The Rebooting Show

By Brian MorrisseyNews Business News

The Rebooting Show episodes

June 09Dynamo's Nicholas Carlson on finding content-market fit
A year after its launch, Dynamo’s Nich Carlson joined me to discuss what he’s learned in starting a YouTube-first video programmer. Dynamo is home to “Business Explains the World,” a documentary-style show on interesting business and economics topics. We’d spoken soon after Dynamo’s launch, so I had Nich back to reflect on Year 1.

Nich was candid about the difficulties inherent to running a fledgling business. The thread I see in the new crop of media startups like Dynamo is, even if they raise small amounts like Dynamo, they focus primarily on getting content-market fit. There's leverage in having makers, not monetizers or strategists, running the business.
Instagram is critical. When Dynamo launched, Nich thought LinkedIn would be a natural complement to YouTube. Only he’s not found that. Instead, Instagram is a critical channel, particularly in reaching a female-skewed audience. Plus: Instagram’s ad ecosystem is strong.
Getting your hands dirty. Nich ran a large newsroom at Business Insider. That’s a lot of management and meetings. With Dynamo, Nich’s original conception of being more of an executive producer guiding the process became being very involved in making the product.
Creators are the comp. Dynamo is looking to build a media company that’s creator-native. He looks at what YouTubers like Jonny Harris and Cleo Abram are doing rather than established media companies.
Accept uncertainty. Running a company is a nonstop stream of decisions, small and big. On the small, Nich focuses on speed over certainty, and even on large decisions, he’s accepted he’ll rarely be more than 60% sure. Waiting for certainty usually means waiting forever.
Lean by default. Rather than 700 people like BI at its peak, Dynamo is 1/100th the size. That means everyone needs to be a doer and the focus is on improving the work rather than coordination.
Chapters:
00:00 Beehiiv Spotlight
01:29 Welcome
02:08 Lessons From the Scale Era
08:02 Where Media Energy Is Now
09:34 Are Journalistic Creators Legit
13:17 Platform Bets
14:48 Why Instagram Is Winning
17:21 Monetization and Outsourced Sales
20:50 What Works on YouTube
23:11 Short Form and Clipping Strategy
25:54 Well-made Objects
28:10 Unit Economics and Profitability Goals
33:07 Doubling Down on Series
34:15 Selling Host Read Ads
37:04 Creative Edge in Ads
38:14 Founder Lessons and Decisions
41:16 Year Two Big Bets
45:06 Back in the Kitchen
48:23 Scaling Beyond the Founder
52:29 Cinematic Universe Strategy
55:18 Staying Lean as You Grow
59:13 Creators With Momentum
1 hr 4 min
June 02The new social with Rachel Karten
TikTok broke social media's original contract — grow followers, followers see content — and replaced it with algorithmic sorting that rewards entertaining strangers over satisfying your loyal audience. Link in Bio's Rachel Karten joins The Rebooting Show to discuss what comes next for brands, social media managers, and the practitioners building media businesses around specific professional communities.

Chapters:
00:00 Beehiiv Spot
01:40 Conversation with Rachel
02:36 Starting in Social Media
04:42 Post Social Media Era
07:52 Middle Lane Disappears
08:42 Brands As Programmers
10:10 Duolingo Hook Strategy
13:40 Entertainment Vs Community
16:58 Social Role Evolves
20:01 Tech Marketing Reality Check
23:44 Clipping And Flooding
26:08 Why Link In Bio
32:23 Monetization And Community
33:59 Consulting Flywheel
36:31 Events And Scaling Up
43 min
May 26The Dow Jones recipe for growth
In the wreckage of the scale era, The Wall Street Journal is one of the winners. It has 4.5 million paid subscriptions and the broader Dow Jones portfolio has 6.3 million with a foothold in B2B data assets like OPIS and Risk & Compliance. The Journal has more pep under the editorial leadership of Emma Tucker.

Scott Havens, a veteran of leadership positions at Bloomberg Media, The Atlantic, Time, joined at the start of the year as the chief growth officer of Dow Jones and global head of consumer. Scott joined me on The Rebooting Show to discuss where those growth opportunities lie.

"Since I left business school and got into digital in the late 90s, it was always about building something new,” Scott tole me. “ The pathway for media growth usually is launching new things. You can always optimize your current stuff, but I've seen success from putting new things into the market, exploring new areas for audiences and for sponsors."

