Digital Social Hour - The Rise & Fall of Cable TV – What’s Next for Media? | Larry Namer DSH #1224

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

🔥 Larry Namer on Building E! Entertainment, Hollywood’s Future & The AI Revolution 🚀 In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Larry Namer, the co-founder of E! Entertainment Television, to discuss his journey in media, the future of Hollywood, and how AI is revolutionizing content creation. We dive into: ✅ How E! Entertainment was built with just $2.5M ✅ Why AI is changing Hollywood faster than ever ✅ The decline of traditional TV & the rise of digital platforms ✅ How social media & streaming are reshaping entertainment ✅ The truth about content creation & why storytelling still wins This episode is packed with insider knowledge, industry secrets, and expert predictions for the future of media! 📲 Follow Larry Namer & Learn More: 🔗 Website: Lhttps://www.ljnmedia.com/ 🔗 Facebook: Larry Namer 🔗 Amazon Book: Off Script: A Business & Life Memoir ⏱ CHAPTERS 📌 00:00 – How AI is Changing Hollywood for Writers & Creators 📌 03:15 – The Creation of E! Entertainment & Early Challenges 📌 07:30 – How Streaming Took Over TV & The Death of Cable 📌 12:10 – Social Media’s Influence on Entertainment & Film 📌 15:45 – The Rise of International Markets & Media Expansion 📌 20:20 – How AI is Disrupting Screenwriting & Film Production 📌 24:10 – The Future of Holograms & Virtual Entertainment 📌 28:40 – Why Hollywood is Losing Viewers to Digital Platforms 📌 32:15 – The Power of Short-Form Content & Why It’s Exploding 📌 35:00 – Larry’s Advice for Entrepreneurs in Media & Entertainment 🔥 Apply to Be on the Podcast & Business Inquiries: 🎙 APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application 📩 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]

Writers over 50 in Hollywood don't get work. They're heavily discriminated against really, but I took 10 writers And trained them in how you prompt So when the strikes finally got settled Everybody was like now. Okay, there are rules for how you you know employ AI related So all of a sudden the writers over 50 were the only ones who really knew how to use All the AI tools and stuff and they found themselves working more than ever. Nice.

Yeah, because AI can probably come up with some crazy scripts. Yeah. At the end of the day, it's still storytelling. You have to be a storyteller. I mean, I don't care what platform you're producing for, you're telling a story. And these guys were fabulous. It's just they were, you know, they, Oscars and Emmys and Golden Globes and stuff. But yet once he hit 30, 50 years old in Hollywood, they kind of put you out the pasture.

But now they're bringing him back because they know how to use the tools that are now available. Yeah. All right, guys, got a legend here today. We got Larry and just dropped a new book, right? Yeah, I finally after people bugging me to write it for a long time. I finally did it and it Literally just came out on Amazon last week. I love it. And what was the core messaging of the book? Well, it's kind of unusual because people have been asking me to do the book and I've always refused because I said I'm not ready To write a last chapter yet, but I've been a foodie

Well literally all my life, so if I didn't do television and stuff I would probably be a cook in a restaurant so it's um It's a combination of a bio and a and a cookbook those the recipes that inspired me in different phases of my life and then Anecdotes of things that happened in my life then. But it's a good book for entrepreneurs. I love it. It's kind of, you know, I was in school. I was the boy least likely. So, Oh yeah.

You got voted up. Oh God. Yeah. I got voted that too. Most likely to fail. No, I was, I was definitely that. And, uh, were you really shy introverted? Um, yeah, I played sports.

Um, but yeah, I mean, pretty much very shy, introverted and stuff. Uh, the family were immigrants and you know, they, they kind of kept a close rain on the kids and stuff. So just in grown up, which is ironic cause you ended up making a living in the entertainment industry. Yeah. Um, and people ask, they say, was that something designed? And no, it wasn't.

It was just I couldn't get a job in New York, so I ended up getting a temporary job in a cable company when nobody really knew what cable was. And it was kind of odd because I was working under the streets of New York putting the wires together. And I just kind of grew because I was working under the streets of New York, putting the wires together. And I just kind of grew up in the cable business. And then I came out to LA to build the first 61-channel cable system ever built.

