VENN Founders Eye TV’s Big Game With Streaming Network Launch

advertising supported. Horn and Cuson see a big white space for TV content that targets millennials and Gen Z, the demographics that have never known a world without gaming. They also see big opportunity for a streaming network that can syndicate content on a number of platforms such as Twitch and YouTube. The two have big plans for creating up to fifty hours a week of original content, all paid

for by sponsor dollars. All of those things sound like kryptonite for the on demand generation, but Horn and Cuson see things differently, as they explain here. Ariel Horn and Ben Cusin, co founders and co CEOs of ben a new video game, entertainment and lifestyle network coming soon to a platform near you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, thanks so much for having us excited here. So I'm going to start up straight up.

I'm not a gamer. I can I can probably measure the amount of time in my life that I've spent playing video games if telephone Solitaire doesn't count, probably measured in hours, not days or weeks. Um. So tell me for a lay person, tell me give me the elevator pitch for then the video Game Entertainment News Network. It is a surprise. It is a surprise to me to see that something that content like this would be launching in a live, linear fashion. That seems a little counterintuitive.

Tell tell me about your venture. Sure, and by the way of telephone Solitaire accounts, my parents are the biggest gamers on Earth show. Give you the heads up there. So yeah, Ariel and I are are both co founders

co CEO. We we've both been in this business a long time and and kind of concurrently saw the same opportunity both across linear TV, V O D and and more about the demographics at large, So to to kind of take this from a big fifty thousand foot view down to a little bit of the micro Gaming is huge, it's been. It's bigger than arguably all sports and entertainment combined. A hundred fifty billion dollars this year, trending toward a three hundred billion dollar year industry in a few years.

So by any metric, whether it's dollars or consumer engagement, um, it's a real thing. And by consumer engagement, to give you a sense, three hundred million people every single day go on YouTube to watch gaming video content and that ranges from people playing video games, to learning about video games, to entertainment properties around video games or e sports. So to say this category is is nothing short of a

powerhouse would be an understatement. And really this is an elusive audience as far as television networks and marketers are concerned, it is very hard to reach Gen Z and millennial and the current TV landscape UM, and people are trying, but at the end of the day, there is no network that's dedicated to content for for this generation. And when you step back and look at the generation, nine out of ten Gen Z play video games regularly. So

when you say, like are you a gamer? That be akin to asking, um, you know, a young gen z or a mallennial kid. We can affectionately call them to say, you know, hey, are you a music listener or you a dinner eater? The reality is is is this is something that's all they know that I should really be is like what game are you referring to? Is it Animal Crossing? Is it League of Legends? Is that call

of duty? Um? So, once you recognize the scale of engagement, you really think about, Okay, we know it's big, but how can we help cater an opportunity this environment and create real engagement. So you've got the world of Twitch that's out there generating billions of hours of watched content per months in thing on YouTube, but there is they are really kind of archival and not necessarily the destination. There's no real curated way to engage in the category.

And so, um, you know, just a little bit more on this area. And I both saw the same opportunity as that you can create a TV network that has gone out and recognize the best content creators across this

universe taken this amazing production. I'm excited for Arial to tell you about his experience and where he comes from to take this wonderful TV production and hopefully elevate the craft that people are doing and what's called a user generated content manner, and create TV behind it and then string it all together, you know, create a TV network can allow a really safe space as for brands and partners to advertise and reach these communities. Um. And so

that's what we've did, and that's that's where we are. Now. Let me ask you again, let me ask the basic question because I understand, I know that there's a lot of viewing of people playing video games, people playing video games in tournament fashion. Um, but this is really from your slate. This is really lifestyle and entertainment shows for the people that like to that like video gaming enough to watch other people play it on on platforms. Um. This is that's if I understand right, it is this

is a TV network for the streaming generation. And then is a double on tunder it's the video Game Entertainment News Network. But it really is the intersection of gaming, entertainment, music, pop culture and really the generations. And that's the next is where we live. I'll give Arial a chance to get a word and edgewise on it. And Ariel, you are speaking to us from your play of Vista your studio in play of Vista. Uh sorry, Berril, you are speaking to us from your studio in play a Vista

where you have expansive facilities, and you're rare and to go. Yes, we are. Yes. So we launched actually on August five, which if which is next Wednesday, depending on when you're when you're listening to this podcast, maybe by the time you're listening, we've already launched, and we hope to get your feedback. If you're watching, we hope you're enjoying the programs that we're putting out there. But yeah, I'm here

and we are in rehearsals. We've got all of our shows are we have twenty hours plus of fresh content that we're going to be putting out each week, which against sort of the comp in the TV world, exceeds most, if not all, of the networks. You know, if you look at the amount of entertainment programming, live entertainment programming

we're creating, it it stacks up really high. We've got a bunch of really interesting formats that both draw from the universes that Ben was describing of young people playing video games in a very raw, authentic way with the audience which you might see in Twitch. We're elevating that format and curating it and distributing it back to those same networks and those platforms where the young people are.

