Heroes in Business - Bonnie Bruderer, CEO Binge Networks, smart streaming distribution and Actor

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Be seen. Stream now 100 plus channels smart distribution and monetizing video content. Bonnie Bruderer, CEO BingeNetworks and actor is interviewed by David Cogan founder of Eliances and famous celebrity host of the Eliances Heroes Show broadcast on am and fm network channels, online syndication to 40plus outlets and TV distribution to 100plus channels.    

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. Oh my gosh, what an amazing morning it's been again, where we're bringing together incredible people. That's right, incredible people to be able to share their secrets about how they make a difference in the lives of others and this morning we had on just recently billy morrison the guitarist for billy idol and thank you for the feedback we continue to have when i had the former ceo of tivo on and also apple ceo so make sure you go to eliancer.com the only place where entrepreneurs align and you can check out past episodes super excited about our next guest today welcome to the

show bonnie bruder ceo of binge networks first of all i just love the name binge networks like how did you come up with that name? I mean, it pretty much does it all. We're all about binge watching and getting content out on smart TV. And so we trademarked the name early on and we love it too. Thank you. Very, very, very smart stuff. So let's talk, let's go right into it. What is Binge Networks? let's go right into it is is what is binge networks sure we are a streaming media syndication service so what that means is if you're a content creator like you are um you can come to us with your video content and we will build you a channel on our platform that is distributed all over smart tv we have a hundred different smart TV outlets that we distribute on, and we represent that content for outlets like Amazon and Roku

and hundreds of others all over the world. So we basically do – we're a one-stop shop for a content creator to up-level into the smart TV world. How did that concept, though, come to be? And, I mean, look, right, only a few years ago, this stuff really wasn't even as prominent as it is now. How did you come up with it all? Yeah, I mean, look, right, only a few years ago, this stuff really wasn't even as prominent as it is now. How did you come up with it all? Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right.

This has been sort of a new technology over the last three or four years. We're actually in year seven of our business. And we started because I was a cable TV talk show host in New York City. I had a show on a network there and, you know, quickly realized cable was not it anymore, sadly. When I finally got a show, I was like, oh, it's dead. Great. But I'm an innovator. And so I quickly saw the rise of smart TV and cord cutting and all of that coming onto the scene. And because our company was small, you know, over the years, we had produced 700 of our own TV episodes, but we were a small company, so we could quickly pivot. And so about year three,

we launched our own streaming media platform, we use the same technology as Netflix or Amazon Prime or any of the others. And we decided instead to be sort of like a interim of like a Netflix and YouTube, right? So anyone can get on YouTube right so anyone can get on YouTube hardly anyone can get on Netflix we wanted to be that middleman and so that's really our sweet spot in the industry is is getting people into the smart TV world and we do it just like I did with my very own show and then got it on one platform and two and a hundred and and now we work with about 150 different platforms all over the world congratulations on on the success. That's absolutely phenomenal. What are you seeing since, Bonnie, you've got your pulse on the content area of that.

What are you seeing as hot content now? Yeah. So, I mean, streaming is everything, right? So in the first year of the pandemic, 78% of all media consumption was happening on smart televisions. And it's grown even this year by 13% compared to last year already. So what we're seeing that's really hot right now, obviously anything DIY, right? So people are still at home for the most part. People are still working out at home, anything fitness, cooking shows, training for anything really, you know, personal development training. I'm a mom, so I love to watch training on how to manage my toddler and how to learn other skills. Those are really the hot things we see.

And then of course, movies and series, everybody's looking for something new and hot to binge. I think by now we've all finished Netflix, right? At least I know I did the first year of the pandemic. And so we have over 10,000 independent films that people, you may recognize an actor or two that's in them, but you probably haven't heard of them and you can go out to our platform and watch them for free. Bonnie, talk to us about this selection process. So does someone apply to your show, how that works? And then how do you know where to place them? Is there a menu of services? Yeah, absolutely. So we, we have a content team, we have a strategist that a content creator would work with, and they would really have a consultation and learn, you know, if it is the type of content we can distribute. For the most

