeah, or you bring them there. And it's
a perfectly fine strategy, and in fact it works better
because it affects advertisers more. It affects media more once
they see with their own eyes, oh that's a million people. Okay,
you're a big show. We get three to five hundred
million viewers a month, but they're dispersed through hundreds of videos.
(15:09):
So for the media, that's a little bit harder to grasp.
They're like, where where, And I'm like, well, here's the numbers,
so you can see it. We can invite you to
the behind the scenes and show you the actual numbers.
And what's funny, Andrews. Sometimes I'll see online hosts do this.
They're like, oh, you know Young Turns Saint, claiming they're
the largest online news show. Let's look this up, and
(15:29):
then the guy will go, holy crap when he sees
the numbers. It's literally happened on air, and so they
don't realize that. Also, tyit has all these different channels
on YouTube and other places and all these different shows.
So Rebel Headquarters is a channel we have on YouTube
that's actually larger than the Young Turks.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Oh didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, See, almost nobody knows that the Rebel Headquarters is
twenty progressive hosts who are making content day in and
day out, and so we're winning the Internet in ways
that people can't even see.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Do you have a sense of what is sort of
the next level of growth, what you want to achieve
for the brand, you know, post election growth plans of
any kind.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, So when we challenged our own side, as I
mentioned earlier that takes a little bit of courage because
you do lose some audience. So we lost some subscribers
and we and in this election cycle, as we constantly
call out both Trump and Kamala Harris, the partisans often
hear only the criticism of their side, right, so they
bake in that you're not supposed to like Trump. But
(16:37):
if you ever criticize Biden or Kamala Harris, as I
certainly did when I ran against Joe Biden, right, Yeah,
then people get very mad. So then we lose some
establishment Democrats from our audience, and that happened, right. But
my goal for the long term is this is the
online news show. This is where everybody can come and
it doesn't matter which side you're on, and we're going
(16:58):
to be tough to both of your sides, and you're
going to need to brace for impact, and we're going
to be honest with you even when it's painful. Okay,
but what you're going to get is the one place
where we're actually telling the truth.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
But when you say that you've got this goal for
the long term, and in the same breath you're talking
about having thrown your hat into the presidential arena. Who's
to say in twenty twenty eight you're not there again
running and maybe actually sticking it out for the long term.
What happens to your media business if you've sort of pivoted.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, So it's a great question as to why I
ran and how does that interact with the business right.
So I ran out of desperation, and I said that
clearly when I announced in the first interview, I said,
this is an act of desperation because I try to
get other people to run against Joe Biden for about
a year. So I talked to about a dozen progressives
(17:55):
and said he's incredibly weak. He's going to lose to
Donald Trump. Please take him on, not just for the
progressive base, and so progressives can win. And by the
middle of the way through that, I dropped the progressive
part because I'm like, look, he's going to lose to Trump.
There's no question about it. The professionals understand that. That's why,
(18:16):
not just me, but David Axelrod and James Carvill and
Nate Silver and Ezra Kleine. We were all out there saying,
for God's sake, look at the numbers. He has no
chance of winning. Please get him out of the race.
So that's why I ran because I deeply care about
the news. I deeply care about the results. So and
(18:36):
I don't mind being activists. I started Justice Democrats. That
is the group that got aoc Rashieta to Lee bilhan
Omar and Aana Presley elected, and then Corey Bush and
Jamal Bowman, et cetera, etcetera. There's now eleven Justice Democrats
in Congress. Actually, with the loss of Bowman and Bush,
it will be down to nine. So my point is,
(19:00):
I'm not dispassionate about the news. I'm passionate about the news.
I don't understand the old model of the wolf blitzers
who read the prompter and go, well, all these children died,
but I don't care. We're moving on. No, all these
children died. I care a lot. Sixty eight thousand people
die every year in America because they don't have health insurance.
(19:20):
I care a lot about those sixty eight thousand. I
think we should change it. And if you want to
get into how you change it, well then you have
to be honest and say our politicians are all taking
legalized bribes called campaign contributions. They take them from the
drug industry, the health insurance industry, the oil companies, the banks,
and they do exactly as their donors tell them. So
that's why we do predictions on the show, and we're
(19:40):
right almost every time. It's not because we're geniuses, it's
because the answer is super simple. Follow the money. That's
what journalism was supposed to do, and we lost track
of that. If you follow the money, you see that
the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, vote with the donors
almost every single time.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
If you take that tack, and I don't want to
be so cynical as to call it attack, but you know,
are politicians themselves going to come on your air as
you guests to talk or are they going to be
too scared? Is the position that you're taking. I guess
I'm saying, come at a great cost if you can't
(20:21):
do the things that might help even take your audience
even bigger.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, it does come with a cost, and the cost
is it might surprise you. It's not access to the
politicians themselves. That yes, that happens. So there's brave folks
who come on and we give very tough interviews. So
we're traditional in that sense. I got Bernie to change
his position on counting delegates in the middle of twenty
(20:48):
sixteen in the when it was the most heated in
the middle of an interview. Okay, and because he wasn't
right about that, And even though I supported Bernie in
every other way, I challenge them on the that he
was wrong on and he conceded it. Okay. We had
bare knuckle brawls almost with Toulcy Gabbert, John Delaney, Tim Ryan, Rocanna,
(21:11):
but the brave ones, the honest ones like ro Coanna
and Tim Ryan, and I agree more with Road than
I do with Tim, but I give Tim a ton
of credit. They both keep coming back on and saying,
this is my position, I'm willing to defend it, and
our audience deeply respects them for that. Okay. But when
we lose, do we lose access to politicians because we
give super tough interviews. Definitely right, Kamala Harris wouldn't be
(21:35):
caught anywhere near the young turns, but neither were Donald Trump.