And Ben hinted at it a little bit, but the way TV is currently set up, it's in a bit of a crisis because it can't follow its consumers, right, And that's a very basic concept that as demographies change, Right, young people have been consuming content in a bunch of a bunch of ways. They're not only looking for short clips, they're not only looking to play video games, they're not only looking to watch movies. But they are consuming a

lot of of content. And so the the version of TV that I I see and Ben and I see is really it's it's a more I guess you'd say it's a more generous kind of definition. It's transmitting video and sound in a bunch of different platforms in a bunch of different ways. And so when you look at young people, they are really consuming a lot of content, and they play lots of video games. They might go

to the movies, they might um binge watch on Netflix. Uh, they might have a second screen open on their phone or on a second monitor that's next them, and so what we want to do is create an authentic version of content that they love and that they understand. And because we are not uh sort of burdened I guess you might say by carriage fees and mfns that exists in the traditional TV world, we could think about a TV network in a very new and novel way, right.

So we can create content that is akin to what you might see on traditional network, but we can distribute it to the channels where gamers and where young people are. So we will be the first ever seven channel on Twitch, on YouTube, on Twitter, right, but we'll also be on connected TVs, will be on traditional m v p d s like people like you might see on a on a cable system right that is now shifting into a more digital warm. We also will be on the v m v p d s, which are the skinny bundles, right.

So we aspire to create content that is contemporary and that is natively interesting for this streaming generation. Has Ben calls it, bring it, bring those creators onto our network creative virtuous cycle with them. So we helped to elevate the things that they do natively really well and where they've built audiences that quite frankly rival and exceed in some cases traditional TV hits in the demo especially, and bring them onto our network and curate a whole slate

of content for this audience. It sounds to me like you want to be something of a food network or h G TV. That is the sort of a destination. It's it's a bit of comfort food. You may not go for a particular show, but you know what you're turning on when you get that channel? Is that? Is that the thinking? Yeah? That that really is so the

way to look at the programming landscape. And I'm sure your audience knows this well as as readers of Variety is you've got to send really you know, young skewing TV. You've got Disney, You've got Nickelodeon, you've got Cartoon Network that really feels the you know, the young demos kind of preteen, etcetera. There's really a chasm of programming for gen Z and millennials. You kind of look at the demos from the ESPNS or the Comedy Central, they've all

kind of skewed up in age. Now what you'll find is gen Z and millennial type programmings intermittently dispersed across networks. Right, it's not your Rick and Morty on Adult Swim, that's your Game of Thrones on HBO. Depending on which platform that you jump to. There are shows that tend to resonate well with therese younger demos. What there is not is a network that is essentially a cultural flag bearer

for these generations. You hearken back to MTV in the nineties, right when people were gathering outside fifteen Broadway eighties nineties were out there and VJs were all the thing. It was a cultural movement with music. That's where young folks would turn in to get their news or an attainment in the pop culture information, et cetera of what they love. Right,

there's just not that in today's day and age. You mean MTV readily concedes that, you know, hun or ten hours of a hundred, you know, forty or fifty possible hours of a week in programming our repeats of ridiculousness. And I actually happened to be a fan of that show. Um, But it's when you program a network with that scale of programming, it's it's very different than going head on into creating his max amount of hours of live original,

unique first run programming as you can. So, to Arial's point, we have more live original programming per week than any other TV network we've We've done the math MTVS at seven Discoveries about fifteen, sixteen, A and E right there as well. We're starting with over twenty and migrating to thirty and then once we open up our New York studio, because we have to studios, one imply a Vista in Los Angeles, the other one in New York at at

three World Trade Center overlooking the Oculus. That is our kind of modern day homage to MTV in their studio in Times Square. We're very excited to create a bicoastal programming set which will be over fifty hours a week, so we'll kind of be in a bit of rarefied air there. That sounds amazing, but it also sounds expensive. And as you said, you're not burdened with cable carriage fees. That's a cavy lift for excuse me, that's a heavy lift for purely advertising to support. How are you funding

