| Every company in Hollywood is trying to figure out a way to make more money from YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Propagate Content, which produces the Food Network show Chopped and the Netflix documentary series Untold, said it has acquired a majority stake in Parker, a management company that represents dozens of influencers. CAA Evolution, an investment business affiliated with its namesake talent agency, is working with agency client Dhar Mann to raise money and roll up YouTube channels, according to several people familiar with the plans. Sony’s Hollywood studio is looking to invest in or buy YouTube companies as well, according to three people familiar with their plans. The collapse of the cable bundle, the decline of the movie business and slower growth in streaming have led to a long recession in Hollywood. The pandemic and two labor stoppages didn’t help. Media giants cut costs and are still struggling to grow. That has hurt talent agencies, creatives and production companies, forcing film and TV businesses to look elsewhere for opportunities. That hunt is bringing them to social media, and, more specifically, to YouTube. Google’s video division generated about $36 billion in advertising sales last year and now accounts for more TV viewing than any other network or streaming service. “The numbers are undeniable,” said Ben Silverman, chairman and co-CEO of Propagate. “If you don’t recognize where audiences are going and how to meet them there, you’ll be left on the sidelines.” From The Office to Mormon WivesSilverman, who first made a name for himself as an agent at the Williams Morris talent agency, has lived through many of Hollywood’s ups and downs. In the late 1990s, he began importing television formats from abroad and remaking them for US audiences. That led to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and The Weakest Link. He left William Morris to start his own company, Reveille, where he produced US versions of The Office and Ugly Betty. He then had a rocky stint running NBC. Two decades later, Silverman is still producing TV shows. He’s got documentaries about the NBA’s Jerry West and crypto con man Sam Bankman-Fried debuting on Amazon later this year, as well as a scripted series for Apple starring Owen Wilson and a spinoff of The Office on Peacock. Propagate also owns Artists First, a talent-management group that represents actor Anthony Anderson and director Jon Chu. Silverman has made a career out of embracing – and sometimes anticipating — the next big thing. Right now, that’s bringing him to social media. Advertisers are shifting dollars to Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Companies can either adapt to this new reality or suffer the consequences. “A lot of people think the sky is falling in the entertainment business,” said Drew Buckley, Silverman’s longtime business partner. “We’re glass half full.” In 2020, Propagate invested in Select, a management firm that represents online talent such as Tyler Oakley. Propagate has since increased its stake in Select to a majority and produced a hit TV show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, featuring many TikTok stars that the firm represents. The Select deal prompted Buckley to look for more acquisitions, hoping to amass enough talent to command big money from advertisers. He settled on Parker because he was impressed with its founder, Lindsay Nead, as well as its roster. The firm has about a dozen clients making more than $1 million a year. Every major agency is looking for online talent. WME, UTA and CAA all have digital divisions, as does Wasserman. The Initial Group, backed by private equity giant TPG, is looking to buy a digital talent practice to complement its acquisition of Hollywood representation firms Untitled Entertainment and Grandview, according to people familiar with the firm’s plans. Hollywood’s checkered history with YouTubeThis isn’t the first time Hollywood has turned its attention to YouTube. A decade ago, media giants such as Time Warner, Disney and Comcast invested in multichannel networks, which helped operate hundreds of different channels. TV networks ordered talk shows from YouTube stars Grace Helbig and Lilly Singh. Those deals didn’t go well. Disney paid hundreds of millions of dollars for Maker Studios in 2014 but struggled to integrate the business. Warner Bros. acquired a gaming-focused network called Machinima and never quite figured out what to do with it. The talk shows flopped, as did many projects featuring digital talent. YouTube has only grown since then, and it appears traditional media companies have learned a few lessons from their past mistakes. Rather than force YouTube stars into traditional formats, streaming services are licensing programs that already work, like the children’s shows CoComelon and Ms. Rachel. Or they are asking those creators to make supersized versions of what they already do (a la MrBeast). And instead of investing in middlemen that don’t own anything, they are either securing direct exposure to talent – via