I mean, there's no way on earth they'll come on.
And I tell them, if I was you, I wouldn't
come on because you're not going to do well. We're
going to challenge you on the truth and you're you're
gonna flounder. Okay, So it doesn't get any more honest
than that. So how does it hurt us? It doesn't
hurt us with the audience. The audience is not interested
(21:56):
in boring interviews with politicians that just give their talking
points that are unchallenged. If you do that kind of interview,
it'll get like two thousand views, it'll die. It's not
interesting at all. Everyone else is doing it.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
So, yeah, you mentioned earlier you had the foresight to
see that Joe Biden's candidacy would be problematic. I'm curious
putting aside your assessment of her as a candidate as
a policy maker. I guess I'm asking for an assessment
more of the campaign because Kamala entered the race with
a real head esteem, a lot of momentum, and it
(22:31):
seems to have receded. I'm curious to get your take.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So this is why we talk about predictions. So you
know that we're not Monday morning quarterbacking. We're doing constructive critique. Right.
So I want to Buyden out of the race because
I was positive he's gonna lose a Trump, and I
think Trump is a unique danger, and by the end,
I'm like, for God's sake, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, all
these governors please get in the race. So they wouldn't
(22:56):
do it. So I had to do it in an
active desperation to try to push him out. And we did. We.
You know, obviously Pelosi Obama were the largest parts of that.
But I'm proud that I contributed to a more sane
Democratic Party. Okay. So now when we go to the
next level of that in Kamala Harris, we said, okay,
we were right about Joe Biden. Good check now Kamala Harris.
(23:18):
In the beginning, we immediately said, oh my gosh, she's
doing wonderful things. We're shocked that she picked Tim Walls,
who's a populous progressive that is very similar to the
way that we think about the world, but also very popular.
And people say, oh, yeah, he agrees with you. So
you're saying he's popular. No, look at the polling among
the four candidates in the race president and vice presidential level,
(23:40):
Tim Walls is by far the most popular. Okay, best
because people like populist progressive, they like paid family leave,
they like higher minimum wage, they liked that he took
care of the kids and gave them free lunch for
the kids who needed it, etc. So we say, great job,
Kamala Harris. Then she does a progressive populist economic agenda
where she says, we're going to tackle price couging, we're
(24:02):
going to tackle the housing prices. We go terrific. We
think her numbers are going to go up, and they do,
and we were right about that, and we gain more
trust with the audience. See, they're not against the Democratic Party.
When the Democratic Party is doing wrong, they call out
that they're doing wrong. When they're doing right, they call
out that they're doing right. So then about a week
(24:22):
what is today, October twenty first, two weeks ago on
October fifth, I said, uh, oh, she's going to start
heading down. And so now at that point she hadn't
started heading down at all, Okay, And I said, here's
why she's going to head down. She's got every sergeon
on cable news saying how much she loves corporate CEOs
and she's going to be more business friendly than Joe Biden.
(24:43):
Stop stop, that's a terrible idea. And then she started saying, oh,
I love Dick Cheney. I loved Liz Cheney, and she's
now campaigning in Pennsylvania. That's great. She's campaigning with Liz Cheney.
Not great. Not great. So we said she's going to
start heading down because people hate the Cheneys. He left
office with a thirteen percent approval rating. You're not going
to get the Republicans you think you're going to get
(25:05):
with by wrapping yourself around Dick Cheney. You're going to
lose populist undecided voters who hate Dick Cheney, whether they
were formerly Republican or formerly Democrat. Those independent undecided voters,
the one thing they're united on is anti war and
hating the Cheneys. So don't go in that direction. Saying
you love big business is the worst electoral strategy you
(25:29):
can imagine. It isn't about left and right, it's about
populis versus establishment.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Well, but as a matter of media strategy, let me
ask you have this. You're saying there's this sense of
establishment versus populism. I understand you're passionate about that, but
how do you know that there truly is this mass
audience that feels the same way.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, a lot of times
Fox News will say Hey, we are the country because
we're the largest cable outlet. That's a little misleading because
at the end of the day, there's still only one
to three million people watching in a country of three
hundred and thirty million people. But do they have they
proven that they at least resonate with some portion of
(26:17):
the American people.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Right. In our case, we're the largest online news show.
We didn't get there by accident. And when we started
twenty two years ago, we had absolutely no money, no connections,
no nothing. We started in my living room. My name
was Jank Yuger. No one knew me, no one wanted
to know me. Okay, so we started out with zero
viewers and zero dollars and we built up this empire
(26:41):
that now has twenty nine billion views and twenty seven
million subscribers. We did that because it resonated. It doesn't
mean that we're right about everything. It just means we
did find a track that a lot of people went, Yes,
that that's what I was looking for. That's the answer.