Chapters:
00:00 Beehiiv Spot
01:21 Intro
04:02 Conversation with Scott
04:22 Growth Remit
06:52 Breaking Down Dow Jones
10:06 Niche Expansion Strategy
12:14 Sports as Asset Class
16:19 Picking New Verticals
20:12 Creators and Talent Labs
25:32 New Creator Business Models
27:09 Video Strategy Across Platforms
32:38 International Growth Strategy
38:56 Events As Growth Engine
46:21 Next Phase Subscription Growth
54 min
May 19The revenge of brand
Markets in the midst of technological change tend to have two camps. One is the legacy incumbents that have strengths in their brands and the other in upstarts that are nimbler. In digital media, it turned out brand won.

At Possible, The Rebooting held TRB Conversations, a series of podcast discussions with media leaders on what they’re betting on. The connective tissue that emerged is that publishers are leaning more heavily on the value of their brands as they reorient their businesses to focus less on scale and more on depth.

This episode features conversations with Shachar Oren, CMO/CRO of EX.CO; Brendan Spain, vp of advertising for the Americas, The Financial Times; Rachael Savage, svp of ad revenue operations, Hearst Magazines; and Avi Zimack, chief growth officer, Bustle Digital Group.

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome
00:57 EX.CO
01:20 CTV Meets Digital Lessons
02:45 Closing the CTV Budget Gap
06:49 All Screens Advertising Future
09:10 Measurement and Agentic Shift
11:32 FT Brand Safety Reality
14:29 FT Video and Paywall Growth
16:39 Global Brand Advantage
22:20 Hearst Brands Need Playbooks
25:34 Scale vs Niche Monetization
28:16 Hearst AI and Data Backbone
33:06 BDG Pivot to Activations
37:50 Influencers and Brand Seals
43:57 Events Plus Data Flywheel
48 min
May 12Inside Politico’s franchise playbook for Playbook
At nearly two decades old, Politico's Playbook was an innovator in the now-familiar daily agenda-setting newsletter. Playbook is now more than a DC staple. It has editions in five countries with two more on the way. And it is looking to adopt a franchise model with multimedia and events extensions. Politico executive editor for Europe Kate Day joined the show to discuss the formula that makes Playbook work: the mix of exclusive reporting, service journalism, and a tone that feels like a letter from your smartest friend in politics. She talks about what stays consistent across cultures, what has to change, and why the Brussels political bubble turns out to be just as full of compelling characters as Capitol Hill.

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome
00:47 TRB in Cannes
01:27 Beehiiv Spot
03:02 Conversation with Kate
06:07 Playbook Goes Global
10:17 Localizing the Formula
14:28 Axel Springer Integration
17:58 Brand and Hosts
25:21 Franchise Beyond Newsletter
28:01 Building The Pub
30:24 Breakfasts Vs Drinks
32:47 Designing Playbook Summits
35:06 Video And Streaming Push
37:52 Newsletter Saturation Limits
41:19 Choosing New Markets
45:29 AI In The Newsroom
57 min
May 05TV advertising has decentralized
The decentralization of digital media has arrived for TV. The TV advertising system is being remade in the image of the data-focused, automated ad systems that came to dominate the internet. TV was always the holdout, thanks to scarcity.

That’s changed. Now, TV advertising has fragmented as part of a larger video advertising ecosystem, stretching from connected TV to streaming to retail media to out of home placements.

Last week, we held a series of discussions on this emerging ecosystem as part of TRB Conversations, powered by EX.CO. In this special episode, I speak to Lauren Benedict, vp of ad sales at Roku; Katie English, global head of ad sales at Spotify; and Patrick Courtney, chief business officer at Fuse Media.

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome
01:50 Roku Hits and Habits
04:48 Modern TV Front Door
07:12 Measurement and Outcomes
10:47 CTV for Every Advertiser
12:28 Spotify AI Ad Tools
14:46 GenAI Creative Controls
16:43 Video Inventory and Scale
18:22 Spotify Ad Exchange Growth
19:02 Audio Measurement and Habits
21:20 Fuse TV Meets Programmatic
24:07 Innovators Dilemma at Fuse
26:26 FAST Gold Rush Reality Check
28:55 Beyond YouTube TV Opportunity
31 min
April 28Inside The Guardian's U.S. expansion
Much of the U.S. news landscape is doom and gloom, but The Guardian is a quiet success story. Powered by reader contributions, The Guardian now has a 150-person newsroom and draws more web traffic than The Washington Post. Guardian U.S. managing director Steve Sachs explains why its global, independent orientation is finding product-market fit in America.

