Screentime 2026: Hollywood in the Age of AI

This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck.

Carol Master, Tips Denevick, live here at Bloomberg Screen Time on the West Coast. And one of the things we love about going east to west is catching up with all of our colleagues who are based in whether it's L.A. or San Francisco. And that includes the next guy sitting next to us.

Where in the world is Ed Ludlow really, though? Because he's on the road a lot. It is Bloomberg Tech, Ed Ludlow. He is going to be talking to Stephen Bartlett, the host of the Diary of a CEO, later here at Screen Time. Stephen Bartlett also joining us a little later on. Ed, good to have you here. You've been at every screen time, like we have too. This one does feel a little bit different, given the conversation around AI.

I mean, this is the third edition of it, and what's interesting is if you go back three years, it was AI is, if you put a prompt into an AI, do you get a feature film out the other side of it?

This was kind of in the earlier days of video models.

And the definitive conclusion today is no, that's not how it's working.

Mm-hmm.

But in the studio's context, they are absolutely using AI. There are so many case studies of it. They embrace it. It's not displacing jobs. It is showing up in post-production in what they call hybrid studios. Real humans on stages or in the wild filming stuff and then being put into maybe a different world through the use of an AI tool in that post-production element.

How would you explain the distinction between... the CGI that we grew up with versus the AI that's available now.

So interesting, actually, because I posed this question a few times this morning, and I don't know I've got a good answer. But in very simple terms, we're still talking about generative AI. The input is a text command, typing on the keyboard, I want this. The AI model generates pixels. That is actually the breakthrough of the GPU. It's what Jensen Wong and NVIDIA were focused on for a really long time.

He would stand on.

Stage in these beautiful. Worlds that are portrayed behind him, he would say, you guys aren't getting this. The GPU is creating pixels.

AI is creating pixels.

There's a distinction on a technical basis of rendering, but that's the answer.

So, but on that point, is it just an advanced level of things that we have been getting used to of more and more technology when it comes to filmmaking?

Yeah, I mean, like, there are some case studies. But if you take a television series, for example, there's this startup called Luma AI, which I think they're on stage today. The COO, Carolyn, was on the show this morning. You know, you still, in a television series, go about your weeks and months of shooting, right? You could be, you know, on location, on set. The human involvement is very high. But, you know, the reality of one episode is, like, in post-production, the.

Director and the editors are sitting there altering like one specific corner of the screen. Not the hour, you know, but it reduces cost reduction. It reduces costs of the overall production is the main economic takeaway. Like the thing about it actually is if you try and in conclusion talk about what everyone's talking about here, they see an economic benefit. You know, that is something that, you know, if you're an investor in the space, you want to see too.

I thought that was what was interesting. I keep mentioning Kathleen Kennedy of Lucasfilms, making that distinction. They've been doing right focus groups, and I thought she was so interesting at bringing people together. I'm like, yeah, there are going to be some jobs that go away, but they're really trying to figure it out.

Yeah, I mean, AI everything, AI all the time. It's an industry that still has lots of things that are going on. Ted Sarandos, the Netflix co-CEO, made the point last night that they have three recent productions across television and film that were done in L.A., the aggregate production spend across those.

Three was $ 400 million.

And politically, you know, LA is not the place it once was to make a film or TV series like Red Tape. The city makes it difficult. There was a mayoral candidate on the stage earlier about tax breaks.

Yeah, Nithya Raman. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, that has nothing to do with technology.

It's just like business. But you know what I thought was interesting about Sarandos last night? He made the point of saying, we've actually shot in all 50 U.S. states.

Yes, in the last year alone, I think he said.

He was very clear to say that. And that's the context of, okay, well, yeah, Canada is huge. The U.K. is huge for shooting.

Yeah.

But in the context of maybe some sort of like federal tax credit from the Trump administration.

But let's go back to the start of our conversation, which is three years ago when they started doing both screen time. The fantasy, frankly, was, OK, I have a chat bot and I will put a prompt in and the net result of it will be a ready to.

Go piece of content.