It's not the right spectrum, it's the populous establishment spectrum.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Last question, but a big one, which is give me
your sense of the future of news media and Tyt's
place in it. Obviously, we have the established powers of
CNN and Fox News and the New York Times and such.
Do you see this ecosystem undergoing changes starting in this
(27:27):
next election cycle?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
So I'll give you a little bit of business intelligence
that and I can say this, even though it might
give away a competitive advantage we have because I know
the rest of the industry isn't going to believe it anyway,
And whenever I say things, they don't. That's been my
experience that they don't believe it. When we started the company,
I said online video is going to be TV. They said,
(27:49):
you're the craziest person we've ever met. There's no chance
that's going to happen, right, And here we are, of
course right, And I can give you many other examples.
We're trying to be in the reality based world as
hard as we possibly can. So with that preface, let
me say what's going to happen next is DAI Dynamic
ad insertion has finally come to YouTube. And so what
(28:11):
a lot of people don't understand about digital media is
that it's still a very nascent industry. So a lot
of the tracks, the pipes, the infrastructure is still being
laid down, and so people sometimes will say to let's
even take people that people perceive as our competitors. They're
not really our competitors, but Vice, Vox, BuzzFeed those type
(28:31):
of people, right, and they'll say, why haven't you made
billions already? What's wrong with you? Well, how can you
get all of the money if the tracks aren't built,
or if the pipes aren't built. There's no pipes for
the ads to flow through. Right, So it got built
on the vod end and that's what's made us profitable
and that's what made us survivors of this industry. But
(28:54):
on the dynamic ad insertion, which basically just creates live
television with ads inserted in there. You take that as
a consumer as a given, but we know in the
digital media space it's not a given. It didn't exist
on YouTube until very recently, it didn't exist anywhere until
a couple of years ago. And so now that the
(29:14):
ads are finally being put into live breaks, what will
happen next to Andrew is a huge number of twenty
four hour hour channels will start to break out on
YouTube because they will realize, oh, right, now there's ads
throughout the day. When I do more live content, So
all of a sudden, live content, especially twenty four hours,
(29:38):
will start to take over the landscape. So we're at
the very front of that line and we're seeing that
trend just as we've seen all of the other trends
in this industry that's allowed us to survive for this
long and to thrive. And so what I believe will
happen is we will win that battle. And when we do,
there's a second thing that's happening that is going to
(30:00):
to us passing CNN, MSNBC and all of them. So
if you look at it today, you go, Okay, jenk
I get it. You're winning on YouTube, you're winning on Facebook,
you're winning on some of these platforms. But saying that
you're going to beat CNN, that sounds crazy. They're so
much larger than you right when you're take in their
TV audience. But remember they grew grew up in an
ecosystem that had infinite money. They had one hundred million
(30:21):
subscribers and they were getting paid you know, different ranges,
but a dollar to four dollars on cable news that
is a world of money. And then you add to
add money on top. But now you're in a world
where you're at seventy million, sixty million subscribers and dropping.
So you just lost forty percent of your subscription revenue.
Let alone the fact that now the average age watching
(30:43):
cable news is about sixty eight on MSNBC, CNN and
Fox News Fox News around seventy. So now you're losing
your twenty five to fifty four demographics. So you're losing
advertisers at a great rate. But your costs are still
super high. So when you have an industry with sky
high cost that got used to those costs, right, as
(31:04):
Bain would say in Batman, victory has defeated you. Right.
So they're fat and soft, and they have unbelievable costs
and no longer have the revenue to keep up with
those costs. That's why you're seeing them cut anchor after
anchor after anchor. ESPN started it, and now it's going
to all of cable and so those forty twenty million
(31:25):
dollars a year outrageous salaries are gone, yep. And so
as they tip over and we rise up, we're going
to be the number one news network in the whole country,
and I hope the whole world.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Well, that sounds like a great prediction to end on.
Jenk thank you for coming in. Good luck with covering
the rest of this election season.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Thank you so much. Andrew really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear
from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign
up for the free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't
forget to tune in next week for another episode of
Strictly Business.
Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
which we speak with some of the brightest minds working
in the media business. Today, I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety.
As we head into the home stretch before the November election.
This is crunch time for the plethora of media companies
who cover politics, count among them a twenty two year
(00:27):
old operation based here in Los Angeles known as the
Young Turks. To talk about the business of TYT, I
am joined today by its founder, CEO and lead anchor,
Jenk Yuger. We'll get into it with him right after
the break. I am joined in studio today by Jenk Huger, who,
(00:54):
if you don't know the name from his work at TYT,
you might recall he had a brief run for the
Democratic presidential nomination that ended earlier this year. Certainly ask
him about that and the election, but today's focus is
on his work in the news space. Thanks for coming in, Jenk.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Thank you, Andrew, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
So, just for the uninitiated, before you even explain what
TYT is all about, I actually want to talk about
the scale of your business first. In this day and age,
anyone can put a logo on a web page and
say they're a news operation. That's obviously not you guys.
