TikTok’s Sundance Microdrama Marriage; YouTube’s Money-Shaming HitThe platform meets prestige in a surprise mashup, and Caleb Hammer has a tough-love financial advice show that’s become a sensation
I wrote about Netflix’s podcast ambitions and what they’re paying creators and reported on Spotify’s pivot to video. My Creator Spotlights have featured Survivor contestant and podcast mogul Rob Cesternino and Drey Dossier investigator Audrey Henson. I’m natalie@theankler.com
Some weeks, there’s a lot of news that’s fit to print. So as dealmaking across the creator economy picks up — particularly as Netflix goes aggro on YouTube, picking off their podcasters — you’ll see me in your inbox most Thursdays with a bonus rundown of scoops, quick analysis and my regular Creator Spotlight feature. (Plus, later this month, look for extra dispatches from Cannes Lions, where Ankler Media has an amazing lineup of programs and events.) Today, I’ve got exclusive details from a TikTok executive about the vertical video app’s new partnership with the Sundance Institute to help train up the next generation of micro-series writers. Then I’ll take you inside the fascinating process behind how Caleb Hammer finds the people who divulge all (and I mean all) about the sorry state of their finances for his breakout YouTube series Financial Audit, which has 3.2 million subscribers — and why his subjects put up with a very tough-love interview style (swearing, name-calling) for the promise of getting their spreadsheets in balance.
TikTok’s Micro-Series Bid to ‘Open Up Creativity’
Yesterday I headed to the W Hollywood for the second annual Vertical Media Summit, where 250 people packed the 12th floor for a day of conversations about the fast-evolving format. As veteran media and entertainment analyst Rich Greenfield put it to me, Hollywood, having spent too long ignoring YouTube, “is trying not to make the same mistake again” when it comes to the booming world of microdramas. The conversation I moderated about TikTok’s role in the growing market for micro-series turned newsy when Dawn Yang, the platform’s head of entertainment partnerships, revealed she’s teaming with the Sundance Institute to develop a micro-series writing program. The free four-week program will be offered both IRL and online through Sundance’s learning and community platform, Collab. It’s targeting creators looking to expand their skillset into the format, which offers series that are shot in phone-friendly vertical aspect ratio and told in 60-to-90-second chapters. “Creators are already the best at storytelling for our platform,” Yang told me before our panel. “They understand their audience, they understand the pace with which our users watch their content, and they typically have two-way conversations with fans on the platform. A lot of the creators I know have ambitions to enter more scripted space in their writing process. The program is a way for them to tap into those creative aspirations.” At the end of the program, participants can submit their scripts to a TikTok-sponsored micro-series challenge, and the app may option some projects for development. The Sundance partnership is part of a broader TikTok effort to bolster its ecosystem of micro-series stories. In the last six months, the platform has launched both a micro-series hub within its app and a separate app for these stories, called PineDrama. While other apps dangle free episodes to eventually hook audiences into paying (via either micropayments or subscriptions), PineDrama is free and currently has no ads. “We believe that opens up creativity,” Yang told the Vertical Media Summit crowd, explaining that TikTok wants to experiment with new types of stories in the format. Take, for instance, the relationship thriller Screen Time, produced by Issa Rae’s Hoorae and financed by TikTok. The 57-part show, released in two batches in April and May, has been viewed 250 million times to date, Yang revealed. Screen Time was already in the middle of shooting when Yang visited the set and decided to finance the project, said Montrel McKay, Hoorae’s president of development and production, who joined us for the panel. Now the company has multiple micro-series in the works for TikTok. “For us, the next thing is how we continue to test and try different things with this platform,” he said, “because we’re not afraid to fail.”