all of this? So so I answer that kind of twofold and I'll kick it over to Arials. So it is expensive if you're programming is procedurals that are scripted, that are big budget on locations, so on and so forth. And candidly, there's been so much TV invested into what is the next generation of a lawyer's show where this doctor that sees ghosts or kind of iteration on either

you know, medical, legal, whatever kind of scripted programming. Younger generations have really issued that really expensive scripted kind of no been there done that type of programming in favor of live programming, UM and programming that works really well in a studio system. That's why you see such thriving

content on on YouTube and and on Twitch. And so what we've recognized is there's a world where we create TV and the tens of thousands of dollars per hour, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour, and so our TV on average costs about nine less on an hourly basis than what you see in traditional TV prime time. That said, it's already proven to pull massive numbers that rival what you see on the prime time I'm give you an example. We have a talent called Austin.

He's amazing. He's essentially the Mark Burnett of what you see on Twitch, he creates game shows, he you know, he pulls in wonderful engaged audiences and and you know, we're just such big fans. It is so Austin will have a concurrent audience of seventy five thousand at one time on Twitch. So let's say you part some of that out globally and say there's Spilitch outside of the demo he's pulling let's say thirty to forty thou in

the demo. If you take a network that's a very big, you know, nationally syndicated network, let's go with with Discovery. Discovery Network across all platforms, every single bit of pay TV does about sixties sixty five thousand people in the demo in prime time. So on one platform, you've got a single individual who's pulling comparable numbers to what you know a Discovery network is is pulling within the demo.

And Discovery obviously generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue and and aims at a at a different demo. But but to your your anti still valid, Yeah, So I guess to the point is it aims to the higher demo as well as all the other networks aiming to the higher demos. I shouldn't say the older demo. I misspoke older demo that will make sure to get

our nomenclaits are right. But yeah, I mean to the point if we can show what one platform someone can do, and if we can help elevate that art make it look like television. And by the way, my wife, she doesn't watch Twitch, she doesn't watch YouTube. She's assuredly not a gamer except animal crossing every now and then, but that will definitely qualify it as a gamer in today's day and age. But you know, she watched previews of these shows. She goes, oh my god, this is amazing.

This is kind of like MTVS Challenge meets Fear Factor with a kind of new twist for streamers. I'm like, yeah, that that's what we're doing. She's like, I haven't seen this before. And that's the reaction we're trying to get to is this is a new breed of programming that people will understand and recognize and watch. Is familiar premium produce entertainment, but it will feel new and novel, and

that may cover video games, that may cover music. We have a partnership with Proximity is one of the biggest E d M distribution channels on Tube to have almost ten million subs. We're gonna be creating a unique and engaging music content. We've got pop culture celebrities coming in

with movies, TV shows, et cetera. This is going to feel like premium TV for the younger generation and that is our bat that it will draw the kinds of eyeballs across all platforms that advertisers are looking for in a brand safe manner and again with less costs on the production side, and we think comparable revenue on that side.

We think that's a not only a survivable business model, but what we think ultimately a very profitable And you have a f understand right you have distribution deals with Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, gaming? Is that a rev share or an ad inventory share? How do those deals work? So so it will vary, so it varies, so it obviously varies. We have built an amalgam of TV, TV experience, game experience, entertain experience at our company and that's something that I think was

part of the answer for the last question too. We realize that there are certain core competencies that that you need to bring to the table to create a TV network. So our CEO is the former Discovery Channel c CEO and CFO name is Neil Kirsch. We've brought his entire pricing and planning team to the table. Our head of sales is from Facebook. Guy named Dave eckenstein uh is

who's the head of our head of sales now. But he was with Facebook, he was at um Bleacher Report in BuzzFeed, and even before that he was he was in sales and at Fox and NBC. So we have an incredibly refined, purposeful team that understands how to build, build media plans and how to actually sell TV. Now you look at what we're making, and we're making something that's in it's elusive in a lot of ways for advertisers.

Let's just talk it through for a second. It's elusive because the demo is usually pretty pretty like fragmented and hard to find. It's delusive because of some issues with

brand safety, right. It's elusive because the digital platforms where the traditional TV networks can they cannot go there because the shackles that they have with their mfns and their carriage fees, they're they're they're kind of like not able to be there, and so what is left there in that space is something that's a little bit hard to understand for most brands, and they're not sure that they want to wade into the water and figure out like do I want to invest in a specific U g

C creator? Do I want to invest in a team in E sports? Where do you want to invest? So as we're looking at our business model, it's built very much on the back of natively understanding what the market likes, how do they like it like that, you know, little things like let the let the pacing be a little bit more more casual, Like you don't have to overformat, you don't have to overproduce things. Because this audience that's built they're sort of like taste buds on streaming content.