And the company that I worked for moved back to Toronto. And you know, you're a Brooklyn kid, you're here, you're in LA, everyone's going to parties and premieres and all of this stuff. So me and my friend Alan came up with an idea for a TV network called V, you know, and the rest is history. Yeah, reminds me of just timing, right? Cause like you didn't really have direction,

but you were just right place, right time. Yeah, well, we were right place and right time. And it was kind of interesting cause when Alan and I started the company, the going rate to start a TV network was somewhere around $100 million. Holy crap. Yeah, TV networks are expensive.

And after three and a half years and nobody giving us any money, we realized that we might have to settle for less. So we actually found someone who was willing to put in two and a half million dollars and people look at he now and they it's a monster. It's in under 42 countries. And but he started with 11 employees and 31 interns. Humble beginnings. You've seen the decline in television numbers, right? Yeah. But not not in viewing visual entertainment. I mean, I'm not one that says that you gotta watch television, but to me it's all the same. It's storytelling on a screen. So if you wanna watch my stuff on a TV set, great.

If you wanna watch it on your iPhone, that's cool too. Right. Yeah, that's a good point, because people aren't not watching stuff. They're just transitioning to other platforms I mean for me, it's always been simple and I people used to hate when I say that But you kind of can predict the fall of linear television. I mean, it's real simple Do you want to watch what NBC wants you to watch when they want you to watch it? Or do you want to watch what you want to watch on the device?

You want to watch it? I it? We all know the answer. Other than sports and news, nothing has to be time anchored. Yeah, did streaming disrupt your industry a lot when Netflix started gaining some traction? It disrupted the broadcast folks, but for me as a producer, no. The demand for storytellers was great. And then I had international experience, a lot of it. I mean, like I say, he's in 142 countries. We really focused on building out

the international markets. And so we found ourselves in incredible demand. Yeah, the international markets. I just had Chef Rush on. He's like a big chef. I don't know if you heard of him. I've heard of his name. Yeah, but he crushes in Korea. Like he's got the top shows there. So it's just fascinating that a lot of people focus on us markets, but you can really dominate in other countries. Yeah.

And it's, yeah, it's one of the reasons why he grew as big as it didn't say as quickly as he did was when I first got involved in the business and if I would do a business plan and you get the financials, I'd weight them 95% US and 5% other. I mean, because that's kind of where it was then. 95% of all the revenue from media was coming out of the US. Now if I do a business plan, it's 30% US. And then there's China and then there's Russia

and then there's Brazil and literally all the's Russia, and then there's Brazil, and literally all the countries have names now, because what's really happened is technology has changed the business so much. It used to be, you used to have to go to Hollywood to make visual entertainment, because you needed big sound stages, and equipment was really expensive. Now I could go to Nigeria tomorrow with my iPhone and make a movie.

So you really began to find visual entertainment hasn't declined, but for the ability for it to be local to the communities that it appears to is really bigger than ever, actually. No, it is. I mean, Beast Games just broke record numbers. Highest cash prize giveaway and highest viewership, I believe. Yeah. And technology changes. I mean, we've been great proponents of AI from the very beginning of stuff.

I use literally AI all the time. Really? Oh yeah. Since even before GBT. No way. And stuff. Of course, it saves you so much time. We all are here on this planet with a limited amount of time

So the most valuable asset thing we have is time and I don't like to waste mine if somebody would ask me to do a Kind of a summary of a new TV series. You just take me five days to do the research write it up, whatever now I mean I use GBT-4 a lot. Takes me 30 seconds. Damn. I edit it for an hour. You gotta clean it up, it's never perfect.

So now in one hour, I'm getting done what I used to get done in five days. That's incredible. I mean, how can you not love it? Yeah, no, when you break it down like that, that's incredible. I think, yeah, it gets a lot of hate, especially in the entertainment industry, because people are fearful that it will take jobs away

yeah well it takes jobs away at one end and it creates jobs on another there's a lot I did a lot of work with them on the strikes were on yeah the writers guild and sag so I work with writers, writers over 50 in Hollywood don't get work. They're heavily discriminated against. Really? But I took 10 writers and trained them in how you prompt. So when the strikes finally got settled, everybody was like, now, okay, there are rules for how you employ AI related.