Make me a film that's a blockbuster.

We're not there yet. It's not even that we're not there yet. That's not how people have ended up using the technology.

Well, OK.

OpenAI axing Sora. Can that be part of the conversation? Were people not using that the way that OpenAI thought they would?

But OpenAI, along with Faith Ailey's World Labs, we went over that acquisition by AMD on Monday.

Those are not text models. They're not LLMs.

They are people called the world models and multimodal models. OpenAI still has a video model. Luma, for example, is a frontier lab. It does research on AI models that are used for robotics. But the reason they're at screen time is they have an AI agent. And the reason their AI agent is good is if you're the director of a movie and you're sitting down with the editor to make some progress on a scene, the agent will determine which of the models that are out there is best.

It might say, okay, actually, OpenAI's video model is really good here. Because your objective is to put a tree in the background that wasn't there or something like that. It's just basic stuff.

Speaking of models, you've got to get to a head. No, don't be sorry. So much coming out. We always want two hours with you. Anthropic said to Target, it's mega IPO before the Thanksgiving holiday. Big news. We're getting some timing here or what?

Yeah.

So like what we're hearing from sources, and I want to shout out like Bailey Lipschultz has really led the way on this. Like it's so hard to find out what's going on for obvious reasons. But, you know, it looks like they'll kick off formal marketing that week of November 9th, just after the midterms. And then, you know, there is like a reality to how long you need to get the market ready for an IPO this complex.

but before Thanksgiving for trade is possible based on this reporting at a valuation of 1.8 to 2 trillion.

Those are the details. Then it's looking like no question they're beating OpenAI.

Well, look, I think that actually, let's state it, it's a very fluid situation. Here are the more definitives. It looks like they will go public by the end of the year, right? So if Thanksgiving doesn't happen by the end of December, that's still what they're planning on based on our sourcing and our reporting. You know, we've been saying since the summer that after the summer, the S1 would flip public. And, you know, we're still here and it hasn't. Things have changed. The AI safety debate has been an impact here. But, yeah, it's complex.

Well, then what does it mean for Sam Altman and OpenAI?

You know, I discussed it at length with Sam, right, earlier in the week and with Sarah Fryer, the CFO. Their position has been. Stated in a different interview that they won't open IPO right now because of the AI safety environment. I think OpenAI was already on a path to accepting an IPO would be in 2027. Which part of 2027? If you're listening and not watching, I'm shrugging my shoulders. I think that's a little bit like it. I know from my sourcing on the existing investor side, I think the investors are very relaxed about the idea that Anthropic goes first and OpenAI goes second.

OpenAI investors, I mean.

And they would be supportive if Sam and Sarah were like, look, 2027, 2028. It happens when it happens.

It's not like investors are not going to be interested.

Yeah.

I mean, the unusual part of this to bring our audience into the newsroom is like when you have filed confidentially, typically the CEO or CFO, any other executive of that company doesn't do dozens of interviews regularly where they're.

Asked about and talk about an IPO. It's been highly irregular.

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

All right, everybody.

Bloomberg Businessweek Daily live at Bloomberg Screen Time here in Hollywood. And we want to take you back to the theater here at Screen Time. We've got a discussion underway, Tim.

Yeah, Darren Walker of the president and CEO of Anonymous Content. I almost said the Ford Foundation.

I know.

Because that's how we know him. He used to be. There he is. You can see him there on the screen. He's sitting down with Laureen Powell Jobs, the founder and president of Emerson Collective. also with Lucas Shaw, managing editor of Media, Entertainment, and Sports here at Bloomberg.

To do the full 360 and partner with Netflix, ultimately, on creating this jewel of a production.

When you mentioned having a long-term investor, does that mean that so you see yourself staying in this business 10 years, 20 years, however long, there is not a rush to get any kind of return?

That's correct.

Yeah. But the company has to be self-sustained. I mean, the flywheel that he's talking about is a flywheel that's highly productive and that ends up making money that is circulated back into the company.