They really they're used to watching really long form content where they're engaging directly with the audience. You have to also really think about what does engagement look like on our network. And so when we building our studio here, we invested almost exclusively in digital signage because we want to create um interactive formats with the audience rather than

building lots of scenic structures. I mean, there's there are just so many ways that you can you can build affinity with with gamers, but but also distributed in a very mature way that is comforting for for advertisers. Right that are that are so that are so focused on on targeting gamers now, especially with COVID, where there's there's been this like a massive mainstream light shining down on gaming, right when everyone's sort of inside gaming numbers are up, right,

everyone's playing games. This is not really news to Bend and me, but it has been further validation for our business model, which is which is like great authentic content for this market, make it in a way that's palatable for them and really easy for for investing. I want to yeah, I want to get specifically to your question about distribution because this is a very big component and it's the way that we've gone into structuring our business with any TV network. With ABC, for instance, go take

your phone out, go to ABC dot com. The first question you're going to be asked is please authenticate with your TV provider. Right. That is a fundamental roadblock to access and that is the unfortunate downside of the way that the TV business models were constructed, which are twofold. It is an ad inventory share model. So it's what's called national airtime, right, and the network sell those national airtime on their own, you know, every day, week, etcetera.

It's what upfronts are. There is then platform or local or affiliate time to where regional broadcasters, whether it's your Comcast, whether it's a Samsung Smart TV, etcetera, will take a share of inventory and they will turn around and sell that inventory on their own. So you could be watching a feed on a platform like Video or Samsung, and you would see an AD that comes from a national AirPod. The next AirPod, the next commercial pod, you may see

an AD that Samsung sold specifically for that platform. So we understand and accept that model, and that is the backbone of what we're doing. However, TV is also set up with what what's called a sub feme model, to where essentially it's like, okay, you know, Spectrum or Comcast, etcetera, pay us for you know, per sub to be able

to the right to carry our content. The problem that's happened in television is these distributors say, hey, we don't have the money to pay your ever increasing sub fees, and so this is highly problematic and TV networks are going fine, well, don't carry us, and that essentially is mutually assured destruction. So what happened is with those deals

they have what are called MFN or most Favored Nation clauses. Right, that means is if I charge spectrum ex send per and I charge Comcast less spectrum then drops down to the Comcast level. Right, creates all kinds of havoc, and all kinds of havoc. But what you assuredly cannot do is take your feet and then make it free. And that is that is the crux of the issue now

with television is younger demographics. Consumption patterns have migrated across different platforms with any industry, whether you're in fossil fuels and you're we're seeing the largest entertainment players have to plow billions into read engineering their operations to to reach that demo. And and still that you know, the death screen of authentication is still for you know in many cases that you know is that first thing that you have to get through, and it's the it's a big

turn off. I love the screen of death. Analogy, So what's happening, just to kind of round out this point, is from a bottoms up perspective. In any business, if it's fossil fuels, you're thinking, Wow, I'm seeing the world of electric cars pick up. I'm going to diversify my acquisitions into electricity and renewable energy because that is needs to ensure the survivability of our business. We whips maybe

falling out of fashion. What we realized is that because consumption patterns are migrating platforms like you know, a Pluto or or Zoom or mixer, Samsung or Video or wherever, we need to be flexible in our business model architecture

to be able to live on those platforms. And the way you do that is by keeping the good stuff, which is the inventory share for her platform, giving up the sub fees, but making up for it ultimately in a higher CPM, which is the rate at which you charge advertising, and frankly more scale and so ultimately we believe that we will be carried on more platforms than any TV network. Like Ario mentioned, we are the first TV network to be broadcast live on Twitter. That's entertainment.