part, it is we We're very vast. We have about 25 different genres on our platform. But essentially, you would set up a meeting with our strategy team, and then they can tell you, hey, here's what we think we can do for you, and here's how to move forward. And we charge a retainer for a year of our service, and we place people on guaranteed 100 platforms and usually quite a bit more.'s excellent i mean again what you're doing and giving the outlet again right remember it used to be kind of the youtube and everybody would go to the just as you mentioned and now

you're opening up a whole nother world for people to get placed on these otherwise how in the world do they do it on their own have to go one by one versus just going on your platform and helping to get them distributed. Yeah. I mean, David, you hit the nail on the head. I spent three years doing that. We basically opened every single door. I used to go to all the foreign markets in France and sell each show individually and do a deal with Netflix or with Roku and then do a deal with Amazon and do a deal with Sony and so forth. And it was a lot of work. And then we realized on the technical side how to sort of piece that all together once we have those deals in place. And really now we can take any content creator. We can get them on 100 platforms within about 72 hours of launching.

So it's pretty exciting. And do you take people that have been, for example, on YouTube and, you know, different shows where they now can expand their market through you? We do. The one thing we always say is you want to assist with any creator whether you come with us or whether you get into Smart TV on your own. You want to make sure in this day and age that the content you're creating is either evergreen or native, not native to that platform. Meaning,. Meaning, David, you're on so many different platforms. So you don't wanna say, hey, check me out on iTunes

or rate me on iTunes when someone might be listening to you somewhere different on iHeart and they're like, wait, what? So you wanna make sure you're not saying, hey, ring the bell, subscribe to my channel, because we can't take that content and then put it on Roku where there's no bell there's no subscribers yes well there's subscribers but it works very differently on television so you want to make sure you

have agnostic we call it platform agnostic content I think that you're right and that's what we definitely do even on this show and stuff because people are listening there they're going to past episodes or sometimes there's a publishing of some past episodes and people like it right where there's no specific thing that would bring to a specific time of that are you seeing those that are applying and becoming your customers is there a certain kind of demographics or age range or male female where you see in it yeah it's a great question and I only give but we have a funny age. We have content creators that are in their 70s that are crushing it. And we have content creators that are 13 years old. And the reason I give up is we team. I'm like, where's your content? You know,

sending these emails. And finally I get a response from her mom. She's like, sorry, you know, Remi's doing her homework. And I was like, oh my God, this is a child. So really to answer your question, there's no age range. It just matters that you're creating content that is interesting, that has a good production value and that adds value to other people's lives. Does it have to be edgy or, you know, controversial to make headlines within your network? No. And, you know, people are so tired of, I mean, anything you turn on these days, there's just so much chaotic news, so much happening in the world. Excuse me. I have an allergy to meat. So we, you know, we're kind of

an escape. We do have some news channels. We have a couple of political channels. We, you know, we support any type of creator, but for the most part, I'd say 95% of our content is more entertainment based. It is more, you know, a lot of workouts, a lot of yoga classes, a lot of food shows. And as I said, tons of films. So really, I believe there's an audience for any type of content. And so once you have identified who you're trying to reach, our team is expert at going out and getting distribution there. Excellent, excellent. Again, and you're listening and watching me, David Kogan, host of the Alliance's Hero Show with Bonnie Bruder, CEO of Binge

Networks. You can go to bingenetworks.tv to reach her, bingenetworks.tv, or of course on our show, eliancer.com, E-L-I-A-N-C-E-R.com, and we'll have the interview and the link to her network. So don't wait. Go to her network. Maybe you've got a show, maybe you think you've got a show that you'd like to go ahead and get on well over a hundred outlets. Imagine that exposure. Bonnie can help you with that. So make sure that you reach out to her in regards to that. Now at Bonnie, at what point, I mean, again, you've been ahead of the curve of this. I don't know of many others that are doing again, what you're doing. You've kind of taken that almost when there were all the social media outlets and then someone came along and said you just use one outlet spin it out to all of them you've kind of created

that part at what point did you know yeah I've got a business here it's actually working and I can make money survive and hire others I think so in our early days when we had the production side of the business um you know we had about 20 people working for the company in production and I always say we're always about ten thousand dollars behind like any natural disaster would have just put us over the edge and so I think it was really the first month that I had enough money to pay all the bills and the team and then there was like extra I realized that we were onto something and that was about