So all of a sudden, the writers over 50're the only ones who really knew how to use all the AI tools and stuff and they found themselves working more than ever Nice. Yeah, cuz AI can probably come up with some crazy scripts Yeah at the end of the day, it's still story that you have to be a storyteller I mean, I don't care what platform you're producing for you're telling a story and these guys who are fabulous It's just they were you know, they Oscars and Emmys and Golden Globes and stuff. But yet once he hit 30, 50 years old in Hollywood, they kind of put you out there pasture. But now they're bringing him back because they know how to use the tools that are now available.

Yeah. What are the next trends you're seeing coming up out of Hollywood? Do you think the live streaming thing is going to last? Yeah, I think live streaming is good. I think, you know, the international markets still have a lot of room to grow. I mean, everything, you know, Netflix is now doing local stuff all over the world and and showing that the economics work. So you're now seeing the other guys follow.

I'm a big believer in AI being able to bring the prices down so that more talented people can get involved, because the entry points are much cheaper to get in. I'm also a big fan of holograms. Holograms. Yeah. Using holograms, maybe not so much for entertainment, although there's some great applications in entertainment

But I think it's a huge opportunity for education to be able to take the best teacher of whatever subject in the world and Beam them all over the world and combine it with AI so they can speak any language and kind of levels the field of playing Education all over. Yeah, that's cool. I didn't even think about it that way. I've heard about potentially AI actors in the future. Have you seen that? Yeah, yeah. People talk about AI being new and stuff.

We've been using this kind of stuff for years. Maybe not calling it generative AI, but backgrounds and stuff. I mean, we've been using digital technology for a long time. So for me it's not really a big change. The problem that everybody goes through, they think that you're gonna take people's likeness and put them in other movies and stuff, and that's not gonna happen because there's a body of law

that prevents it from happening. Right. And, you know, just like in anything, if there are consequences for doing bad things, people tend not to do it, and then there's a way to fix it if somebody does do it. So you can't take a shooter movie with Tom Cruise and then put him in a porn movie next. I mean, there's laws and contracts and stuff. There's a body of work there that protects that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Have you seen the human attention span is dropping shorter than a goldfish now? Yeah. Um, yeah. Uh, but if you're, if you're in the storytelling business and you pay attention to where the world is going and get your ego out of the way, I mean, I don't think of myself as the filmmaker or a TV guy. I'm a storyteller and if you want stories in 15 second chunks I'll do those. I mean I'm doing a lot of stuff. I do a lot of stuff out of the country. I do a

lot of stuff in China and we've been doing movies that we break up into you know 90 minute movie we break into 45 different two-minute segments. Oh, wow. And it's interesting because we give you the first 10 segments for free, but then you're hooked on the movie, so then you pay like the equivalent of a dollar for that next 35 segments and stuff.

So the economics are really good, but how you tell those stories is interesting. We employ people who are very good at writing soap operas because soap operas are actually written in two-minute story arcs. So it lends itself to that. You're gonna see it huge here. You've got new companies here called Real Shorts

and stuff like that. They're already doing it. It'll catch on. Most of my views are from shorts. Yeah, one-minute videos. I get way more there than my full episodes. Yeah, it's just a new era, right? You know, however people want to consume it, you know, I don't care Yeah, make a difference to me. What made you want to focus on China? That's an interesting approach. Um, I Well, I still it II I started doing a lot of stuff in Russia

and Well, I started doing a lot of stuff in Russia. And for me, I was cracking up going in Russia doing TV, which is weird. But I ended up starting a concert series to raise money for the Children's Hospital in the orphanage in St. Petersburg. And I would work with the vice mayor of St. Petersburg on putting these concerts together. And the Vice Mayor is a guy named Vladimir Putin.