I know, Cheddar kind of did it in a post cable model their millennial financial news. We believe that we're tacking into a much bigger audience with gaming and pop culture. UM will be the first network on YouTube, will be the first TV network on Twitch that carries the exact same feed everywhere real time. You just go to ven dot tv and you're watching our network. And ultimately, when brands want to hit scale and they want to hit as much of the NEMO as possible, will be how

many platforms are you carried on? It will be We're carried everywhere. Let's not now talk about viewership. Let me ask you, are there any instances in which you are paying for carriage? No, no, that's not in the business model. But it's not I mean not in business model nor in any single deal that we have struck today that the models are all inventory share and they all vary

on a per platform basis. But we have our national inventory, so when you're watching, you'll see our our commercials that we sell internally, and then you'll have local inventory that's sold on a per platform basis. I know you have a few deals, you have some deals with connected TVs, you know, to be directly on their on their home hubs. What would you say is harder working at a deal with a Twitch or a Twitter or YouTube or working at a deal with a Samsung or a TV set manufacturer.

I mean personally, Yeah, this has been an amazing process with the TV manufacturers, and it's been a wonderful process with all the different platforms. There is a rush to grab quality content. We're filling a hole that's needed. Um. Everyone has been equally we'd say, willing and an awesome partner. Some bigger organizations take a little bit longer. That's why we'll be announcing some of the bigger platforms that will be on here in the coming months because it's a

little harder to close as deals by launch, but they're there. Um. And when you hear about him, I said, okay, well that that's exciting and big news. And I understand why that deal would take longer than you know, a more nimble platform, but I would I would just put it this way too, and it and it gets down to a little bit of a segmentation discussion. But when you look at game and gaming is massive, right, it's this

hundred and fifty billion dollar industry. Right when when we think about gamers traditionally we're really it's really shorthand for like competitive gamers kind of like that black liquorice loving kind of you know, you might say, like League of Legends, they're deep into the cosplay world. They're like maybe Internet trolls, so to speak, etcetera. That's that's kind of like an old school version of what gaming actually is, right, So that's that's a lot of what you might see on

on Twitch and the streaming platforms right now. But if you look at the demography actually, and we did a segmentation study with Colinice, who is our our head of insights, who came from Twitch, he found that that's actually only about a third of the audience. So another third is really what we call it casual gamers that are playing this animal crossing there into Marvel. They are super into like the k pop and using social media and TikTok,

and they are more maybe on on YouTube. Then there's a whole other group that's about that are elder millennials, which are a little bit older. They have jobs, they have kids now, they have you know, responsibilities and air quotes, but they still really identify with the console wars. Right They've been there from the beginning. They have a deep pride in a sense of kind of like I've completed, you know, a hundred hour games. You know, X, Y and Z. When you say Zelda, they could have like

a ted talk about it, right, you know? And so that is yeah, you know what I mean. So, so what what we are hoping to do with our distribution is not just acquire more eyes. I mean, that's only a small part of the reason to do this, right, it's to be where all of the potential consumers are. And because the media landscape is shifting so quickly, we want to be as fastile and as integrated with a TikTok or snap as we are with Twitter or or

Facebook right, or as we are with connected TVs. And we're gonna find and I think we'll see after we launch. I hope our our suspicions are correct that we're actually hitting these different segments in a very unique and novel way that satisfies an audience that maybe didn't even understand or didn't follow the movement and streaming right, didn't follow kind of twitch and and how that that whole thing

had had sort of progressed. And that's okay, because we're trying to destigmatize gaming at large, right, We're trying to We're trying to you know, sort of like push off the notion of this like mono type type of persona that that is perceived by some about gamers. Right, it's all about celebrating things that you love. For us, it's about shining light onto in some cases niche passion and

really bringing it out in our content. And it's giving a platform to to really be civically minded in certain respects without proxy virtue proxy and saying like the world needs to change. Young people are is where that change is going to happen. And we have the ability with our platform, even in COVID, even in strange times, to

make a big difference. And so we feel like by putting together the right type of content creators, building the right type of authentic trust with them, and then distributing in a novel way where we can move with the consumers on like you know, the more aged industries, that we stand a real chance of of building, you know, something to last. And that's that's exciting, that's deeply exciting

as an entrepreneur. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs are probably listening to this, and I just want to speak speak to that that you know that that you can you can go out there and make make something from scratch that that can hopefully make a difference. Let

me ask you about the content operation. How are you going to balance the user gen nature of this that is going to appeal to the audience of the target audience with the concerns about brand safety and the need to presented, you know, to present to present pro programming

rather than people just kind of ripping. So I can hit that one, and then you probably have some thoughts on this clearly, but I think it's I think it's partially about understanding what your brand stands for in any any sense, right, you need to know what does my

brand stand for? And for us, we are trying to actively push back on bullying internet sort of internet bullying, um, you know, some of the stereotypes that that exist in gaming that um, you know, and hiding behind an anonymous sort of shield or wall while you're playing games and you start to act out and all this. We're trying