four years ago like i literally remember sitting there and being like what should i should i buy something like i mean like a pair of shoes it wasn't anything big um but it was that's really the metric right is that once you start to see something working and you're building building building at least for me as an entrepreneur i've always bootstrapped my companies this is about my fourth venture that i've done on my own and so you, you know, you're always robbing Peter to pay Paul and borrow back from Mary. And so it's, it is very interesting when you hit that point and then you scale up from there. So yeah, that's really how we knew. How did you sit again? This is your fourth. How did you get so knowledgeable within business and learn how to do startups and and be successful you know a couple of things I came from a family business

my grandfather and father worked together they had an overseas shipping and trading company so a lot of conversation in our family thanksgivings christmas was around business and I didn't know that that wasn't the norm you know I didn't it my family. I didn't go to any other Christmas dinners. So I kind of had a, um, a little bit of a bug for it. And then I had some really, um, successful entrepreneurial boyfriends in my career. I was very lucky to date some just incredible business minds. And again, the pro and the con, the reason they didn't work out is because that person was always married to their business, but you're always sitting there waiting for them, listening to the calls. And I'm such a learner. So I would always just, you know, pay attention and learn strategy and negotiation and so forth. And then I spent 10 years of my career working for Tony

Robbins. So that was the mindset piece of like, okay, now I have the strategy and now I need the motivation that I can, and belief that I can do it. And I worked for five years for Harvey McKay, the swim with the sharks, that whole business. So I learned a lot through, you know, I always say being mentored, but really just sitting in rooms quietly and observing and taking notes on everything. And that's a big part of how I learned, you know, what I was able to create.

Phenomenal. And again, and that's what we're doing here at Alliances. So make sure, again, you check out Alliancer.com. We have with us Bonnie Bruder. Bonnie, where do you see the future of binge networks going? I mean, you've already got well over 100, whatever, 150 platforms. I mean, how much more platforms are there even in existence that you would want to get? And where do you want to take the company?

Sure. Thank you so much for that question. Because that's my favorite passion right now is that, you know, I feel we've tackled from the technical side, being able to get distribution on all these platforms. Now we're super hyper-focused on as much monetization as possible for that creator.

So for example, if you brought your show to us, we build you a channel, we get it distributed on all the binge apps, but then brought your show to us, we build you a channel, we get it distributed on all the binge apps, but then we really want to make sure that we get placement on any relevant business show, on any show for CEOs, on any... Because each one of those platforms that we get you on, there's an ad revenue share. All of our work, the majority of our work is what's called Avod, where it's free to watch and ads play, just like YouTube.

Netflix is a subscription service. Hulu is a subscription, but we play in the AVOD world, which is 95% or 98% of the smart TV world these days. And so the more places we can get you, the more we can grow that revenue. So each month we can write you a check, you know, saying, hey, you earned 50,000 views here, you earned a million views here, and so on and so forth. And so that's

really where we're focused in 2021 and into 2022 is creating larger scale partnerships, where we can syndicate our content over and over for more revenues for our creators. Phenomenal. Excellent. Excellent. Really gives an insight of it. And again, you're helping the creators. Because if someone can focus, as you know, bonnie is focus on their show and have someone else do the distribution doing it all is way too much oh yeah we have to do again what you did you know now what it's been through it's like us with pot you know podcasting we're on over 40 outlets including exclusive channels and have to have you know someone else try to go and apply to each one crazy to have to do that you know the amount of work and then managing it.

I like it where it's just the one push to your network and away it goes. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, we've literally opened every door in the industry. So it's just a matter of you sitting back, creating content. It's funny because I used to be on camera all the time. So I did this every day. I was used to doing the hair and the makeup

and how to talk in today. It was like, oh my God, because I'm so into a different mode and it's a lot of work. You have to find the light and plug it in and then it doesn't reach and then this and that and make sure you have to move right. You know, it's a whole full-time job to focus on one thing. So we want to take the distribution off your plate, the monetization, so you can create great content as a creator. Are there new channels like always being added? Are there new channels always people that are creating that are coming out? Yes.