You talked about the challenges of the fee-for-hire business, and I'm wondering, you know, there has been a lot of consolidation among talent agencies over the last many years to the point where you now have sort of three really big ones and then a huge drop. then there's some mid-sized ones. There has not been the same consolidation on the management front, though there has been a lot of discussion about it. You have a lot of private equity money in it. Have you guys talked about trying to combine anonymous with other firms?

Well, we've absolutely, as a part of our strategy, want to grow. I'm not going to comment on any particular part of the verticals and target companies, but we plan to grow. We're going to grow organically. We're going to probably make some aqua hires. And if there is a transaction that makes sense... which is these days because valuations are so inflated, we.

Would look at that, absolutely.

Is there an area that you are not in right now that you feel the business should be larger in, whether that's creators, podcasts? There's obviously a lot of verticals in entertainment that people are trying to stretch beyond sports and music as well because the film and television business has been fairly static.

Absolutely.

So there's no doubt that the content creators, these independent content creators, figuring out how to have a portal to that community, that community of writers, that community of creators in places that we don't normally go and making sure we have team members who can have tentacles in those places is right. And then looking at things like theatrical and looking at different ways for us to work And when I say theatrical, I mean Broadway.

I mean live events.

So you're not going to be buying movie theater chains?

No, we're not buying movie theater chains.

When I say theatrical, I mean Broadway, live events. And understanding that today, young people are returning to live events, to theater, because they find community. And in spite of the fact that we convinced ourselves that young people want to be with their equipment, with their phones, with their computers.

They actually want to be with other human beings. And it's why they stand in line for hours upon hours for live events. It's why standing in line is a way of being in community. It isn't seen necessarily as a hassle to stand in line because you're engaging with other people. And for the generation of young people who live through COVID, they are desperate for a different kind of connection to humanity.

You brought up the Atlantic earlier, and I wanted to ask you about it, Lorene. That is a business that I think when you took it over, it wasn't in the best of shape.

It was a great brand.

But you've turned it into something, I think it's gotten north of a million and a half subscribers.

It's profitable.

You seem to be hiring people every three months, as best I can tell. So how have you turned Atlantic into one of the fastest-growing media companies around right now?

Well, the editor-in-chief was there before we invested. That's Jeff Goldberg. But the business side needed some.

Some real org changes.

And so we brought in a new CEO.

Who wasn't the most obvious choice because he had come from the editorial side, right?

Yes, and at Wire Magazine he actually was business and editorial.

So yes, he was both.

It's good that he had both sides of the brain because he works hand in glove with Jeff.

But our big investment was.

In engineering because they had... a very, very thin engineering staff. So they had no subscription revenue at the time, individual, other than for the hard copy magazine. So we worked to build out the platform for digital subscriptions, and that became the big revenue driver. We saw what was happening from business and ad revenues on not a free fall, but a slow decline. It's sort of plateaued at this point.

But we saw that trajectory and we knew we needed another very robust revenue source. So subscriptions are obvious. Live events are another revenue source.

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this. It's a big day here on the West Coast because Mark Gurman's brand new Power On podcast is out. It has dropped. Mark Gurman joins us now. He's Bloomberg News Managing Editor for Global Consumer Tech. He joins us here at Bloomberg Screen Time.

You're very kind. That's, yeah, no, I mean.

It was a long time coming.

Long time coming.

I've gone on podcasts for 10 years. Whenever people started talking about Apple on podcasts, and I felt like now is the time to finally do my own, send people podcasts.

Straight to the source.

You know, I listen to some of these podcasts where people send them to me and it's a lot of times people talking about my reporting, right? And so I figured, you know, there's clearly an audience for this stuff. Why listen to someone else talk about it when I can talk about it? And so I'm happy to do that.

I'm happy to have some guests on it. I definitely should have you guys on at some point talk about, you know, your need to get a new iPhone and your takes too, Tim.

And so.

Well, what do you want to do? Like, I just think about from your vantage point, like how you want to approach everything that's going on. when it comes to consumer technology?