So if you will paint a picture of the growth
you guys have achieved all this time.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, So we are at about twenty seven million subscribers
across all the platforms now, about eighteen million on YouTube,
six million on the flagship show, The Young Turks. But
it's now a network, so we have fast channels that
are on almost all the fast channel platforms. We do
everything from one minute TikTok videos to twenty four hour channels,
(01:55):
about at least a dozen platforms so far. So you
type iny or The Young Turks anywhere and you'll get
us and tyts for the network. Young Turks is for
the flagship show. And we've been around since the beginning
of YouTube. We're actually the first YouTube partner ever, Yeah,
which makes me the original YouTuber. So when I say
(02:19):
that we have twenty nine billion lifetime views, that's both impressive,
but at the same time, it's been a while, okay,
so I'm fair about it. In fact, we're the longest
running show in Internet history, so that's pretty neat, and
I feel good about those, you know, hallmark achievements and
the size that we've gotten to.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
And I would imagine in this election season, the audience increases.
People are paying attention like never before. You're seeing that.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, of course, election season views always go up, and
you know, we've got hundreds of millions of views every month,
and that feels great. But I'll tell you there is
a wrinkle to that, and that makes the story interesting.
We are doing something pretty different now than than almost
anyone online, and it's so new school that it's almost
(03:10):
old school, and it is costing us audience. Okay, so
that's where it gets interesting. Tell us about it. Yeah. So,
but we believe we're going to get a larger audience
in that. And so we're telling the truth. And you
might think, come on, jank, everybody tries to tell the truth,
and you don't have a monopoly on it, et cetera.
(03:30):
I understand all that, but do they So let me
challenge that way of thinking. If you go on MSNBC
or Morning Joe or The View and you say, for example,
the photo op that that Trump did at McDonald's was
actually a brilliant piece of marketing, they'll say, outrageous, you terrible,
how dare you? He's the worst. Right, you have to
(03:53):
be honest with your audience and you have to say
what he's doing right and what he's doing wrong, what
Kamala Harris is doing right, what Kamala Harris is doing wrong.
But when you do that, the partisans get very very angry.
You can alienate them.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
They won't come back because you said something they don't
like exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So what's happening online now, unfortunately, is everyone is giving
people what they want. And you say, wait, why is
that unfortunate because what they want to hear is not
necessarily what's true. So it's created a news industry that
is filled to the rim with people. Whether it's mainstream
media or social media and new digital media, they're all
(04:31):
giving the audience what they want. Oh, Trump is the best,
Trump is the worst, Kamma is the best, Kamala is
the worst, and no one's actually getting the truth. And
we're trying to give them the truth. And then that
alienates people and it's a dangerous strategy we have of
actually doing the news.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Well, but are you seeing signs of alienation? Do you
see people reacting because you're not queuing to a party
line partisan wise?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Oh? Definitely. And so it goes from ideology to partisanship.
So on the ideology front, when crime rose, we accurately
reported the crime rose. And that angered a lot of
leftists in our audience, and they said, how dare you
make the numbers basically fit your ideology instead of your
ideology fitting the facts. And so now they wouldn't use
(05:19):
it in those terms. They'd say, you're helping right wing
framing by pointing out the facts. Well, I don't think
you're helping your side by denying them, right, And so
they got very mad at that. And then we said, look,
I know the right wing is drumming up hatred against
the trans community, and we fight against that, and we've
been fighting against that when no one else was on
(05:41):
our side. We were fighting for trans rights, gay rights, etc.
And in fact, we held Biden and Obama accountable when
they weren't for legalizing gay marriage. And back then people
forget we were considered outrageous radicals for daring to criticize
Obama and saying he's got the wrong position on gay marriage.
They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You all want gay marriage,
(06:03):
but don't criticize the sainted, benighted Barack Obama. See even
as I say that, I guarantee you there's pete Democrats
in your audience who are a little rankled by that framing, Like, whoa,
what are you saying? Are you saying I'm biased? Are
you saying that Obama's not benighted? And that sounds like
a right winger? No, I just told you I hate Trump.
I'm debating eight pro Trump guys at once, right, and
(06:24):
I've done that all over media. But you lose credibility
if you're not honest, right, And now, don't get me wrong,
I'm not letting the right wing off the hook. Their
right wing media is nuts and they say things that
aren't anywhere near true. And Domanian has got what eight
hundred and thirty five million dollars to prove it right? Right,
So Fox is yes. So we're not saying Trump is great,
(06:48):
and the lunacy that the right wing media has, we're
knocking down every one of those mythologies, like Jesus Now
they're at eating cats and dogs like that's just right.
They hate the establishment. I don't like the establishment. We
could talk about that. I think that's an interesting topic, right,
But just because you don't like the establishment doesn't mean
(07:09):
you should believe lunatic conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Right, So it sounds like you're giving it to people
on the right and the left. But I think we
should make clear for those not familiar with TYT and
correct me if I'm wrong. You guys are on the left,
you guys are progressive. What is it like in this
election cycle speaking to a progressive audience?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Honestly's a tough business, but you have to do it right.
