|
TOGETHER WITH |
|
|
It's Thursday and Instagram is ramping up its rivalry with TikTok. The platform's latest (alleged) plan to poach short-form viewers: launching a standalone Reels app. |
|
Today's News |
👀 Unwell Network drops Alix Earle ⏪ Max changes course 🎙️ A podcaster builds a $250M true crime network 🎮 Anthropic's bot plays Pokemon on Twitch 🤖 One creator replaces himself with AI
|
|
|
|
HOT MESS |
|
Alix splits from Alex: Earle dropped from Cooper's Unwell Network |
The breakup: It's been less than two years since Alex Cooper and Alix Earle teamed up for a content development partnership—but according to Variety, Cooper's Unwell Network is already dropping Earle's Hot Mess podcast from its lineup. |
The network has reportedly renounced all rights to Hot Mess, while SiriusXM—which recently secured advertising and distribution rights for Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast—will stop selling ads against Earle's show. So, where will Hot Mess go next? |
Podcaster Jack Mac believes the show could find a home at Barstool Sports—aka Mac's current employer and Cooper's former one. Mac revealed on Instagram that Barstool leader Dave Portnoy had spoken with Earle not long before posting a clip in which he raised a drink in the air (an apparent reference to a post Cooper made when Unwell signed Grace O'Malley after her departure from Barstool). |
The context: Cooper and Earle initially joined forces when Unwell Network launched in August 2023. Soon after, they dethroned long-time chart-topper Joe Rogan by reaching the top two spots on the Spotify podcast rankings. Despite that early success, however, there were clear signs of friction: Unwell began decreasing its promotion efforts for Hot Mess a few months back, while Earle's father alluded to "a business situation" he "wasn't happy about" during an episode of his daughter's podcast. The drama ramped up during Super Bowl weekend, when Earle reportedly skipped an official Unwell party in New Orleans. |
Now, the podcaster's departure raises questions about Unwell's ability to avoid the pitfalls of other creator-forward media companies. Those firms tend to hemorrhage talent when on-screen stars become more recognizable than the brands they represent. At first, Cooper's network seemed to be different. She signed established creators looking to break into the new-for-them medium of podcasting. Earle's departure, however, suggests that Unwell's strategy isn't quite foolproof. |
|
🔆 SPONSORED 🔆 |
|
The best AI video search tool just dropped—and it will change the way you scale and monetize your content for good |
Something big is rocking the world of online video. |
OpusClip just launched OpusSearch, a new AI video search tool that makes your entire video catalog searchable in seconds. It gives you real-time personalized trend analysis, and turns your catalog into a continuous stream of trendy, monetizable videos. |
Top creators and businesses have already multiplied their revenue with OpusSearch. |
Take it from TFTC: |
A finance podcasting powerhouse with 58K subscribers, TFTC hit a growth ceiling on YouTube when their inventory became saturated with existing advertisers.
It was clear they needed to expand—but their team didn't have the bandwidth to create content for a totally new platform.
So, TFTC used OpusSearch to rapidly scan their entire YouTube content archive for clips that aligned with trending topics on X and automatically generate optimized videos for that platform.
|
The result: $30,000 in new sponsorship deals in 1 month. |
 | Discover TFTC's case study here |
|
OpusSearch is designed for professional creators and businesses that want to dominate their category. If you're one of them, this is for you. |
Explore OpusSearch → |
|
HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
|
|
|
CRIME JUNKIES |
|
The most popular podcaster not named Joe Rogan is building a $250M true crime network |
The funding: Ashley Flowers' future is looking rosy thanks to a $40 million injection of funding from The Chernin Group (aka TCG). That investment values the Crime Junkies producer's company, Audiochuck, at $250 million. |
Thanks to TCG (a longtime investor in creator-led media companies), Flowers will have an opportunity to add new programs to a roster that already includes her own viral show, Crime Junkies. According to Bloomberg, the podcast version of Flower's true crime hit (which she hosts alongside childhood friend Brit Pawat), hauls in $45 million of annual profit and ranks second on the list of most popular U.S. podcasts with 6 million listeners. (Joe Rogan's namesake Experience is first.) More recent additions to Audiochuck's library include Delia D'Ambra's CounterClock and the cold case series The Deck. |
In addition to beefing up her Audiochuck's roster, Flowers will work with TCG to hire a CEO who can oversee the company's operations. Its office space is set to triple to 30,000 square feet, with its workforce doubling to nearly 130 people. Potential Hollywood projects and an expansion to YouTube are also on the docket. |
The context: The rift between Alex Cooper and Alix Earle shows that growing a podcast company is no simple endeavor. Flowers, however, has an advantage thanks to her visibility in the booming true crime niche. Add in TCG's financial contribution—which represents one of the biggest investments in a podcasting startup—and Audiochuck seems to be in an ideal position to expand. |
|
GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL |
|
Anthropic is training its AI by having it play Pokémon on Twitch |
The channel: Claude AI has joined in on the decade-old phenomenon known as Twitch Plays Pokémon. On a channel called Claude Plays Pokémon, the latest version of Anthropic's large language model is exploring the original Game Boy version of Pokémon Red. |
Twitch Plays Pokémon first began in 2014 with a stream that invited scores of users to choose controller inputs via chat. The format quickly became a viral phenomenon, reaching millions of viewers and attracting a long list of quirky players (including someone's pet fish and the mathematical constant pi). Claude 3.7 Sonnet is the latest oddball to take up the mantle. |
Previous iterations of the LLM have stalled before reaching the end of the game, but the most recent version of Claude hasn't gotten stuck yet—and it's explaining the reasoning behind its inputs as it goes along. |
The context: Viewers on platforms like Twitch and YouTube have developed a big appetite for those kinds of deep reinforcement learning videos, which show how AIs become smarter. A one-year-old YouTube clip in that genre, for instance, has collected more than 10 million views. |
For Anthropic, Claude Plays Pokémon isn't just a vehicle for audience engagement or brand awareness—it's also a more ethical form of research for an entity that has been accused of slipshod AI training methods. Anthropic was one of the companies that fed its LLMs on unauthorized content from The Pile, and it recently settled a lawsuit from music publishers who accused it of scraping lyrics without permission. |
|
WATCH THIS 🎙️ |
|
Would you notice if your favorite creator was replaced with an AI? |
The experiment: YouTuber Sambucha set out to answer that question by posting a series of AI-driven videos and streams over the course of a full month. At first, the creator only used AI tools to come up with the concepts for his content—but by the end of the month, he'd replaced both his likeness and voice with AI. |
In a reveal video posted earlier this week, Sambucha described that process as a "litmus test" designed to measure how many AI-driven elements he could incorporate into his content before viewers caught on. The answer: a lot. In fact, one fan lamented in the comments of Sambucha's reveal video that they were only just "realising all these shorts are ones I watched and I didn't notice." |
Check out the creator's full explanation here to see how he pulled it off. |
|
Want to introduce your brand to Tubefilter's audience? Sponsor the newsletter. |
|
Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here. |
Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.