And so Putin kind of went up the ladder and ended up in the Kremlin. He asked me to work with his Minister of Communications to rewrite regulatory policy for media, saying Western marketers are going to come in here and they're going to want stuff that looks a little bit familiar. So I work with the Russians on that. And some years later, the Chinese realized that they needed to do media reform too. They liked the Russian model. They went to the Russians. The Russians sent them to me.

So I started helping them with media reform. Then they asked me to work with young TV executives, have a quotes around this, teaching them the process of creativity for profit. Because when you worked in the 100% communist system, if you knew the right guy in the party, you just did whatever you want. So I started doing stuff there and we have a pretty robust company there in China now. We do TV, film, internet content. We do a lot of immersive stuff in China, which is great because we get to try stuff in China that we then could apply to US markets. Like we own in China, we've been doing immersive van Gogh and Klimt and hundred years of Disney animation. That's cool

Yeah, I think that could be the future immersive content like virtual reality. Yeah, it's a it's all It started in this country. It really started took off with van Gogh and stuff which was So at you know, it's only four years ago, but it's so outdated. The technology is shot by it. Now when you combine it with live experiences, with AI, it's gotten real sophisticated. We just actually bought the chain that we're doing, Shrek the musical name.

And so we do the Harlem Globe, we do quite a lot there. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know Shrek was big out in China. Yeah, well, a lot of American media, it's very weird, it's a very strange market. People don't realize there are actually more people in China who speak English than speak English in the US. Wow.

Because when they started, when they won the Olympics for oh wait They went on this real tear for like 10 years of teaching making it mandatory in school So now you have 400 million English speakers in China, which is more than the population in the US. That's impressive Yeah, it's interesting to see like what trends stick and what don. I remember when 3D came out, people were excited, that kind of flop. Same with 4D, right? Yeah. Well, people get enamored with technology, and they overdo it.

There's a place for that sometimes. But for the most part, it really falls back to the story. Is the story going to hold people's interest over time? You can dabble with special effects to a degree, but it wears off. You still need good content at the end of the day. That's why Squid Game crushes it, man. I love Squid Game.

The storytelling is, like, I don't even know what's gonna happen next season. No, Squid Game is one of my favorites and stuff. I mean, you just look at it. I mean, some of the stuff that's popped up there, yeah, I loved Wednesday. That's a good one too. Yeah. There's just so much good stuff out there.

Who's your favorite storyteller, director of all time? Probably Spielberg. Nice. Yeah. It's hard to beat him, right? Yeah, it's hard to beat Spielberg. I just saw, who was on Rogan recently? Tarantino?

Yeah. Yeah, that was a great episode. Yeah, Tarantino's stuff is good, but he's missed a few that I didn't really love, but yeah, mainly Tarantino is great. I think when you're doing so many, it's hard to deliver on all of them, right? Yeah.

Because you're distracted. I mean, how many films has he done at this point? Probably like 40, 50? No, he's done actually a lot less. Oh, really? films has he done at this point probably like 40 50 No, he's done. No actually a lot less. Oh, really seems like he's done more but no It's a lot less and I think he said that he's done Wow cuz I just saw kill Bill for the first time. Oh, yeah, that was his that was his third one, right? So I just assumed by now he'd be at 40 or something. No, no, no He's down in the low teens. I think so. Oh, wow. So he's very selective.

Yeah. I actually like that, though. Yeah. Yeah, because then you take pride in your work. Yeah. He's really, I like him. But I think just overall, if I look at things like Shin was list and stuff, and I'm just like,

you go back to Jaws and stuff. Spielberg was amazing. Yeah. What's your favorite era of movies? Do you like the recent stuff, or do you like the older stuff? I think I like the recent stuff. OK. And, you know, there's, my favorite film actually

was something that in the early 80s, and Blade, the original Blade Runner. I haven't seen the original one, I think. I saw the new one. Yeah, the new one was OK, but the original Blade Runner. I haven't seen the original one, I think. I saw the new one. Yeah, the new one was okay, but the original was just. Okay, I gotta watch that then. And there's just a lot of good stuff happening. I mean, I find stuff on TikTok that I think

gives me as much enjoyment as watching a good movie. Yeah, I'm addicted to this one show now. It's called The Traders. Oh no, I'm not. You haven't heard of that? No. Oh man. Did you watch Survivor at all?