You know, for me, it's always about the news and breaking the news. And so I want people to come on to the Power On podcast. and be able to hear something that they've never heard before. And nine times out of ten, I'd like that thing that they've never heard before to be a scoop, be a piece of information about Apple or a piece of information about an upcoming product that they haven't read before or heard before from anyone else. And the other one time out of ten, maybe it's a cool take or a piece of analysis.

They're like, oh, that's interesting.

You always have a cool take. We love when you play with products on air. It's just one of.

Our favorite things.

I want your cool take on Apple's content strategy.

Okay.

Lucas was talking to Casey Bloys of HBO earlier, and he presented a question to him. It was sort of like in the lightning round about who's better at content, and he mentioned, quote, the Apple guys. And I'm just curious about your view on the X number of years in to the content strategy where now we're all paying for Apple TV +. I don't even know if I pay for it. It's just like whenever I buy a new product, I get a few months, so I feel like I just always have Apple. It seems like it's doing pretty well in terms of the actual quality of the content.

The quality seems good. You have shows now that are entering their seventh or eighth season. Race the Horses is one of them.

Love it.

Morning Show has been around forever. Ted Lasso feels like it's been around forever. But the reality is we don't know anything about the financials. We don't know anything about the numbers. And Apple is going into its belt-tightening era right now. They've been doing rounds of small layoffs. They've been doing marketing budget slashing. They almost laid off 5,000 AppleCare workers over the summer. and replace them with artificial intelligence.

And so, on one hand, the content strategy seems really important.

For them to be in.

On the other hand, it runs counter to what they're trying to do to the financials in the company, where they're trying to up their margins. And the business at Apple that is particularly running into headwinds here is the services business that Apple TV sits in. The App Store is about to get crushed, and it's already getting crushed.

You have these legal rulings in the United States and the European Union in Australia and Japan that are making it more difficult for Apple to collect gravity from the app store. At the same time, you have this move to AI, which is going to completely upend the app ecosystem and the business dynamics of how apps are sold and subscriptions are handled. And so that's a $ 25, $ 30 billion a year business.

It's a big deal.

And then if you have this TV thing, which people love and whatnot, and it's literally burning a hole in their bank accounts because it costs so much to produce and they're not making a profit on it, At some point, a decision is going to need to be made.

What are you going to do? Are you going to pull back on some content?

Are you going to do something like where you're going to start licensing content in, which is cheaper to produce? I don't think they're going to bow out of Apple TV, but something's going to happen at some point.

But does it? I mean, we know that Amazon has a content strategy because it's all about Prime. Like, that's what Amazon wants. They want people to join Prime because if you join Prime, you spend more and you buy more frequently.

Right.

What is the point of Apple's content strategy? Does it get people to buy more iPhones?

I don't think so.

And I think that's one lever they can pull is by making it exclusive to Apple products.

People fall in love with the show, so they have to buy the Apple product. But that is not the case.

Their strategy for Apple TV is actually quite interesting in that it's platform agnostic.

It's really the only Apple offering.

Which is crazy if you followed Apple. Like the moment that Apple TV became available on the Roku, I was like, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

What about Android?

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's insane.

They've got an Android app now.

And so they've moved to sort of a platform-agnostic business model there because they just want to make money off of it, which, of course, that's what you.

Want to do.

But push is going to come to shove at some point, and I don't know how this is going to end, but people aren't talking about enough how you have, on one hand, this dynamic where the services business is under an extraordinary amount of pressure.

You have a CEO who wants to up profits.

And then you have an Apple TV business that's cool and sexy to talk about and gets all these awards. But is it really doing anything positive for you when it comes to the bottom line?

So could they possibly, I know you said you don't know how it's going to play out, but could they possibly get rid of it?

I just don't see how that could be plausible, right?

Like the only thing that Apple cares more about than profits is PR.

And it's just a bad headline.

And like there's no amount of money they won't spend to avoid a bad headline.

You know, on the content side of it, we've already had folks mention how much they love the studio. I think that's an amazing show. It does a good job of poking fun at the industry.

I watched the first season. I thought it was intriguing.

