The Chris Cuomo Project - Unboxing YouTube vs. TV

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Chris Cuomo unboxes his YouTube Silver Creator Award and dives into the differences he’s observed over the course of his broadcast career between network television, cable television, and YouTube. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the best thing that you have seen on the Chris Cuomo Project. The best picture since its inception. And here it is. No, not just my face covered with black. the YouTube 100,000 subscriber thing that I am now unboxing, as they call it. This is a ritual here on YouTube to unbox. And then there is this, which will be thrown away. And there is this letter from YouTube that I will read to you.

Do you remember your first subscriber? Yes, it was me. Your 100th? No, your 1000th. Chances are you do. And we know that you'll definitely remember your 100,000th subscriber. Your fans may have found you while searching YouTube, learned about you through a friend, or maybe you showed up as a recommendation video. No matter how they came to your channel, your audience stayed and their numbers increased because of you and the community you've built. Blah, blah, blah. Neil Mohan, head of YouTube. Thank you, Neil. Love to talk to you. Love to have you on the podcast. Listen, if you know anything about me,

you know I've been doing AG1 for over five years, okay? Why? Well, because I heard about it just as I was looking at all of these white and translucent brown bottles in my life. Had to be a dozen of them, okay? Which vitamins I took with when, with food in the morning, at night.

And it was making it so that I didn't even want to deal with it anymore. Then I discovered AG1. One scoop, one glass of water. I like it warm. Glug, glug, glug. Boom. Done for the day. Doesn't upset my stomach, and it has everything.

And by the way, you take AG1, it is a hell of a lot more cost effective than doing these things separately. Trust me, okay? It will give you a better way to elevate your baseline health. All right? AG1 is therefore the supplement that I trust to provide the support my body needs every day. And that's why they've been a longtime partner. If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1.

Get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2. Why not just D3? Combinations matter for absorption. And you'll get five free AG1 travel packs. Very cool, because you can't get through the TSA otherwise. Go to drinkag1.com CCP. That's drinkag1.com. Check it out. Take control of your health.

We don't fake the funk here. And here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo. It's embarrassing. But it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why?

Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments, and you do it right from your couch. discreet sexual health treatments. And you do it right from your couch. HIMS provides access to clinically proven generic alternatives to Viagra or Cialis or whatever. And it's up to like 95% cheaper. And there are options as low as two bucks a dose. HIMS has hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers. So if ED is getting you down,

it's time to pick it up. Start your free online visit today at HIMS.com slash CCP. H-I-M-S dot com slash CCP. And you will get personalized ED treatment options. HIMS.com slash CCP. Prescriptions? You need an online consultation with a healthcare provider, and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply. You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription.

It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. I will tell you how I know that this is a big deal. This box was already opened. And it was opened by my son, Mario, who says that when he was a kid, he's only 17 now, this was his dream, was to have 100,000 subscribers. And here it is. Here it is. Here it is. Look, it makes everything look bigger and stronger. Yes. 100,000. And it's a mirror. So I get to see me when I look at it, which makes me want to smash it.

No, I'll tell you what it means. You know what it means? It means that it's working. It means that it's helpful. It means that there are at least this many of you, and we know that it continues to grow. So even more find that there's something helpful, something useful in what we're doing with the Chris Cuomo Project. And that's all I've ever wanted. And it's been one of the

most elusive things to really feel deeply in my now 25 plus year career in journalism, television journalism specifically, to feel that you break through, to feel that you matter. Now, look, I know there are a lot of people who've gotten to this level. There are a lot of successful people out there. And then more. There's a million, there's three million, there's 10 million. There's a lot of stuff out there. Most of that's porn. But the point is to break through, to be relevant, to be useful, to be of help to people. That is the dream. And I am so grateful.

And I know Greg and Jeff and Dusty and the rest of the team was making the project happen. They were really geeked about this. They wanted it to happen. They said it was going to happen. And it did happen. And all of the thanks, of course, goes to you. The project doesn't work without you guys wanting it to work. They said it was going to happen. And it did happen. And all of the thanks, of course, goes to you. The project doesn't work without you guys wanting it to work for you. So this is really cool. And I know that there should be an ambition. What's next? I stay away from that. Would it be

great to get another one of these or whatever the next one is? Yeah, I guess so. But I didn't think I was going to get this one. So I'm really grateful about this. I really had absolutely no conceit or no expectation about having any measure of success doing this. I never even listened to podcasts and I don't watch a whole lot of YouTube. I'm starting to more and more now. I'm expanding the aperture of what I look at to get a better understanding of what you're taking in and what I need to counter and how. I really didn't even think that we were going to get to this. And this is more than I ever expected.