So it's like Boston Robb and a few other Survivor movies. Oh really? Yeah, it's reality. Yeah. You got started in reality TV, right? Yeah. That was how you got out there at first? Yeah, we were the ones who started

E Hollywood True Story, Wild on E, Howard Stern. Probably the one that really started the whole thing was Talk Soup. Wow. You know, which you go back to those shows and they really are examples of like necessity is the mother of invention. We had no money.

So we had to be really creative and inventive. I mean, Talk Soup was, you was, I had Greg Kinnear and it said, Greg, stand in front of the TV screen, we're gonna show you clips, make fun of them. And yeah, people were looking at it going, Larry, you wanna do a TV show that makes fun of TV shows? I'm like, yeah, exactly. My thing has always been Hollywood is funny stuff.

Don't try and make believe it's rocket science. Just have a good time. I mean, look at the top shows like Tosh point. Oh ridiculousness They're just reacting to videos even all the comment late night talk shows are just reacting to clips Yeah, they read that's reactive clear. I got a late night talk show that I'm gonna do it comes out in June I just have this thing that post covid. Yeah I think the world wants some positive stories to go to bed with.

You watch the talk shows, number one, there's all guys. All guys. Except for Taylor Tomlinson, which they try to turn, I love Taylor, but they've turned her into a guy. It's the same show, you know, sit behind a desk and whatever, and they're all promotional. Promotional and they get political, Yeah. It's kind of weird. You know, Tom Cruise, tell me about your next movie.

You know, I'm bored with that. But I found this gal, she's from the UK. Eight years ago, she was a single mom, homeless in the UK. You cut to eight years later, she's living in Bel Air. She's life coaching Will.i.am and Steve Ioki. Wow. Wait, is that Natasha? Natasha. Yeah, she's been on Bel Air. She's life coaching Will.i.am and Steve Ioki. Wow.

Wait, is that Natasha? Natasha. Yeah, she's been on the show. Oh, okay. So I'm doing a talk show with Natasha. She's got a great personality. Yeah, she's one of a kind. Most people don't realize what go into doing a show,

work ethic wise. They think just because their personality is good, they don't get that you're gonna basically dedicate your life to. Right, they treat it half ass, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we're doing Natasha, and I shot a pilot with her,

and we shot a pilot actually in a nightclub in LA. And you know, I had Batch on, you know, who's a big Vine star. Yeah, King Batch, yeah. Gigi Gorgeous, who's trans, and some people from Selling Sunset. So it's really cool. Nice.

And it's more about, it's very Natasha, it's more about motivation, inspiration and stuff. She's not doing the tell me about your next movie stuff. Yeah. I hate that stuff, dude. There's no substance. No, and nobody watches it and they wonder why the ratings are gone. And I mean, I'm doing a podcast show now that's all about women's empowerment. It's like women of four different generations that they'll talk about a subject.

You kind of could hear the difference between what their take is on different subjects, but yet there's this underlying camaraderie and love among women that I don't think guys necessarily share. We're not as emotional. No. And, you know, it looks great. I shoot it like a TV show.

Shooting it 4K, 4K, and actually it's good lighting and good sound and stuff. And when I talk to networks about doing stuff, they go, well, women under 40 don't watch TV. And I'm like, well, did you ever think maybe it's because you don't put anything on that they might want to watch? And they just like look at me like, you know, like what's wrong with you? Yeah.

There's definitely a market though. I mean, Orange is the New Black crushed it. That was probably a huge woman audience I'm trying to Wednesday was probably mostly woman stranger things had a big woman audience so there's shows that can cater to towards that for sure yeah you must have witnessed a lot of discrimination in your industry right oh yeah especially towards woman yeah especially towards women so this this one it's actually it's interesting I've always been fascinated with this thing.