Did you ever finish the second season of Friends and Neighbors?

Oh, yeah.

I think like a lot of people.

I kind of chopped off.

I saw you post about this, Mark. The first season was so good, and the second season was such a slow burn.

Let down.

I was considering dropping off, but I just had to, I had to power through it because it was one of the only shows I liked at the time on TV. Uh, the ending of the second season was, uh, it was pretty good. I'm looking forward to seeing how season three kicks off.

Uh, I can't believe they made it work more than one season, given how the first season ended.

You know what I read the other day is that the third season is going to complete the story arc of sort of this, this, this era for friends and neighbors.

I don't know if that means there's no season four. Uh, But if it does well, it could be, right?

Well, what it sounds like is regardless, this current storyline, this situation that they're in is going to end at season three, and they'll come up with a new situation for season four and beyond.

If it continues.

So in terms of revenue generation, I mean, we've always talked about that, that Apple needs to kind of continue to expand, grow beyond the iPhone. Is that kind of what Ternus is going to be focusing on as he looks to kind of Maybe pair back in some other places?

Yeah, I think he's going to pair back on things that are not making as much money. I think they're going to experiment with new things. They're going to operate more quickly. They're going to try to bring more devices to the table. And if they can, find all sorts of new peripherals to build around the iPhone that are going to be revenue generating. I played with Meta's VR glasses a couple weeks ago at this point. And when the Vision Pro launched, it was positioned by Tim Cook as the future of the company in some respects. It's a complete failure in many regards that I don't have time to get into today.

We might have some time.

How much time do we have?

We got time.

It's a complete failure. They positioned it as the future of the company. They spent tens of billions of dollars developing it. They spent a decade developing it. They put all the best people in the company on it.

And it comes out.

And $ 3, 500 is fine.

It's pricey.

But I think the bigger thing is that people just don't want to sit in an isolating headset all day. And they don't want something that... I read a stat. It's the same weight as five... standard sticks of butter that you're putting on your face.

And so it's heavy.

And again, I'm not one of those people who are just coming on and talking about things and being a pessimist about it just to, you know, talk smack about something. You're getting this from someone who has used this since day one of the release.

Someone who... It waited in line for this.

Someone who could not wait to buy it from the moment it was announced and waited seven months for it to go on sale, counting down the days to February 2nd, 2024 for this thing to go on sale.

So you were all in, basically.

So I was all in, okay?

I put my money where my mouth is, and I'm continuing to do that because this thing is not worthy of being a product.

How can a company as smart as Apple spend that much time, that much money, that much effort?

Ego and arrogance. I think the fact that.

Tim Cook's or everybody's?

I mean, look, they spent so much time working on it and they were about to get completely knocked over the head by open ai and they have to do something they needed the headlines they needed the press they needed the marketing of doing something innovative and it is even innovative.

It's a great device but it's not a great product.

Maybe they should have been working on an llm or on something ai related rather than something.

Um augmented reality when they announced so like you go through different eras of technology right there was like The touchscreen era, the smartphone era, the tablet era, right? And then there was this sort of AR, VR era, which I would say went from like 2018 to 2022-ish. That was like the prime of like, you need the VR, AR product, right? And then Apple hits us with this in mid-23 for release in early 24.

And the ship had sailed already, right? They launched a VR product in the AI era.

Anywho, use the VR glasses, the MetaVR glasses.

And just to keep it straight with you guys, if Apple released.

That product, we'd be talking about an AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac sort of sized hit. Because it's not even the cost, okay? I think people, if they want to afford a $ 3, 500 device, they shouldn't, but they will.

It is the weight.

Yeah.

It's too heavy.

Are we going to be able to, in a couple years, see a product from Apple that is a pair of something like a meta glasses that will be able to draw a line from that to.

Tim, it's 2027 practically.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's just be honest with each other. We're about to hit 2027. This thing was announced in 2023, and they've done nothing.

Not one iteration of it.

Well, they did a chip and chip.

Okay.

Chip and chip is what I call.

You swap out the processor and you ship the same thing to the customer.

