Good morning. NYC creators, this one's for you. Next Wednesday, November 18, we're teaming up with our friends at TikTok for a Friendsgiving-inspired edition of Cocktails With Creators.

Join us for drinks, good food, and the opportunity to swap ideas with fellow creators (and maybe even find your next collaborator).

— Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

This week at Adobe MAX, the software company unveiled new features across Firefly, Premiere, and Creative Cloud, with a focus on improving AI agents in each program.

Here’s what’s new:

Alongside the announcements, Adobe released findings from a survey of 2,000 US creators on how they use AI in their creative workflows: 

Why this matters: AI tools are becoming more capable, but creators aren't always satisfied with the results. Many users either struggle to understand how the tools work or find that the output doesn't meet their creative standards.

To help close that gap, Adobe is releasing ten free creator masterclasses over the next few months—led by creators like Kinigra Deon and Airrack. The goal is to help creators understand Adobe’s suite of AI tools and produce work that better matches their vision.

How we see it: Adobe is doubling down on AI, both through new features and partnerships with companies like Microsoft. But with some brands and creators choosing to avoid AI altogether, the question is whether better tools will be enough to win them over.

Last Saturday, Druski became the first creator to host Saturday Night Live—just one week after Obsession’s Inde Navarrette hosted—garnering the show’s highest rated episode in two years. 

Zooming out: Viewership reports indicate cable TV is falling behind streaming, and streaming is falling behind YouTube. But while streaming’s competitive approach has been to poach creators from YouTube, legacy TV seems to view YouTube as another distribution channel.

Live from your feed: Today, SNL’s YouTube channel has 17.5M subscribers. While roughly 4–5M people watch live on NBC each week, the show pulls over 100M views per week on YouTube.

Earlier this year, NBC reported Saturday Night Live Season 51 reached 8.2B total video views across Peacock, YouTube, and social platforms. According to VidIQ, the channel received about 2.5B views over the same period from YouTube alone. 

What’s emerging is a symbiotic relationship. SNL is increasingly borrowing from the creator economy—finding cast members who got their start as creators (like Jane Wickline, Grace Reiter, and Veronika Slowikowska) and tapping into audiences who consume content through their feeds. 

At the same time, creators have the opportunity to replicate SNL’s 52-season playbook: find a winning format, build a cohort of talent, and package every segment to travel beyond the original platform.

Sponsored by Microsoft

From blown-out highlights to crushed shadows, a video’s flaws are easy to miss on a laptop that doesn’t show them. That’s the gap Microsoft’s newest device is built to fill.

Introducing the Surface Laptop Ultra.

With an accurate-color mode for editing, its 15-inch display is designed to help hold shadow and highlight detail.

The Surface Laptop Ultra also reaches up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness in Microsoft’s tests. See every frame of your timeline clearly – whether editing in a dim studio or sunlit cafe.

Catch the small stuff before you press publish. Buy the Surface Laptop Ultra at Microsoft.com or select retailers today.

Animation creator Benji Woerly spent nearly two decades touring as a drummer for artists like John Legend and the Jonas Brothers. Now, he’s betting his savings on an animated series that lived in his head for almost 30 years.

Meet The Soovins: By 2019, Woerly was burned out from touring and wanted to build something he owned. He turned to a story his dad told him as a kid about creatures with magical powers and built a world of characters around it.

Each episode of The Soovins runs 6-8 minutes and is shaped by input from child psychologists, teachers, and principals—teaching concepts like self-belief, kindness, and teamwork.

Woerly can’t draw or animate himself, so he partnered with creatives who can. His team of about ten now includes writers from shows like Blippi and Jimmy Neutron.

The new path to television: Getting a show on TV used to mean pitching networks and hoping for a yes. Now, that path can run through YouTube.

Children’s shows like CoComelon and Gracie’s Corner started on YouTube before landing deals with Netflix and Disney+. Woerly believes The Soovins could be next.

Audience first, revenue later: Over the past two years, the channel has grown by 140K subscribers and 5M+ views. Revenue is still limited, but Woerly told us the growing audience has caught the attention of potential partners.

Woerly recently signed a deal with a media and talent agency to help secure distribution deals, followed by licensing and brand partnerships later.

Big picture: YouTube has become a testing ground for kids’ content. Instead of relying solely on pitch decks, streamers can see which shows resonate with young audiences before licensing them.  

That puts the early financial risk on creators like Woerly, but could also allow them to retain more of the long-term upside.