You go out to dinner with a few couples, and one woman says, I gotta go to the restroom, and they all get up and go. The guys are sitting there going, where are they? What are they doing in there? But it's really, it's a metaphor for that camaraderie among women, so we've got, you know, from a boomer down to a Gen Z,

soon to have to add an alpha And it's just interesting to hear the different take they have and that it's getting 80 80 percent of the audience is women. Yeah, at least early early stuff and And under 40 heavy under 40. Well, shout out to Nikki Glaser because she's been crushing it I love with the award shows. She's bringing those back because no one watched those. No, but now she's like roasting everyone and it's hilarious. Yeah. No, she, I, she's done good.

I had the Brady one was interesting. I would have done Brady. Did I thought they did it too traditional? I mean, you had Nikki. I mean, you could do so much cool stuff. Yeah. They had to run by all their jokes beforehand and stuff, but it was at least a start in the right direction.

Yeah. No, I, I love Nikki Glaser. Yeah. I think she. But it was at least a start in the right direction. Yeah, no, I love Nikki Glaser. Yeah, I think she just did the Grammy. She just did the NFL honors yesterday. She's been on a tear. Shout out to Nikki. And then the other one, if it wasn't run by old guys in the old traditional ways,

I mean, Taylor Tomlinson is, if you've ever seen her stand up, she's brilliant. She's solid. But they're just like reining her in and letting her be Taylor. Times are changing, man. I think the Emmys were last week, or was it the Grammys, one of those? Grammys. Grammys.

And they actually invited a few streamers. And the streamers were getting more views on their live Twitch stream than their network was. Crazy, right? Yeah. The world has changed in the way people, viewers change. And if you want to be a storyteller you got a Go where the viewers are going and the devices they want to watch stuff

Yeah, and the markets like you're doing because going international that's uh, that's a very unique strategy Yeah in in China when we do shows in China it's Like 70% of the people who watch our stuff watch it on a cell phone. So we actually shoot it different. Wow. Because normally for television, if you're shooting for like television, you do your final edit on a 55 inch TV set.

We do our final edit on an iPhone. Holy crap. That's crazy. That's the way most people are going to watch it. Yeah. So you're, you're doing a lot of, um, you know, you're not doing a lot of long shots, you're not doing twos and threes. You're doing ones and twos. Yeah.

Take talks big over there, right? Yeah. Tick tock is huge there. We, we do some consulting to bite dance. We kind of help them with, with the whole storytelling strategy and how you monetize that, I mean, we've been able to monetize stuff there so differently. We actually bought the rights to Gossip Girl. Oh, I used to love that show.

So we redid it instead of Spoiled Rich Girls in New York, Spoiled Rich Girls in Shanghai. Oh, it's kind of like Crazy Rich Asians, that movie. No, Crazy Rich Asians was really... People... I got in trouble for saying that it'll never, Crazy Rich Asians was really, people, I got in trouble for saying that it'll never play well in China because they were going, oh, it's all Asian cast and whatever. First of all, it's Singaporean.

There's a huge, we think of it like Asians. There's a huge difference between Singaporeans and mainland Chinese people. But we were fascinated with that show because we never saw anything that was an entire Asian cast. So people were saying, oh, it's gonna do amazing in China. And I'm like, no, it's not.

I said, they watch TV all day long, but that's all Asian. All their movies are all Asian. It's not gonna be anything new to them. And it flopped terribly. Gossip Girl flopped? No, Quasar. Oh, it did, wow. Gossip Girl flopped? No, uh, Kwesiw. Oh, it did? Wow.

Gossip Girl, again, the English version did really well because you have so many people that speak English. So we, we redid it, it's Worldwide Girls in Shanghai, but what we were able to do there, one of the girls wears great shoes. So we go, oh, those are great shoes. Where'd you get them? I get them on Sparkle.com. So I was later going, oh, another pair of great shoes.

So we actually own Sparkle.com. And on the production budget, we had a shoe designer. So we actually started Shoe It a Month Club. So if you signed up, we knew your size, we knew your address, we had your credit card. So we'd send you an email going, here's next month's selection. Here's the two alternatives. Which one do you want?

Brilliant. So we actually made more money selling shoes than we made on selling the TV show. That's brilliant. But that's the future, man. I'm seeing these live shopping numbers. I got a couple buddies making tens of millions with live shopping.

