Good morning. I assume we’re all here because we’re just big internet nerds, so my offering to you is: Firefox’s latest ad featuring memes from the last 20 years.

As a self-proclaimed internet anthropologist, I loved this. As someone who remembers when all of these happened, I feel kind of old.

— Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Newpress, the media company the couple built out of Johnny’s 8M-subscriber YouTube channel, has closed a $12M fundraising round led by Emerson Collective and Glick Family Investments. The money will fund recruiting journalists and creators, expanding into new subjects and formats, and developing original programming. The stated ambition: Scale the network to 12 to 16 channels. 

“Through those shows, we believe we can reach 100M people worldwide,” Iz told us.

Context: Newpress is made up of four different YouTube channels run by creator journalists, totalling 10M subscribers. Each creator under the Newpress umbrella earns a salary with revenue share and has access to Newpress’ network of editors, producers, and other operators. Beyond YouTube, Newpress has a subscription program that provides early access to their premium content—including Johnny’s upcoming travel show The Human Element.

But the bigger growth signal is the hire. Bill Owens, who ran 60 Minutes until resigning in April 2025 over a loss of editorial independence, will join as executive producer on March 1, 2027. He’ll work alongside Johnny and Iz to develop shows and scale reporting and production.

“As we plan to bring on more creators, more personalities, more editorial visions, keeping the vision of rigor and high standards [is] gonna be more difficult,” Johnny told us. “[Bill’s] gonna come with a lot of wisdom on how to do that, how to recruit the right people, and how to build a culture that pervades every additional show.”

Big picture: More and more, we’re seeing traditional media execs move to creator studios to build out their businesses. Scott Lewers left Lionsgate for Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs, Zach Miller went from Spotify to Jesser, and Cory Midgarden joined Smosh after years at Paramount. 

On Monday, Instagram announced Features: long-form videos up to 90-minutes that can be shared natively in-app and connected to short-form videos. 

After covering the announcement on Monday, our comments were flooded with one primary critique: 

“Yet again, Instagram fails to introduce revenue share to creators.” 

“Why would anyone do this on instagram for no pay?”

“Until they start paying creators, no thank you.”

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri responded on X: “We understand the economics matter a ton, and are exploring multiple options to help long-form creators get paid.”

Mosseri spoke briefly about monetization in his recent conversation on The Colin & Samir Show. 

“There's three ways you can get paid at a high level: You can get paid by the platform directly. You can get paid by a fan, and you can get paid by a brand. And…we still have a small performance-based program,” Mosseri said. “But it's still, like I talked about last time for video anyway, ROI negative.”

While long-form creators want monetization incentives to move from YouTube to Instagram Features, Instagram has not found a financial model that makes that work. 

“The reason for the pushback is because creators think the standard when it comes to monetization is YouTube,” Colin said. “But YouTube's actually not the standard, it's the exception to how long-form content is monetized. YouTube should be commended for that..but it’s rare."

Mosseri has been clear that monetization is not on the short-term horizon, so the question becomes whether there are other forms of currency Instagram can offer that incentivize creators for their content.

“Attention and discovery are forms of currency,” Samir said. “If you know what to do with that, how to cash in that currency, Instagram is for you.” 

We sat down with creators making long-form and short-form content across platforms to get their read on how the update will influence their content, and what new creators should keep in mind as they’re navigating the never-ending landscape of new tech.

Read what this means for existing short-form, long-form, and emerging creators on the site.

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On Tuesday, Tubi announced the Creatorverse Incubator—a program where they’re funding 10 original series developed by TikTok creators.

If you’ve never been exposed to their catchy but somewhat grating jingle, Tubi is a completely free TV streaming service, powered entirely by commercials that give you just enough time to run to the bathroom in the middle of your favorite show, like the good ole’ days. 

In that way, Tubi is not unlike old school cable TV. It provides a menu of content like traditional streaming, but the completely free aspect is not unlike YouTube…

Given Tubi’s storied past funding creator projects and syndicating YouTube VODs, this partnership doesn’t necessarily come as a shock.

Tubi’s VP of Creator Partnerships Kudzi Chikumbu told Variety his three criteria used to choose which TikTok creators to invest in:

“The creators we’re working with have built a following, a point of view and a body of work that people come back for,” Chikumbu said.

For creators, the path from feed to television has clear application criteria:

A following. When a streaming service invests in a creator, one of the creator’s primary assets is their audience. While audience size is a contributing factor, demographics and engagement often matter far more.

A point of view. Traditional TV pays writers to develop new ideas. Now, they pay creators. Tubi’s TikTok creators will be producing original series exclusive to Tubi, giving viewers a reason to watch on TV instead of scrolling their phones.

A body of work. Tubi’s creators span a variety of niches across genres like comedy, horror, and animation. What matters more than one specific genre is a body of work that demonstrates creator consistency and reliability in their preferred genre.

Today, Tubi receives just 2% of streaming views, surpassing Peacock and Warner Bros., but significantly behind Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video who receive a combined 16.7% of all watch time. 

This move borrows a page out of big streaming’s playbook: engaging creators to increase views and draw a new demographic to the app. 

Whether 10 TikTok-born series can move that 2% is the experiment to watch.