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Today’s lineup:

Two years after Matthew “MatPat” Patrick’s departure from Theorist Media, the production studio he founded is celebrating its 15-year anniversary.

Context: Upon his retirement, Patrick promoted the creative directors of each Theorist channel—Film Theory, Food Theory, Style Theory, and Game Theory—to on-camera talent. 

How it’s going: During the first six months of the transition, Theorist’s motto was “don’t rock the boat.” They knew some fans of Patrick would stop watching, so the goal was to keep content consistently good for the fans that stayed. Theorist Media saw a 33% dip in revenue during the first year. In the year before MatPat’s departure, Food Theory averaged 2.8M views per video. This year, they are averaging 370K.

But the new hosts are playing the long game: “You've got to consider it like a new business investment,” Game Theory host Tom Robinson told us. “Things like this take five or more years to turn around. It will be slow going. But once you have established that trust and you've rebuilt that level of trust and connection and community, things do start to go up.”

Experiments are starting to work: Robinson said they were seeing improvements on a few channels across their portfolio over the past six months. 

“The changes in format we've been experimenting with on both Game [Theory] and Film [Theory] have seemed to have resonated with audiences,” Robinson said. “Both in subject matter, but also getting to know and see us.”

Looking ahead: Theorist Media is one of the first major creator studios to go through a talent transition of this scale, but they won’t be the last. Robinson sees the freedom in it. 

“Mat put his trust in me for the skills that I have, not the skills I didn't have,” Robinson said. How they handle Patrick’s departure may serve as a guiding light for other companies who might have a similar turnover down the road.

When the scripted show Lila Goes Viral launched its trailer on YouTube Kids and YouTube Main last year, the channel had nine subscribers. Within a day, it had 1 million views.

How’d that happen? We spoke to the show’s creator, music composer Erica Rabner, to hear the story—and how her team is building on that growth.

How Lila went viral: "YouTube Kids has the cheat code that YouTube Main does not—the homepage," Rabner said. "If the team is going to feature you, you're automatically going to get a set of eyeballs." Lila earned that placement through a deal brokered with YouTube by nonprofit the Aspen Institute (which awarded Rabner funding for the show through a pitch competition). 

But the homepage drives views, not subscribers. For the show, which runs on its own channel, Rabner runs a daily Shorts strategy on YouTube Main (Kids doesn’t allow Shorts) that includes dance clips and BTS moments. The full content stack includes eight episodes, 18 vlogs, and eight original songs with music and lyric videos.

The show is also not marked "Made for Kids," keeping comments and engagement open on YouTube Main—data Rabner watches and adjusts content to in real time. "I posted a dance video and it got 20,000 views on Shorts. So I'm just going to post another dance video tomorrow," Rabner said.

How about monetization? YouTube Kids doesn’t allow AdSense and has strict integration rules, so brand deals route through Main. Rabner has woven sponsorships into the show's DNA—it follows a girl figuring out how to be an accidental influencer, making brand integrations plot points rather than interruptions. 

Big picture: Many kids shows get ported to YouTube Main as an afterthought. Rabner spent two years studying teen and tween vloggers to make Lila feel native to YouTube main. "I wanted it to feel like what people are actually going to the platform to watch," Rabner said. And they are watching—in the show’s first two weeks, the channel has received 480 subscribers and over 800K views.

This week, we saw a lot of platforms enacting seemingly positive changes to their algorithms—but will they be able to free our feeds from slop?

Here’s the latest: 

Patreon is introducing a short-form feed exclusively made up of free content. They state that their algorithm is suggesting videos based on fan engagement, not watch-time. 

Spotify is rolling out verification badges to combat the influx of AI artists on the platform. Artists must have consistent listener activity, compliance with Spotify’s platform policies, and off-platform presence to be verified.

Instagram is de-prioritizing accounts that repost other creators’ content. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri shared that aggregate accounts with majority unoriginal content will no longer be promoted to non-followers. 

The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.