You have to give the analysis and then we give
our perspective, and our perspective is that of progressive populace.
So what does that mean? I think there are two
political spectrums. One that is hidden and that especially to
the establishment, that they're not even aware exists. The one
that we're all familiar with is left right. And on that,
(07:54):
let's just stick with the main show because all of
our hosts have different points of view, and there are
a lot to have different points of view. And TYT
as a network has a mission statement which is boldly
pursued the truth, challenge the establishment, and drive positive change. Okay,
so as long as you're fitting that mission statement, you're
allowed to have any opinion you like. You're an out
(08:14):
to have any politics you want right. So for the
main show, it's me and my co hosts Ana Kasparian,
and our politics is center left. It's not extreme left.
We take it on the extreme left all the time.
It's definitely not right wing. And it's not what mainstream
media would call moderate. But I think what mainstream media
calls moderate is not actually moderate. I think it's a
(08:35):
radical corporate agenda which brings us to the other part
of the political spectrum, the hidden part, and that's establishment
versus populist. And there we're very populist. We're on the
one end of the spectrum on that one.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And when it comes to establishment, I'm hearing perhaps you're
not just talking about government, you're talking about the media
that follows the government as well.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, definitely yes. So for people who have watched television
and makestream media their whole life, or read the New
York Times, when I talk about the establishment, they say,
what water? Okay, you know the old story about the fish.
You ask him how's the water, and he says, what water? Right.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
But in terms of your own company, which is for profit,
you take advertising, how do you not as you grow
fall into the same trap where you are beholden to
corporate America. And I also it's hard for me to believe,
given the scale that you've achieved, that political parties aren't
(09:37):
whispering in your ear what their agenda is as well.
So all this goes by way of saying, how do
you really keep yourself apart from everyone else? And say, no,
we're the antidote to the media problem.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, so this great question has interesting technical answers as
well as ideological answers. So one is that we get
a decent amount of our revenue from our members, and
so that way we say you're our bosses instead of
giant corporate advertisers or politicians, et cetera, and we serve you.
And so when you tie your financial incentive to your audience,
(10:14):
you're better off than if you tie your financial incentives
to other factors that can then lead you in a
direction that isn't true.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
But just interrupt for a second. How big a chunk
of the revenues that you get come from subscribers as
opposed to advertise.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
About a third? Okay, so that's a significant chunk. So
if you lose a third of your revenue, you're in
a lot of trouble. Ye, right, but if you gain
more subscribers tyt dot com slash join. If you gain
more subscribers, then that's the audience saying at a boy, okay,
this is the news that makes sense. And by the way,
(10:49):
if it doesn't make sense to you, that you don't
join it.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
So now, but we do get advertisers, and so what
do we do. Number one, we do mainly programmatic, so
we are not directly tied to the advertisers. It goes
through a third party, so they don't care what we're saying,
and we don't care what their corporate position is, and
so it gives a good distance, so you're not overly
influenced by that. The other thing that happens, there's a
(11:13):
giant hidden advertising base again that we don't see much
talk of in the mainstream media, which is the politicians themselves.
So in the last cycle, they spent seventeen billion dollars,
almost all of which went to ads in mainstream media.
And so that's one of the reasons why they don't
speak out too harshly against politicians because politicians are some
(11:37):
of their top advertisers, they're top clients. We don't do that,
so you will see political ads on TYT, but they
went through a third party, and so there's no influence
on us at all. In fact, a lot of times
you'll see Republicans running ads on it. We don't endorse that,
and we don't care. You can say whatever you want
to our audience. Our audience is open minded, open hearted,
(11:59):
and we know how to tell reality from fiction. And
so if you want to run the ads, that makes sense.
Tons of undecided voters there, but we're not soliciting that. Now.
Sometimes we do direct ads and I'm happy to do it,
but generally speaking, it's with more progressive outlets or outlets
that we agree with. So good example is Aspiration, longtime
(12:21):
sponsor of ours. They're a financial institution that is more progressive,
so they don't put your money in fossil fuel companies,
whereas the major banks do. So we love Aspiration. They
created a green marketplace where there's eighty two other good
guy companies and so if you're a good guy company
trying to do good in the world, oh, we love it.
And that's the alignment we want. Because we're trying to
(12:42):
set up win wins.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
I say, I say, well, we will have more with
jenk Uger after the break, be right back and we
are back with Jenk Huger, CEO, founder lead anchor of
the Young Turks and the Tyt Empire. Jenk, you'd referred
(13:04):
earlier to your seminal role in, you know, the formation
of pro content on YouTube. YouTube, is that still sort
of the main platform because you are doing other things,
You're on podcasts, you're on the other social media, But
is that still the main attraction.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, that's where two thirds of our subscribers are. That's
where the line's share of the audience is for the
whole internet. Really, if we're you know, looking at it holistically,
YouTube is the giant, and so we go to where
the audience is. It's always been on YouTube, and it's
still on YouTube today, but we are on all the
other platforms, and sometimes different platforms, depending on how they
(13:46):
set their algorithms, will spike. So for a while we
actually had more viewers on Facebook than we did on YouTube.