I guess brilliant companies make mistakes. Or how do you see it?

It was just such an avoidable mistake and they had to have known that this was a disaster of a move. The question is, what did they have to lose?

And if you ask yourself, what is the cost of doing something versus not doing it? I think the cost of not doing something in this scenario was higher than doing it. It's not like people are running around complaining, I hate my Vision Pro. It's just that they don't have a competitor in this landscape.

But maybe they're not running around talking about it, even.

Well, they can't run around.

It's so heavy.

Dude, when was the last time you saw a Vision Pro ad or a billboard or.

Anyone talking about it?

I can tell you, I've never even seen one of these in public.

But you like it.

It's a dust collector at this point. By the way, they just raised the price 6%. I want.

To answer your question. Smart glasses, end of next year, Apple smart glasses. The meta glasses are so impressive at this point that my recommendation to every company that's not.

Apple and Google is don't do it.

Because Meta has a mature product with the best smart glasses brand right now, which is Exoril Exotica, the maker of Ray-Bans, and they've got Oakley. Any glasses company that you can think of is owned by EL. So Meta's got that market cornered. Apple will do great in that market because the Apple brand is very strong.

What about Snap's new glasses? And I'm asking you this in the context of my conversation last night I had with an analyst and a tech journalist, not at Bloomberg, who were making fun of this product. They were at the event. I was not there. They said the tech was impressive, but nobody's going to buy it.

No one is going to buy the first version, but if you can get down to $ 1, 000 and 100 grams with that tech, I think you're in a very good place. And I think Evan intends to iterate quickly, unlike Apple, which has not iterated quickly on its category. And so I would liken the first version of the specs to the first version of the Vision Pro. But I think the difference here is if they can afford to, they're going to iterate best.

So much of our conversations here, Mark, have been about AI. So where's Apple when it comes to AI at this point?

More silence.

You know, did you see the, uh, the white house, uh, um, luncheon on AI?

How could you miss it?

Of course we did. Okay. And so they posted this, the chart of it, where everyone is sitting on the table. So I'm reading the chart.

Okay.

Got Microsoft. You've got Google. You've got the all in podcast. You've got, um, who was missing? Well, yeah, you've got anthropic. You've got the open AI CEO and president. And it's like, okay, Tim Cook, Tim Cook, Tim Cook, Tim Cook, Tim Cook, Tim Cook, John Turner, John Turner.

What's going on here?

Where were they?

Were they not invited?

Believe it or not, I actually don't know where they were.

Okay.

They were probably in Cupertino.

I don't know if they were invited or not. But they didn't have a seat at the table at the White House for AI. And I'm not sure they have a seat at the table in the technology industry today. or in the technology landscape for AI either.

That's amazing.

Isn't it?

Yeah.

Is that a bombshell comment? It shouldn't be.

Mark, we're speaking with Mark Gurman. He's Managing Editor for Global Consumer Tech. We're taking a look also at what's happening with Nike. We're seeing that Nike first quarter revenue misses estimates. Nike expects adjusted EPS $ 1. 15 to $ 1. 35 for fiscal 27. Nike shares falling 5% in the post markets.

After results, first quarter revenue, missed estimates coming in at $ 11. 21 billion, shy of $ 11. 33 billion. Is the CEO still there? Yeah.

CEO is still there.

Wait, let me just point out. Stocks down about.

45% this year. You know Tim Cook's on the board.

There's always a connection to Mark Gurman.

What are you saying?

No, no, no.

I'm not putting a connection. It just crossed my mind.

This turnaround for Nike is going extremely poorly.

They brought a guy out of retirement. It was Elliot Hill.

He probably had two or three years to turn this gigantic ship around. It's just not working. They brought in a new executive, a new senior executive.

I forgot her name. They just brought her in recently.

And I wonder if they're sort of laying the groundwork here to do another CEO change because they need an even fresher start because this is not going well.

Stock down 5% here in the aftermarket.

You know, Tim Cook is no joke.

And as a board member, someone who's involved in these things, you know he's all over this.