If you put it in the right context and stuff, and you don't offend people by throwing it in their face, and stuff and you don't offend people by like throwing it in their face. And you know, and you have experts. Gossip Girl was the number one driver of fashion choices among women under 40 years old in China. Holy crap. That's crazy. So there's a lot of influence in these shows if kind of marketed in the right angle. Yeah, people don't realize they don't really dig into stuff. I mean, they have their propaganda, we have our propaganda. But I mean, I'll give you another silly statistic because I love silly. In China, there are more people that are fans of Gossip Girl than there are members of the Communist Party. Whoa. Think about that one. That's nuts. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot of, I guess, narrative around how China and the United States have beef. Yeah. But you're over there, so you're not really seeing that? You see it at the government level once in a while. It does curtail stuff. But no, we're pretty non-political. Not pretty non-political, totally not.

We're not there to change their government, to change their life. We're there to make people smile and laugh and stuff. So they've been very good with us. We've had really no problem That's cool. I'm half Chinese. So that's cool. This cool to hear that honestly. Yeah No, it's me and there's a great difference between people and government Right, you got to separate the two because a lot of people lump them together, right? Yeah. And you know, our company in China, everybody, well, I'm by far the oldest. I'm the only non-Chinese person in the company there. Wow. And we picked the people, the way we ended up building the company, and it was a great,

it was a good thing we did. We'd get people out of colleges here, but you had to be born in mainland China, you had to want to return to China. So we give them intern jobs, then we give them regular jobs, but then they had to go back to China. So in our company in China, everybody has been educated in the West. So they're not just, they're bilingual, bilingual bicultural which really helps because they understand, you know best practices and stuff So we've been really successful it with a lot of shows. Yeah, that's smart. Do you speak Mandarin now? I Try it's it's hard Brooklyn accent. It's like not it's not a pretty language it's one of the toughest languages apparently so hard because When I was in Russia, I learned to speak Russian because it kind of follows

the rules of like Latin. So there's like letters make words, words make sentences, sentences make paragraphs. In China it's symbols and you know in simple Mandarin, in simple there's 4,000 symbols. So you know once you're past like five years old you're not's 4,000 symbols. So, you know, once you're past like five years old, you're not learning 4,000 symbols. Plus the words can have different meanings. And then you have the tones. So we always think that Chinese sounds funny

because it's very tonal. It's almost like singing. There are four tones for every symbol. So that's 16,000, you're 4,000 times000 times 4 and stuff and no I get it wrong a lot. What keeps you going man? Because you could have retired a long-ass time ago. Yeah but you know people say that I go but like what would I do? I wake up every morning with 10 new ideas. I'm pretty good at self-assessing. By the time I go to sleep, I realize that

probably all 10 were dopey. Every once in a while, I'll have a good one. So you're like the visionary of the company. Yeah, I like digging in though. I like doing stuff, but I'm smart enough to let the people that are gonna be closer to the audience have a big say. I mean, like in the podcast, I totally am hands off.

It's 100% women who work there, and they run the whole thing. As I say what my role is these days, now it's like I'm a bodyguard. Like I'll let them shoot themselves in the foot, but if they're gonna shoot themselves in the head, I'll step in. Got it.

More like an advisory position these days. Yeah, that makes sense. Are you optimistic about podcasts, the podcast space in the future? Yeah, I love the podcast space. Because it really does, it lets you hone in on niche audiences, but at a much smaller level. I mean, even you had broadcasts there and you needed millions of people to make economic sense, cable and you knew it was a few hundred thousand. Now with podcasts, you don't need huge numbers. So you could really focus on things that people are passionate about

and really be authentic and true to that. And I use the term super serve so that whatever the, you know, the love is or the passion is, you could really serve them. I mean, like when we're doing stall talk, people are going, can't believe we're finally seeing that. And the reason you're seeing it is because it's very inexpensive to put a podcast up.