And therefore, it is more than enough. And I think it's awesome. And I love that it's one of the few things that I can connect with my son when it comes to any kind of measure of success in media. For him to say that this was his dream when he was growing up and that we achieved it. And of course, he's part of any success that I have as are our daughters. And of course, my wife, she makes everything happen. I'm really, I'm really happy that this happened for the team and for the project. So thank you very much. I'm going to put it up on the shelf over here because this is the shelf of significance.

These are all the books that we have covered at the project and then my dad's stuff, which of course inspires and motivates so much of what I do. So I'm going to cover these

just for the moment with this. Ah. Also, smash. Here it is. Presented to the Chris Cuomo project for passing 100 000 subscribers very cool thank you very much and as always this is great but you know what the mandate is it's the same as the motto let's get after it. More conversation, more provocative discussions, more growth,

more failing, more learning, more dealing with challenges, more of us together finding a way to get better. Thank you so much for being a part of the project. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS,

and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment. And it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why? Because it's giving you access to affordable and discreet sexual health treatments. And you do it right from your couch. HIMS provides access to clinically proven generic alternatives to Viagra or Cialis or whatever.

And it's up to like 95% cheaper. And there are options as low as two bucks a dose. HIMS has hundreds of thousands of trusted subscribers. So if ED is getting you down, it's time to pick it up. Start your free online visit today at HIMS.com slash CCP. H-I-M-S dot com slash CCP. And you will get personalized ED treatment options. HIMS.com slash CCP. and they will determine if appropriate. Restrictions apply.

You see the website, you'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why?

It works, it's easier, and it's less expensive. That's why. Since 2010, they've been getting their formulations right and tweaking their formulas. Why? Because the science changes, okay? It's not like politics where people decide to believe one thing and no matter what happens with the facts, they never shift. This is the opposite. Oh, prebiotics work with probiotics, but in this way. D works with K and this type of B works with that. They have the scientists doing it. So I don't need all the bottles. I don't have to spend all the money and I don't have to figure out when to take what and why. More importantly, it's not just the regular list of vitamins. It's the extras, okay? The adaptogens, the prebiotics,

It's the extras, okay? The adaptogens, the prebiotics, the probiotics that support your body's universal needs. Gut optimization, immune support, stress management. That's what foundational nutrition is about. And these are the people at AG1 who've been doing the work to get it right, okay? I tell friends. I tell family.

I get no complaints, okay? If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1. You get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs, okay? That's what happens with your first purchase. So make it.

Go to drinkag1.com slash ccp. Drinkag1.com slash ccp. Check it out. And what I'm so happy about with this is that we're just starting to figure it out. There's such a world of difference between what matters in the digital space and in the conventional space of television, even cable TV. I remember when I moved from network TV to cable TV, it was kind of like relearning how to communicate to people in that medium. Why? because unless you were doing long form in the traditional media, let's call it, like where I was at ABC, it was really just the fax man or in a long form, finding a way to once upon a time, a story that would make people understand their connection to somebody else's plight or situation.

Now, of course, in coverage, it's about being where you can't be and showing you why. Then when I went to cable, it was no longer about the who, what, where, and when. It was all about the why. And it was all about moments and provocativeness and finding things that were extreme and staying on them and running it until it ran into the ground and then you found something else. You know, cable is a place that people culturally went for very specific stimulation as opposed to just a habit of, oh, well, I need to know.

This was more I want to feel. So now I'm making that turn from cable TV, which I'm still in, obviously, with News Nation. Although, you know, News Nation is also becoming a digital enterprise. And it's something that's going to be streamed and that we have to think about how to create content that people can find several months from now, as opposed to just in this moment. And YouTube is completely its own animal.

It is, for now, the apex, the apogee, the top of the food chain of, I'm going to seek out what I want. And the niche interests, like for me with fishing or muscle cars or fitness, which is not as much of a niche interest. You know, we really got to take fitness out of the some people say category.

Fitness is for everybody and should be everyone's focus of their life because mind, body, spirit is the way that you get through every bit of meaningful connection in your life. So I don't know why we make it like a hobby category, but whatever, fitness for sure, it's exploding, it's everywhere. But the things that are more discreet

that matter more to me, I can get such in depth, like the dream of what Facebook was many, many years ago, coming off of MySpace and Facebook's, the next iteration of forming community. YouTube has taken that to an exponential degree where I can get so deep into things that matter to me personally in my hobby life and my interests, whether it's how to tie tackle and what colors work and when and what water conditions and how you learn things about time. And when I was getting my Coast Guard captain's certification, I would look there at

people who had studied for the test and how and what mattered and what didn't. Really cool. And to be a part of that, very challenging because it's completely subjective. You know, there's no more three choices. Nobody's bringing just these choices to you it's you going out there and looking for for whatever it is so to me having a hundred thousand subscribers is way more impressive and meaningful to me personally than even you know if if my ratings were a hundred thousand or a million in the demo i I mean, that would be amazing. It would make NewsNation tremendously successful, but it's still easier in a way because there's a limited universe of where you're going to go for cable news and, you know, and trusted sources and stuff like that.