He also loves Nike, and Apple and Nike have partnered for years. Yeah, they need to make a change.

Nike probably needs to make a change.

Yeah.

It's a great brand.

Am I allowed to say that?

You can say whatever you want.

They need to make a change.

Guess what?

It went out.

Yes.

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

This is Bloomberg Screen Time. We are Bloomberg Businessweek Daily out here on the West Coast. All right. We want to talk about Betches Sports, Betches Moms, Betches Brides, Betches Travel, Bravo by Betches. There's a lot out there.

Watch your mouth, okay?

I said Betches.

Can we... Tone it back a little bit? Is that okay? No, I'm just kidding.

I love the name.

You may be familiar with it. You're probably familiar with it. What It Is, something that started as a viral blog by childhood friends who went to college together at the beginning, turned into a leading entertainment brand for millennial and Gen Z women, offering up a wide array of content, including some by working with organizations such as the NFL.

I love this. And bottom line, it's also about laughing and laughing a lot. I just want to throw some numbers. Betches generated over 540 million average monthly views across all channels, nearly reaching nearly one in two women across the United States. That's just wild. Let's get right to it. And the company was recently bought out, so it caught the attention of other media companies. It's great to have with us the co-founder and CEO of the media and entertainment brand created by and for women, Betches. She is Aileen Drexler, and she's here at Screen Time. So great to have you here with us.

Thank you for having me. I love the intro.

We love it, too. It's such a great story. I mean, just take us back there. These are people you knew from childhood, right? You got together. You're in college together. What was it specifically that you saw that said, wait, we can do something here?

I've known these two women since I was 10 years old. We went to college together because we don't branch out. We lived together our senior year. And it was 2011. It was a time when Facebook wall-to-walls and BBMs was how we communicated. But at that time, there was such an intense culture around bros online. But for women, it was all about telling us how to be, how we should be. But online, there was nothing for women telling us how how we are, what's real. And that's what really inspired us. And I don't know any other way, but to communicate with humor. So that was, that was how we did it. And it went viral and it was anonymous when we started.

Why anonymous?

I wanted to go to medical school.

I read him like, is this really that you wanted to be a doctor?

Yeah, we were anonymous for two years.

Um, but we wrote a book coming out of college cause we had the advice of an agent to solidify our IP. Again, I had no idea what that was. And I was outsider. I was a media outsider. All I believed is if you make really good content, people will come back on their own. And what happened by being anonymous was that women saw themselves in it. They were tagging each other on each other's Facebook wall. accusing them of writing it, saying, how do you know me so well?

Who is this? Am I being punked?

And that's how it went crazy. And so we wrote a book right after college. I decided to take a year off. My parents weren't happy. And it was a New York Times bestseller. I've written two since.

And we bootstrapped the business and exited 2023.

At what point were your parents okay with this path?

When I could support myself.

How far out of college was that?

Um, probably two years, two years.

So it took a couple of years for things really to start going from a revenue perspective.

Yeah.

Interestingly enough, I think a lot, a lot has changed when it comes to media since then. I mean, you talked about the world of, of Blackberry messenger. I mean, that's like my vintage too, way back in the day.

Yeah.

Good times. But like, you know, you talk to somebody about that today who, who is under the age of 35 and they have no idea what you're talking about. What is the right way right now? to connect with your audience?

It depends on who your audience is. I think the right way is knowing where they are.

Where are they?

Well, who are you speaking to? For me, I'm speaking to young women, Gen Z, millennials.

They're on Instagram. They're on YouTube. They're in real life.

And for me, that's what's really important is speaking to our audience. And that's why we have been so successful is we built brand first. And that meant keeping our voice so consistent that women continued to see themselves in our content. And our content was really speaking to women the way that they spoke to each other. And that's how we showed up regardless of the platform.

Aileen, I'm always curious about how sticky. Once you get somebody on, how do they stay? Do they start branching out to all the other different verticals? And we're going to talk about the verticals that you're in, including what you're doing with the NFL and sports.

Yeah.

But I mean, how sticky is it?