to push back on that. So it starts with us knowing that about our brand, and then when we select those partners that we want to work with, whether it's creators or or partner brands you select for the telegenics. You select for their audience, of course, and their affinity with the market, but you you select them knowing what you're getting, right, And so there's a wide spectrum of different types of eats out there. Some of them are yeah, quite toxic, and we we are not interested in working

with them. Some of them are legitimately you know, um, making content that that is uh, you know, it is really authentic and and there, and we see them that they're on the come up, and we want to mutually invest in creating content together and we support the thing they do. So just to kind of make sure that that everyone's listening to this understands it. You might say, well, are you competitors with Twitch? No, not at all, right,

we work with Twitch. Creators were distributed on Twitch. They sell our inventory, by the way, and when they have content that they create on their platform, we say, give us, give us one day of your content a week, we will cross promote you. You will still be with your

current audience. Because of the way that Twitch has their distribution and it's kind of like a modern version of syndication, they can actually stream to their audience and then project it over to to our channel through through the way that it works on Twitch, and we can then take

their content and distribute it more widely. So if they are feeling like they're hitting a glass ceiling, or they're feeling like they're getting tired of creating the same type of gameplay content every day, we can work with them and give them producers and and modern graphics tools and a studio in some cases to create some new stuff that will make them excited and feel like they're growing as creators. So again to get back to your question,

you know, are we worried about brand safety? I think we we are going to succeed in being authentic and resonant for the audience. So we want to and we do have an SMP person by the way, I just talked to them today, So we're creating rules. Of course, then there's some like strictly very very dark red lines, right like you know, human rights and like hate speech and all this kind of stuff. We also want to be natively natural for the audience, and so that's going

to be a line. But I think actually we might be slightly more open to you know, the speaking frankly or whatever. But at the same time, we're gonna be so by and far, the most brand safe product that's ever existed in this in this vernacular that I think our partners are going to be super happy that we're being up it. Do you have any launch partners sponsor advertising launch partners lined up yet that you can disclose? Yeah. I mean the reason you're hearing arials phone go off

is we've got our ad sales team. We just closed back to back deals. They would have put it on mute, because I think that's a good thing and a bad thing for an interview to congratulations, Thank you, thank you. UM. As I mentioned in variety, we signed a very large category exclusive deal will be announcing in the coming weeks. It was actually just shy ten million dollars a year. UM. It's a very exciting partnership and we've signed many, many

individual deals. All of those deals are gonna be revealed on on both kind of a rolling basis and as per our our mutual announcements. What has become unbelievably clear is that this is a white space that advertisers are looking to put their money into UM and there are a lot of brands who need this very pivotal U gen Z and literal audience and don't have means to

access them. UM we have got national QUSR brands, global tech brands, UM lifestyle brands, you name it, across category, Telco, so on and so forth, and so you'll see some of those that launch, will see some of those rolling out throughout the year. UM big opportunity here and we're starting to see that reflecting the marketplace. It's very exciting for us. How much to date have you raised uh to to launch van Our Our seed series raise was seventeen million dollars. As we talk here today, you are

six days out from launch. By the time this airs, you'll probably be six days or more past launch. But as we talk today six days out, what is keeping you both up at night? What is what is the thing that you're angsting about most as you get as you get close to launch. I don't think there's any one thing. I think it's all the things. Right. If an entrepreneur isn't up worrying or looking over their shoulder, you know, checking at crossing every tea and dot every eye,

then you're not you're doing something wrong. So I think ultimately arial and my goal is are we creating resonant entertainment? That people enjoy watching. I think if that is your first goal, it's really the content. It's not the business economics. It's you know, revenue is a byproduct, you know, doing the right thing on a way that engages with an audience and all that we're we're really worried about making sure this TV is is good TV um and you know that's what we hope the day one people can

see that. I hope people are patient with us. Launching a network is not easy, especially in the timeframe we did it. So for us, it's really listening to the feedback when it goes live, being out there on Twitter, being out there on Twitch, engaging and chat, hearing the feedback and doing our best incorporate uh that back into our program and to give ultimately the best product to

the audience. Well, it will be interesting to see what the then diagram looks like in six months, twelve months time. Good luck to you, admire anybody that that is putting this much into chasing a big dream. Thank you both for your time, Thank you, thank you give with you, Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts. We love to hear from listeners and be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.