But then Facebook decided to deprioritize news because the Republicans
yelled at him too much. So, actually, to be fair
to Facebook, both sides yelled at them too much, and
they're like, well, we don't want the headache of dealing
with these politicians who demand that we cheat on their side, right,
(14:09):
So I get why they did it, but snap's a
big outlet for us. The fast channels are a huge
outlet for us. So our strategies be everywhere. And that
is juxtaposed, for example, to the Joe Rogan strategy, which
is just be in one place so he aggregates and
to be not only to be fair, but to give
him credit. In terms of business strategy, when you aggregate
(14:32):
all your viewers in one place, it seems bigger than
it is, so people look at it and go, who
I see a million people downloaded that stream? Right, Oh
my god, that seems gigantic.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
But that's the only place you can get it. It's
sort of like an artificial scarcity.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I guess yeah, or you bring them there. And it's
a perfectly fine strategy, and in fact it works better
because it affects advertisers more. It affects media more once
they see with their own eyes, oh that's a million people. Okay,
you're a big show. We get three to five hundred
million viewers a month, but they're dispersed through hundreds of videos.
(15:09):
So for the media, that's a little bit harder to grasp.
They're like, where where, And I'm like, well, here's the numbers,
so you can see it. We can invite you to
the behind the scenes and show you the actual numbers.
And what's funny, Andrews. Sometimes I'll see online hosts do this.
They're like, oh, you know Young Turns Saint, claiming they're
the largest online news show. Let's look this up, and
(15:29):
then the guy will go, holy crap when he sees
the numbers. It's literally happened on air, and so they
don't realize that. Also, tyit has all these different channels
on YouTube and other places and all these different shows.
So Rebel Headquarters is a channel we have on YouTube
that's actually larger than the Young Turks.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Oh didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, See, almost nobody knows that the Rebel Headquarters is
twenty progressive hosts who are making content day in and
day out, and so we're winning the Internet in ways
that people can't even see.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Do you have a sense of what is sort of
the next level of growth, what you want to achieve
for the brand, you know, post election growth plans of
any kind.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, So when we challenged our own side, as I
mentioned earlier that takes a little bit of courage because
you do lose some audience. So we lost some subscribers
and we and in this election cycle, as we constantly
call out both Trump and Kamala Harris, the partisans often
hear only the criticism of their side, right, so they
bake in that you're not supposed to like Trump. But
(16:37):
if you ever criticize Biden or Kamala Harris, as I
certainly did when I ran against Joe Biden, right, Yeah,
then people get very mad. So then we lose some
establishment Democrats from our audience, and that happened, right. But
my goal for the long term is this is the
online news show. This is where everybody can come and
it doesn't matter which side you're on, and we're going
(16:58):
to be tough to both of your sides, and you're
going to need to brace for impact, and we're going
to be honest with you even when it's painful. Okay,
but what you're going to get is the one place
where we're actually telling the truth.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
But when you say that you've got this goal for
the long term, and in the same breath you're talking
about having thrown your hat into the presidential arena. Who's
to say in twenty twenty eight you're not there again
running and maybe actually sticking it out for the long term.
What happens to your media business if you've sort of pivoted.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, So it's a great question as to why I
ran and how does that interact with the business right.
So I ran out of desperation, and I said that
clearly when I announced in the first interview, I said,
this is an act of desperation because I try to
get other people to run against Joe Biden for about
a year. So I talked to about a dozen progressives
(17:55):
and said he's incredibly weak. He's going to lose to
Donald Trump. Please take him on, not just for the
progressive base, and so progressives can win. And by the
middle of the way through that, I dropped the progressive
part because I'm like, look, he's going to lose to Trump.
There's no question about it. The professionals understand that. That's why,
(18:16):
not just me, but David Axelrod and James Carvill and
Nate Silver and Ezra Kleine. We were all out there saying,
for God's sake, look at the numbers. He has no
chance of winning. Please get him out of the race.
So that's why I ran because I deeply care about
the news. I deeply care about the results. So and
(18:36):
I don't mind being activists. I started Justice Democrats. That
is the group that got aoc Rashieta to Lee bilhan
Omar and Aana Presley elected, and then Corey Bush and
Jamal Bowman, et cetera, etcetera. There's now eleven Justice Democrats
in Congress. Actually, with the loss of Bowman and Bush,
it will be down to nine. So my point is,
(19:00):
I'm not dispassionate about the news. I'm passionate about the news.
I don't understand the old model of the wolf blitzers
who read the prompter and go, well, all these children died,
but I don't care. We're moving on. No, all these
children died. I care a lot. Sixty eight thousand people
die every year in America because they don't have health insurance.