management – or buying YouTube channels that own intellectual property. Some of these creator-driven businesses are worth more than $1 billion. Some executives say it’s too late, that Hollywood has already surrendered its cultural supremacy and should be afraid of YouTube. Others are dismissive, suggesting YouTube videos are inferior to TV and movies. “There’s a difference between killing time and spending time,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said recently. Translation: YouTube is where you kill time. Netflix is where you spend time. But public posturing aside, even Sarandos knows he needs a YouTube strategy. Netflix has been the most aggressive of all the major media companies when it comes to licensing popular YouTube programs, and is now flirting with video podcasts. The company has positioned itself as the major leagues (to YouTube’s minor leagues). Major entertainment companies have come a long way from the days when they sued YouTube. They’ve dismissed it, insulted it and competed with it. Now they are embracing it. Let’s call it the five stages of Hollywood grief. The ‘quality over quantity’ era | Here’s the good news for beleaguered media companies: their streaming businesses are getting more profitable. Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global and Comcast collectively reported more than $300 million in earnings from their streaming operations in the first three months of 2025, the second-straight quarterly profit. Disney and Warner Bros. posted profits while Paramount and Comcast’s Peacock reduced their losses. Here’s the trend over the past year: Now, for the bad news. A couple of these companies are still shrinking. Sales at Warner Bros. fell 10% in the first quarter while Paramount posted a decline of 6%. Their streaming services are growing and adding customers, but not quickly enough to counter declines at their TV networks, which account for the vast majority of their profit. The collapse of cable is the primary reason Comcast is spinning off its networks, Paramount is merging with Skydance and Disney once considered selling its TV networks. Warner Bros. is still trying to figure out what to do and has explored spinning off its cable networks. Yet while Comcast can take such a step without disturbing its primary business — selling you cable and internet service — Warner Bros. would be surrendering businesses that still account for about 85% of its profit. Collectively, the group is still growing by a smidge thanks to theme parks — Disney and Comcast (owner of Universal Studios) are both directing much of their new investment in that direction. One small quibble with these companies. Both Disney and Warner Bros. say their new mantra is quality over quantity. Puh-lease. They’ve always positioned themselves as different from Netflix because they stressed quality. They need a new mantra to make it sound like they have a new strategy that is driving their results. Warner Bros.’ streaming business grew primarily because it expanded overseas. Max’s share of total TV viewing in the US did inch up a bit in April thanks to The White Lotus. Disney’s streaming business is doing better because it raised prices without suffering a steep drop in churn. Its streaming services haven’t had a great start to the year in terms of producing new hits. Neither of these services had one of the 10 most-watched originals in the first quarter of the year. An update on Trump’s movie tariffsHollywood is prepared to work with Donald Trump on a plan to bring production back to the US. That plan won’t involve steep tariffs, at least they hope. Though Trump announced a 100% tariff on foreign films, it is usually best to view his public statements as a sign of his intent as opposed to actual policy. Trump wants to see more production happen in the US. His initial instinct was to accomplish this by proposing a tariff. He loves tariffs. But pretty much everyone else with a vested interest in this issue – from Hollywood studios to “ambassador” Jon Voight, knows that placing tariffs on movies is impractical and potentially catastrophic. They would like Trump to take a different approach, encouraging people to shoot in the US by making it cheaper. California Governor Newsom is pushing for federal tax incentives. (The state of New York just increased its production incentives in response to competition from New Jersey.) The No. 1 streaming TV show in the US is…The White Lotus. The third season of the HBO show has been the most-watched program in streaming for two weeks in a row. Remember that we get streaming data from Nielsen about a month after a show ends. It’s Max’s first show to top the charts since House of the Dragon last year. I suspect The Last of Us will soon follow suit. Deals, deals, dealsBloomberg News won its second Pulitzer Prize this past week. Check out the pieces that won. If you have any tips, message me at lshaw31@bloomberg.net or on Signal at lucas_shaw.63. If you don’t already receive this newsletter, please fix that here. And if you want to attend Screentime 2025, apply here. | 