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome
00:28 Beehiiv Sponsor
02:07 TRB Events and Salons Update
03:41 Intro
05:42 Guardian US Origins
07:26 Guardian Trust and Turnaround
11:10 Value Proposition Research
16:38 Audience Politics Breakdown
21:07 Growth Metrics and Comscore Wins
23:19 Traffic Sources and AI Search
25:37 Newsletters Podcasts and Verticals
27:44 Where Guardian Competes Next
30:51 Lead In to Revenue Model
32:08 Guardian US Growth Numbers
38:57 Market Signals Vs Subsidies
43:55 No Paywall Conversion Metrics
49:37 Breaking News As Funnel
56:35 Brand Identity Beyond British
01:00:06 Ads Mix And New Products
01:03:24 Video Podcast Mission Brand Ads
1 hr 5 min
April 21Journalism vs capitalism
In this live recording from the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, I debated Peter Erdelyi, director of the Center for Sustainable Media, about the role of state subsidies in building sustainable media businesses.

Chapters:
00:00 Beehiiv Sponsor Story
01:29 Intro
07:36 TRB at The International Journalism Festival
09:22 Hungary Media Capture
12:00 Decentralized Info Economy
15:36 Subsidies and Bad Incentives
20:44 Billionaires and Influence
22:35 OpenAI Buys TBPN
26:51 Institutions vs Individuals
29:28 New Subsidy Models
38 min
April 14Morning Brew’s direct thesis
Morning Brew CEO Robert Dippell discusses why there are two types of publishers: those with a passive connection to their audience and those with a strong connection.

Sponsored by Beehiiv, the modern email system used by leading publishers like Time, TechCrunch and Newsweek.

Chapters:
00:00 Beehiiv Sponsor Spotlight
01:18 Welcome
02:01 Morning Brew Today
03:59 Founder Brew Launch
05:27 Consumer Growth
07:54 Platform Company Explained
11:24 Bisnow Synergies and Events
14:34 Hands Off Integration Plan
17:57 Future Acquisition Targets
20:41 Creator Economics and Leverage
27:38 B2B Events Playbook
31:57 AI Policy And Tools
36:07 Balancing B2B And Consumer
39:37 Revenue Profitability
42 min
April 07Axios COO Allison Murphy on bringing the franchise model to local
Allison Murphy, COO of Axios, joined me to discuss the evolution of Axios Local five years in. Axios plans to be in 43 cities by the end of the year. It is adapting its franchise model to build around individual reporters. In this model, the journalist becomes “talent” for multi-facated businesses, with Axios providing the support structure, shared services and a small team. We touch on how using AI tools can enable this kind of small-team approach.

Sponsored by beehiiv, the modern email platform used by major brands like Time, Newsweek and TechCrunch. See how beehiiv powers leading media brands

Chapters:
00:00 Beehiiv Sponsor Spotlight
01:18 Meet Axios COO Allison
01:44 Whats Working Now
03:00 Revenue Events Memberships
04:02 Axios Local Five Year Check
04:24 Scaling Cities Lean Teams
06:37 AI Tools For Reporters
09:28 Profitability Through Scale
11:58 Local Ads National Buys
15:03 Utility First Local News
17:58 Original Reporting Vs Curation
20:03 Finding The Right Content Mix
23:23 Scaling Local Newsrooms
24:17 Next Wave Smaller Markets
25:16 Membership Contribution Engine
26:13 Perks Pricing And Growth
28:20 Building Star Reporter Franchises
32:51 Are Newsletters Still Core
35:55 Video YouTube And New Bets
38:01 AI Audio Automation Experiments
39:35 Reshaping Teams With AI
41:53 More Reporters Less Overhead
44:25 Transparent Future Of Work
45:01 Wrap Up And Thanks
46 min

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The Rebooting Show gets into the weeds with those building and operating media businesses, giving an open view into how the smartest people in the media business are building sustainable media…