Yeah, it's only a few thousand, you know? You could start on iPhones, that's how I started. Used iPhones, refurbished iPhones. We're down in the low thousands and stuff, and you could just say, you know what? This thing may only appeal to 10,000 people, but the numbers still work. Which is fine.

I know shows that only get a couple hundred views, but they're making a living because it's such a targeted niche that a couple hundred views could make six figures. Absolutely. Yeah, so I think people need to stop obsessing over the numbers. Yeah, and I love it, because there's no gatekeepers numbers. Yeah now and I love it because there's no gatekeepers

I mean for me it's always been weird because people well Up until fairly recently people go like what's wrong with that guy? He must be on drugs now I've kind of moved to the point where I'm a visionary. I'm still the same person and stuff, but There's no there's no gatekeepers here, so I could do whatever I want I don't have to ask anybody for permission. And if it works, great. If it doesn't work, you didn't lose a lot. Yeah, because you dealt with gatekeepers

your whole life in the entertainment industry. I hear about these nightmare stories, right? You gotta give me this amount of money, or you gotta do me this favor. Oh yeah, I mean, now I'm looking at doing something. Some folks on the armed forces have asked me to create something for military suicide. For the people that are involved with people that have committed suicide or contemplating it.

All the mental health issues are just amazing and And they won't tackle them because the advertisers don't want to be next to them on broadcast television. Yeah. But on a podcast, you can do it. Yeah, and I know certain topics, if you try to pitch them in networks, they'll deny you. Yeah, oh yeah. You know?

Yeah, they don't want to do it because they need a certain number of viewers in order to justify the production costs. Right. And they gotta get sponsors. So if they don't think the sponsors are gonna be happy number of viewers in order to justify the production cost. Right. And they gotta get sponsors. So if they don't think the sponsors are gonna be happy rubbing up next to whatever the subject matter is, I mean, military suicide is not a happy subject.

Yeah, not at all. And Big Pharma would drop out of that. They wouldn't sponsor that. So, but, you know, do it as a podcast. You can make it work. At the end of the day, things have to be financially sustainable. Right.

Because we all have to eat and pay the rent and do that. And if we can't sustain it economically, eventually we can't continue to do it. I saw Netflix allegedly made a billion off Squid Game. Did you see that? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. How does see that? Yeah, that's crazy Yeah, how does that work? Cuz it gets a ton of views, but there's no ads if you have the Netflix like premium Yeah, but it's been so well that if you just look at the way their subscriber level jumped

So in those kind of services, you got two things. It's how many new subscribers Yeah, and then you also measure your drop-off you say okay There's a normal drop-off of X percent and stuff and if you could impact it's really cheap to save someone It's much cheaper than having to find a new subscriber Wow and stuff. So they love it. It's good I mean when you start its good games You could never think of like dropping Netflix Yeah, Beast Games was brilliant too because I heard they lost money on the front end, but because people are becoming Amazon Prime customers and they're buying stuff,

they're gonna make all of that back. Yeah, it's interesting. The way that Netflix evaluates or finds the value in something is different than Amazon. I mean, Netflix really is more of a traditional, you know, is the audience and stuff Amazon is is that show gonna drive people to stick with Amazon as a buying service and stuff? So their measurement is different. Yeah, and you were saying how you're incorporating shopping now, too So that might be where future shows go towards right? Absolutely

You know and again if you don't stick it in people's face and it's relevant to what the content was, it works. People are not offended by it. They welcome it. Yeah. I mean, I could see so many people dressed up as like Squid Game for Halloween and stuff, bought merch. I got a Squid Game costume. Oh, yeah, you do?

I love them. Yeah, yeah. It's a fun thing to be. Larry, it's been really cool getting to know your world, man. Where can people find your book and keep up with you? The book's on Amazon. It's called the off script and You can always find I actually I answer all my own Email I actually do my Facebook page as a food blog

But LJN at LJN media. I I have this thing that I never go to sleep without answering all my email Wow, but if you call me on the cell phone, it may take days for me to call you back old school Good old email man. Yeah. All right. We'll link your email below if anyone has any questions. Is that cool? Yeah, no, that's great Awesome. Thanks for watching guys. Check out his stuff and I'll see you next time