(19:20):
I care a lot about those sixty eight thousand. I
think we should change it. And if you want to
get into how you change it, well then you have
to be honest and say our politicians are all taking
legalized bribes called campaign contributions. They take them from the
drug industry, the health insurance industry, the oil companies, the banks,
and they do exactly as their donors tell them. So
that's why we do predictions on the show, and we're
(19:40):
right almost every time. It's not because we're geniuses, it's
because the answer is super simple. Follow the money. That's
what journalism was supposed to do, and we lost track
of that. If you follow the money, you see that
the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, vote with the donors
almost every single time.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
If you take that tack, and I don't want to
be so cynical as to call it attack, but you know,
are politicians themselves going to come on your air as
you guests to talk or are they going to be
too scared? Is the position that you're taking. I guess
I'm saying, come at a great cost if you can't
(20:21):
do the things that might help even take your audience
even bigger.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, it does come with a cost, and the cost
is it might surprise you. It's not access to the
politicians themselves. That yes, that happens. So there's brave folks
who come on and we give very tough interviews. So
we're traditional in that sense. I got Bernie to change
his position on counting delegates in the middle of twenty
(20:48):
sixteen in the when it was the most heated in
the middle of an interview. Okay, and because he wasn't
right about that, And even though I supported Bernie in
every other way, I challenge them on the that he
was wrong on and he conceded it. Okay. We had
bare knuckle brawls almost with Toulcy Gabbert, John Delaney, Tim Ryan, Rocanna,
(21:11):
but the brave ones, the honest ones like ro Coanna
and Tim Ryan, and I agree more with Road than
I do with Tim, but I give Tim a ton
of credit. They both keep coming back on and saying,
this is my position, I'm willing to defend it, and
our audience deeply respects them for that. Okay. But when
we lose, do we lose access to politicians because we
give super tough interviews. Definitely right, Kamala Harris wouldn't be
(21:35):
caught anywhere near the young turns, but neither were Donald Trump.
I mean, there's no way on earth they'll come on.
And I tell them, if I was you, I wouldn't
come on because you're not going to do well. We're
going to challenge you on the truth and you're you're
gonna flounder. Okay, So it doesn't get any more honest
than that. So how does it hurt us? It doesn't
hurt us with the audience. The audience is not interested
(21:56):
in boring interviews with politicians that just give their talking
points that are unchallenged. If you do that kind of interview,
it'll get like two thousand views, it'll die. It's not
interesting at all. Everyone else is doing it.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
So, yeah, you mentioned earlier you had the foresight to
see that Joe Biden's candidacy would be problematic. I'm curious
putting aside your assessment of her as a candidate as
a policy maker. I guess I'm asking for an assessment
more of the campaign because Kamala entered the race with
a real head esteem, a lot of momentum, and it
(22:31):
seems to have receded. I'm curious to get your take.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So this is why we talk about predictions. So you
know that we're not Monday morning quarterbacking. We're doing constructive critique. Right.
So I want to Buyden out of the race because
I was positive he's gonna lose a Trump, and I
think Trump is a unique danger, and by the end,
I'm like, for God's sake, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, all
these governors please get in the race. So they wouldn't
(22:56):
do it. So I had to do it in an
active desperation to try to push him out. And we did. We.
You know, obviously Pelosi Obama were the largest parts of that.
But I'm proud that I contributed to a more sane
Democratic Party. Okay. So now when we go to the
next level of that in Kamala Harris, we said, okay,
we were right about Joe Biden. Good check now Kamala Harris.
(23:18):
In the beginning, we immediately said, oh my gosh, she's
doing wonderful things. We're shocked that she picked Tim Walls,
who's a populous progressive that is very similar to the
way that we think about the world, but also very popular.
And people say, oh, yeah, he agrees with you. So
you're saying he's popular. No, look at the polling among
the four candidates in the race president and vice presidential level,
(23:40):
Tim Walls is by far the most popular. Okay, best
because people like populist progressive, they like paid family leave,
they like higher minimum wage, they liked that he took
care of the kids and gave them free lunch for
the kids who needed it, etc. So we say, great job,
Kamala Harris. Then she does a progressive populist economic agenda
where she says, we're going to tackle price couging, we're
(24:02):
going to tackle the housing prices. We go terrific. We
think her numbers are going to go up, and they do,
and we were right about that, and we gain more
trust with the audience. See, they're not against the Democratic Party.
When the Democratic Party is doing wrong, they call out
that they're doing wrong. When they're doing right, they call
out that they're doing right. So then about a week
(24:22):
what is today, October twenty first, two weeks ago on
October fifth, I said, uh, oh, she's going to start
heading down. And so now at that point she hadn't
started heading down at all, Okay, And I said, here's
why she's going to head down. She's got every sergeon
on cable news saying how much she loves corporate CEOs
and she's going to be more business friendly than Joe Biden.
(24:43):
Stop stop, that's a terrible idea. And then she started saying, oh,
I love Dick Cheney. I loved Liz Cheney, and she's
now campaigning in Pennsylvania. That's great. She's campaigning with Liz Cheney.