Whereas on YouTube, it really is all about your appetites. Now, look, they're taking a step into the other arena themselves, right? YouTube is doing YouTube TV now. So they're becoming a traditional server of just streaming offerings and trying to be like everybody else, Hulu and everybody else. And, you know, the market will assess what their value proposition is and how good it is and how. Early reports are good. But for me, in making the transition into this kind of programming, I now have to create things that you are willing to seek out.

And that's kind of daunting for someone who's not a brand, okay? You know, it would be different if I were The Rock or something like that, where you just have like a built-in fan base. Or even a Sean Hannity or a Bill O'Reilly or one of these guys, Tucker Carlson, and it's much harder to see those things on the left. I guess Rachel Maddow.

I mean, I'm not talking about who relative level of respect or anything like that, but she's certainly not the brand name that a Tucker Carlson is or a Hannity or an O'Reilly on the right. And I don't mean that as a point of disrespect. It's just a distinction. So for those people, you come to them because you're like-minded. Nobody knows what's in my head or where I'm going to come out on something or why. You can say, oh, he's a Cuomo. He's going to be a lefty. You're just wrong. But that's okay. You can feel whatever you want to feel. The challenge remains the same, that I, with the team, have to find ways to create content

that you'll seek out. And that's why what I've done, even though I'm not a brand, what I've done is decided to open up the realities of my own life to a certain degree and the challenges of my own journey, mostly found through failure and perceived failure and difficulty and pain and upset and how I have tried to deal with it and am trying to deal with it and what works and what doesn't and why and what I've read and what I've learned and what I've been told and what I've tried. That is my trade-off on brand. I'm not selling anything. I'm just relating to you on the level of the human experience. And when I can do that through

the lens or the aperture of journalism and conversation and communication, I will. But I think that the success we've had to this point is more about something else. It's more about just relating on a human level. And, you know, I had written a book that I didn't really finish with my writing partner. And I don't know that I'll ever put it out because I'm also in a fight with my publisher because when I got shit canned, everybody dropped me. But it was about what I learned during the pandemic. And, you know, I had no idea how big a factor in your lives I was during the pandemic. First, I was sick. And then I was like in a real bubble of just doing the job.

And I didn't really look at social media a lot. And I didn't do stuff. Rose was doing all of it. So I had no idea how much everything had grown in terms of people's enthusiasm for what we were doing. And so I wanted to put it all in one place, what that experience was like for me, what I learned back in the PPE phase. You know, people got upset at me for helping my brother. I was helping the state of New York and states all over this country source PPE from friends of mine who did business in China and North Africa. Journalists aren't supposed to do that either, but it was to help.

It certainly didn't compromise my work. It wasn't like I was advertising their companies or making money off it. Probably should have. Would have been nice. Would have been easier to deal with getting fired. No, I'm joking. But the point is, there are different challenges

and I wanted to put it all in one place. Maybe I'll just release the content on YouTube. Maybe I'll just do it as a series of videos and do the book that way. Maybe that's the best way, is to just have you relate to what the human experience was for me of going through that and becoming something different for my audience. And what I learned, nobody, you know, was, you know, look, I didn't get a single nomination of any journalism type for any of the work I did during the pandemic. And I know that's because of what followed with my brother and all that stuff.

And that's okay. I don't agree with the assessment. I think the work was some of the best work I've ever done in my life. I've never had work matter as much to you guys from what you've told me. But I get it. I get it. It's a club, and I get that the club has rules. I get it.

I get it. It's a club and I get that the club has rules. But, but I know that it mattered. And I know that nobody was as wired to what was going on as I was. Whether it was the people in government at the state level, obviously, with my brother and the other governors that I got closer to as a result, the federal government, the private industries. So the more that I can bring all that experience to bear on YouTube and elsewhere and give you content that's worth seeking out, that's the dream.

And today we realized a little part of the dream in getting our 100,000 subscribers, getting our little plaque there or whatever this thing is called. And I do like that. The next thing, share the recognition by allowing your team to purchase personalized creator award. Knock yourself out. Knock yourself out, team. Buy them. But it shouldn't be about the trophy. It should be about the recognition that you're making a difference and that you're helping people because that's why we're doing this. So obviously, I thank my people, Greg and Jeff and Dusty and the rest of the team that are doing all this. And we all have to thank you for giving us an opportunity to make a difference for you.

Okay? Like I like to say at News Nation, I report for you, but I also report to you. We're doing this to provide a value and to help. And this is proof that enough of you for this moment think that. So thank you for helping us grow. And I continue to hope that it stays a help to you and that we stay together and that we grow, but we don't change in terms of our mindset. Let's get after it means let's endeavor to get better together.