Yeah, we have onboarded two channels just today. I'm seeing the emails come through from our business development team. And they're all different. We have a new show on fashion that just came on not too long ago. But it's fashion for the 40, 50, and 60-year-old woman. So it's, you know, it's nichified. We have CEO type content. We just signed a big Swiss company that puts this really great content for CEOs together.

We've got children's shows are very popular as well. So I would say, you know, every week we're adding a new channel to the platform. And we currently have about 35,000 videos in our library, 10,000 of which are films, and the other 25 are a variety of other genres. Absolutely amazing, amazing. All right, the next thing is Bonnie, the secret is how do you, how does someone find what they wanna watch

now that we've got a million choices? Yeah, so, you know, you pick your poison. I always say like you, we find that people are loyal to certain brands. And that works great because we take such a broad approach, right? We get you on Amazon. We get you on Roku. We get you on Sony.

But those viewers tend to be loyal. I'm a loyal Roku person. I'm a binge person. But Roku is a little, you know, if I'm at home and I don't watch on my computer, I'm going to watch on Roku and binge networks is on Roku as well. But I don't really stray from that. You know, occasionally I'll pop over to Netflix. And what's great about that is each one of these audiences, there's hundreds of millions of subscribers in each network. So where, you know, we work with a platform in China that has a hundred million subs. That's crazy. Roku has about 40 million. Apple

TV, who's one of our partners, has 30 million. Amazon has 30 million. So each place we put you in tends to be a loyal viewer, which again is invaluable because today people are, you know, we're used to social media and I might follow you on Instagram. I did actually today follow you on Instagram. I might follow you on YouTube. I might follow you on Facebook and it's generally the same. You know, it's me. I'm just watching you here, there and everywhere. Whereas a smart TV viewer tends to be a Roku viewer, an Amazon viewer. We've got time for one more question. I think this is important too, because you've been very successful in your career. You've learned a lot. You've worked for companies and been very successful on that end too. What about now with the way things are within the environment and the the new workforce where I quote

whatever that is the new normal which whatever that means getting out there what kind of secrets can you share with those that are in that frame right now graduating college going into this world the unknown world what can they do to make their mark? Like you've been so successful doing. Thank you. I think that I really do think that this is the normal, I don't want to say the new normal, and I don't even want to use the N word because this is so not normal in the world right now. You're right. You know, and I think for me, why I've been successful is I've always pivoted. It's like I put my heart and soul and revenue into something.

And then the minute it's not working, I don't just get frustrated, throw in the towel, do something else. I'll just say, OK, what is working? You know, I did that with TV. I was a TV host. That was my dream in life. And I finally made it. I was like, oh, well, it's not working anymore. I could do this.

And it's related. But I think for people today, you have to really see what is now, what opportunities are available right now. And streaming is hot. It's the hottest industry there is in any technology. I think that, you know, businesses that cater to the at-home market, like, for example, and this is a form of streaming, I have always gone to the gym. I was a triathlete for most of my life or a big chunk of my life. But now I'm a Pel of streaming. I have always gone to the gym. I was a triathlete for most of my life or a big chunk of my life. But now I'm a Peloton person. I do my workouts at home and I don't ever see paying money to go to a gym again, regardless of how COVID plays out and if we can. So I think that

some changes are here to stay. You know, I'm in an office now. I come to an office because I also have two babies. And so we can't get them home. Wow. It's impossible. I've tried. So we have an office space. But I think that most people that can will stay home. So think about what type of industries cater towards that. What kind, you know, delivery.

I'm so impressed with Instacart, with Uber Eats, with all of these companies that are catering. And they were around, but it was just like, maybe you with Uber Eats, with all of these companies that are catering and completely pivoted. They were around, but it was just like, maybe you get Uber Eats, but not everybody does. And now it's just like dinner, it's how you get your dinner. So really look for things that are catered to today's market place.

Hey, incredible. That's right, catering to the current marketplace. And that's also too, what the Alliance's Hero Show is doing. Bonnie, you created a way for business owners and content creators to reach the masses with Binge TV. Make sure you go to bingenetworks.tv, bingenetworks.tv. Bonnie, it's been a pleasure having you today on the Alliance's Hero Show.

Thank you. Bye, everybody. having you today on the alliances hero show thank you bye everybody