Not great. Not great. So we said she's going to
start heading down because people hate the Cheneys. He left
office with a thirteen percent approval rating. You're not going
to get the Republicans you think you're going to get
(25:05):
with by wrapping yourself around Dick Cheney. You're going to
lose populist undecided voters who hate Dick Cheney, whether they
were formerly Republican or formerly Democrat. Those independent undecided voters,
the one thing they're united on is anti war and
hating the Cheneys. So don't go in that direction. Saying
you love big business is the worst electoral strategy you
(25:29):
can imagine. It isn't about left and right, it's about
populis versus establishment.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Well, but as a matter of media strategy, let me
ask you have this. You're saying there's this sense of
establishment versus populism. I understand you're passionate about that, but
how do you know that there truly is this mass
audience that feels the same way.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, a lot of times
Fox News will say Hey, we are the country because
we're the largest cable outlet. That's a little misleading because
at the end of the day, there's still only one
to three million people watching in a country of three
hundred and thirty million people. But do they have they
proven that they at least resonate with some portion of
(26:17):
the American people.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Right. In our case, we're the largest online news show.
We didn't get there by accident. And when we started
twenty two years ago, we had absolutely no money, no connections,
no nothing. We started in my living room. My name
was Jank Yuger. No one knew me, no one wanted
to know me. Okay, so we started out with zero
viewers and zero dollars and we built up this empire
(26:41):
that now has twenty nine billion views and twenty seven
million subscribers. We did that because it resonated. It doesn't
mean that we're right about everything. It just means we
did find a track that a lot of people went, Yes,
that that's what I was looking for. That's the answer.
It's not the right spectrum, it's the populous establishment spectrum.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Last question, but a big one, which is give me
your sense of the future of news media and Tyt's
place in it. Obviously, we have the established powers of
CNN and Fox News and the New York Times and such.
Do you see this ecosystem undergoing changes starting in this
(27:27):
next election cycle?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
So I'll give you a little bit of business intelligence
that and I can say this, even though it might
give away a competitive advantage we have because I know
the rest of the industry isn't going to believe it anyway,
And whenever I say things, they don't. That's been my
experience that they don't believe it. When we started the company,
I said online video is going to be TV. They said,
(27:49):
you're the craziest person we've ever met. There's no chance
that's going to happen, right, And here we are, of
course right, And I can give you many other examples.
We're trying to be in the reality based world as
hard as we possibly can. So with that preface, let
me say what's going to happen next is DAI Dynamic
ad insertion has finally come to YouTube. And so what
(28:11):
a lot of people don't understand about digital media is
that it's still a very nascent industry. So a lot
of the tracks, the pipes, the infrastructure is still being
laid down, and so people sometimes will say to let's
even take people that people perceive as our competitors. They're
not really our competitors, but Vice, Vox, BuzzFeed those type
(28:31):
of people, right, and they'll say, why haven't you made
billions already? What's wrong with you? Well, how can you
get all of the money if the tracks aren't built,
or if the pipes aren't built. There's no pipes for
the ads to flow through. Right, So it got built
on the vod end and that's what's made us profitable
and that's what made us survivors of this industry. But
(28:54):
on the dynamic ad insertion, which basically just creates live
television with ads inserted in there. You take that as
a consumer as a given, but we know in the
digital media space it's not a given. It didn't exist
on YouTube until very recently, it didn't exist anywhere until
a couple of years ago. And so now that the
(29:14):
ads are finally being put into live breaks, what will
happen next to Andrew is a huge number of twenty
four hour hour channels will start to break out on
YouTube because they will realize, oh, right, now there's ads
throughout the day. When I do more live content, So
all of a sudden, live content, especially twenty four hours,
(29:38):
will start to take over the landscape. So we're at
the very front of that line and we're seeing that
trend just as we've seen all of the other trends
in this industry that's allowed us to survive for this
long and to thrive. And so what I believe will
happen is we will win that battle. And when we do,
there's a second thing that's happening that is going to
(30:00):
to us passing CNN, MSNBC and all of them. So
if you look at it today, you go, Okay, jenk
I get it. You're winning on YouTube, you're winning on Facebook,
you're winning on some of these platforms. But saying that
you're going to beat CNN, that sounds crazy. They're so
much larger than you right when you're take in their
TV audience. But remember they grew grew up in an
ecosystem that had infinite money. They had one hundred million
(30:21):
subscribers and they were getting paid you know, different ranges,
but a dollar to four dollars on cable news that
is a world of money. And then you add to
add money on top. But now you're in a world
where you're at seventy million, sixty million subscribers and dropping.
So you just lost forty percent of your subscription revenue.
Let alone the fact that now the average age watching
(30:43):
cable news is about sixty eight on MSNBC, CNN and
Fox News Fox News around seventy. So now you're losing
your twenty five to fifty four demographics. So you're losing
advertisers at a great rate. But your costs are still
super high. So when you have an industry with sky
high cost that got used to those costs, right, as
(31:04):
Bain would say in Batman, victory has defeated you. Right.
So they're fat and soft, and they have unbelievable costs
and no longer have the revenue to keep up with
those costs. That's why you're seeing them cut anchor after
anchor after anchor. ESPN started it, and now it's going
to all of cable and so those forty twenty million
(31:25):
dollars a year outrageous salaries are gone, yep. And so
as they tip over and we rise up, we're going
to be the number one news network in the whole country,
and I hope the whole world.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Well, that sounds like a great prediction to end on.
Jenk thank you for coming in. Good luck with covering
the rest of this election season.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Thank you so much. Andrew really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear
from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign
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