How ‘Financial Audit’ Makes Millions on IRL Money Troubles
Caleb Hammer knows what it’s like to live with crippling debt. At one point in his early 20s, the aspiring composer had maxed out his credit cards and owed an additional $40,000, mostly from student loans and a car purchase. So when Hammer, now 31, tells a guest on his wildly popular YouTube series, Financial Audit, that they’re “fucked” — as he did in one recent episode — he speaks with authority. Financial Audit is one of those phenomena of the internet that needs to be seen to be understood. Part financial roast, part lurid voyeurism, part practical advice, it’s all entertainment and it’s racked up more than 3 billion views in just four years as its self-taught host has become one of the biggest personal finance creators on YouTube. It’s rare these days to hear about a YouTuber putting up those kinds of views after just a few years, so I sat down with Hammer to learn more about the operation he’s built. It turns out, he’s practicing what he preaches in all those Financial Audit videos and has made quick work of translating his fast-growing YouTube channel into a very real business. “It’s been a crazy ride,” he tells me. Austin, Texas-based Hammer now employs around 40 people who help him operate budgeting app Dollarwise (a subscription costs $99 for the year), sell money management courses ($667 for the whole bundle), and run membership program Hammer Elite ($99 for the year), which has 100,000 active subscribers and recently relaunched with its own app supported by the subscription video platform Uscreen. At the top of the entire funnel is Financial Audit, the flagship show on his YouTube channel (it’s also distributed as a podcast), where he interviews a person struggling with their finances. In each episode — they regularly stretch to 90 minutes or more — he’ll break down how the guest spends and saves money, discuss their long-term financial goals and offer advice. Hammer typically goes well beyond the spreadsheet with his interview subjects, using his signature Jerry Springer-esque interview style to antagonize them about everything from their eating habits to their vices to their parental co-dependency. In one recent episode, a woman discovered her boyfriend was paying for explicit content in the final minutes of their interview. The interview style can be caustic — Hammer sometimes swears at guests, calls them names and picks apart their decisions. “I like the tough love, Dave Ramsey approach,” he says, referring to the radio personality who made his name offering financial advice. Hammer’s other influences include YouTube creator Graham Stephan and comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s Kill Tony comedy variety show.
What’s Off Limits: OnlyFans and Politics
A strong chance of being belittled and humiliated in front of an audience of millions about your financial decisions hasn’t stopped people from clamoring to be guests on Financial Audit. Hammer tells me everyone who appears on the show voluntarily applies and goes through a multi-round vetting process that includes a general screening, a meeting with a producer who goes through all their financial records, and another with a story producer who digs into their personal background. Every Monday, Hammer and his team review the candidates who’ve completed that process. The perfect guests, Hammer says, are the ones with both an interesting financial situation and an interesting life story. “We make sure that people have seen the show, and if they haven’t, we send them an episode,” he says. Every guest also watches an onboarding video where Hammer tells them what’s in store — a bid to weed out those who can’t take the heat of the actual episode. “We’re trying to scare them into not coming on the show at that point,” he says, adding, “I want people to come on who love the show, who love roasts, who love the craziness of it and who want to participate in that in a fun, consenting way.” Financial Audit pays all guests a $1,500 stipend to travel to Austin for the shoot, and it lets guests stipulate certain topics they won’t talk about on camera. Some of the most popular “no-nos” are politics and OnlyFans purchases. “If there’s a single dude on my show and I haven’t called out an OnlyFans purchase, it’s there,” Hammer says. “He just doesn’t want to.” In 550 episodes, only one guest has ever walked off the set. And Hammer says the response to their appearances is overwhelmingly positive. All guests receive a copy of his budget-friendly meal plan and grocery list, complimentary lifetime access to Dollarwise and a free download of his educational courses. Hammer’s team also stays in touch with guests after their episodes air, and asks them to participate in annual surveys tracking their progress. On average, guests pay off $25,000 in debt within a year of appearing on the show, he says. Many of them later offer updates on the Hammer Elite show Audit Update. Hammer may be getting rich thanks to his guests’ bad financial decisions — his company told Business Insider that Dollarwise alone is on track to make $3.2 million this year — but he says his goal is to help them improve their lives just like he did all those years ago. “If people want to think about me as only a selfish content creator, which obviously isn’t true, whatever,” he says. “These are real people that I have gotten to know, that my team have gotten to know. We know their families and their kids and they are actually improving their lives. We just had a guest stop by the studio who paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad debt in the two years since she and her husband were on the show. We all celebrated and it was a great moment.”
Jim Shepherd, the executive who oversees Snapchat’s relationship with creators and other public figures has jumped to Meta, where he’ll focus on spreading the word about Meta Ray-Bans and other wearables as director of content and creator partnerships. Run-A-Muck — the media startup that I covered a few weeks ago — has raised $10 million in funding led by Gavin Baker’s Atreides Management on an $80 million valuation. Podcast studio PAVE has teamed up with A+E Global Media to produce a slate of six podcasts based on unscripted series like The First 48 and History’s Greatest Mysteries. Barack Obama is launching a new podcast with Malcolm Gladwell about America’s Reconstruction Era. New York magazine writer Danya Issawi has joined Substack, where she’ll be deputy editor working on The Substack Post, among other projects. She announced the news on her own Substack, which she says she’ll be publishing on more consistently in her new role. I loved this profile of L.A. “nightcrawler” Alex Choi, who tracks crime and chaos across the city — and live streams it for millions on Instagram and YouTube. Fitting that Choi didn’t participate in the piece.
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