I mean, they're incredibly sticky.

For me, again, the brand was number one.

I bootstrapped the business.

I couldn't afford not to only invest in the brand and the content and the audience. So when I got a fan, a real fan, I wanted to hold on. So everything that I was focused on was how to make their experience better. So if they're growing up, let me make something for them as they hit different life stages or have different interests or for new fans. How can I make content that makes them feel seen and at the end of the day makes their life a little bit lighter and have a good laugh.

Do you want to stay in that sweet spot in terms of age? I want to be.

There for young women.

I'm going to consider myself young forever. So it's millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. And what I believe we have a responsibility to To be there, life is hard, especially for a woman. And I really believe we can be there to make things a little bit lighter. And when you know how to communicate with humor, when you know how to communicate authentically and relatably, you can really talk about anything.

You're aiming for a large segment.

Yeah.

I mean, that's probably 25, 30 years difference with some of those viewers, some of those members of your audience.

Yeah.

I'm wondering for Gen Alpha, like the sort of the generation that grew up perhaps most online, lived through COVID in a really challenging way in school. What is the right way to connect with them versus connecting with, you know, like people my age, the sort of elder millennials?

Well, I would say for Gen Z, Gen Alpha is the youngest cohort. They're like still young teens. They're coming up. Gen Z are the generation that grew up through COVID in college. Speaking to them is about just speaking authentically. And I kind of see myself as a 21-year-old girl starting Betches the same way.

That's why I started.

Betches because I saw everything else as kind of BS.

Why is everybody being condescending? Why is everybody speaking to me like I am dumb? Women are smart. Young women are smart.

And that's what Gen Z wants.

They want to be seen... taken seriously. And I think that's really the best way to communicate.

I want to talk about some of the verticals, news, entertainment. So that's TV, movies, books, music, celebrity, sports, relationships, lifestyle, style. You've got so much out there. Are all of them growing fast or is there certain things that have really taken off? And I'm just curious, what other verticals do you think about adding?

That just sports was the most recent kind of big bet that we made I saw a really big opportunity in an audience that wasn't being spoken to. A few years ago, you just all of a sudden saw this massive rise in women's media talking about women's sports.

And I was like, this is fabulous. This is amazing.

But are women only supposed to watch women's sports? I, as a sad Jets fan, actually don't only love women's sports, and I do, I love watching women's gymnastics, I am obsessed with women's hockey, but I also, sadly, am a Jets fan, I love the Islanders, so women actually watch male sports too, and actually 50% of the Super Bowl viewership is women, and nobody is speaking to women as a fan base, and that's what Betches Sports is set out to do, is to speak to women about based on the thesis that women just watch sports differently than men do.

So what does that mean for the type of content? If they watch it differently, then how do they consume content differently?

We just kind of, it's about knowing what they care about, about the players. I think we care a little bit, I think we care a little bit more deeply about the stakes of the game, the people behind it, the personalities behind it. When I'm watching, I'm looking up everything possible about that person, who they've dated, why they're on this team, what 10 teams were they on before. And that knowing how a woman engages in really understanding the depths of the stakes really allows you to engage with a female fan in a different way and gets them hooked right away.

So you did a deal with the NFL about two years ago. Do they get it about how women may be what they want out of watching NFL games? I mean, I grew up watching NFL games courtesy of my dad and my four brothers. It was just what we did on Sundays and Monday night football. But I'm just curious, and how lucrative has that partnership been for you? We have about a minute or so.

I would hope that the NFL gets it because they came to us A month after we launched Betches Sports, they came to us and asked us to support them in reaching young women fans. And it's been an amazing partnership. I obviously can't speak to the details, but what I can say is that we're still working together after our partnership.

Very briefly, more partnerships to come?

Yes.

Like?

There's different leagues out there, aren't there?

Like?

I can't say yet.

You'll see.

You have to go follow up fetches.

We know that the Women's World Cup is coming up. We know LA 28 is coming up. We have endless amounts of content. IP, creator-led narratives, so you just gotta keep watching.

This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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