YouTube is a worse gatekeeper than the TV networks, because you can't negotiate with an algorithm
Comedian Adam Conover says Hollywood, chasing Netflix, tore down cable TV with its own hands and handed entire genres — game shows, daytime, lifestyle — to YouTube. And YouTube's algorithm is a gatekeeper you can't talk to and can't pressure.
The video won't play here. Listen to the audio instead:
The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
"Creator" is a word platforms invented to get you to work for free
Conover says he uses the word "creator" but doesn't like it, because it isn't a neutral job title — it's contract language invented by social media companies: the platform holds up Mr. Beast making a billion as the template, gets everyone to believe they might be next, and so people are willing to work nearly for free for a lifetime, just waiting for the day the platform breaks off a small piece of the ad revenue. His analogy is Avon or Mary Kay calling their salespeople "entrepreneurs" — it sounds like being your own boss, but it obscures what the platform has done to the industry. So he insists his own identity is stand-up comic, comedy writer, television host, and a member leader of the WGA — not creator or influencer.
— Adam ConoverChasing Netflix, Hollywood handed 60% of TV to YouTube for free
Conover says that in his two years in Hollywood, every conversation started with the same line: did you know YouTube is already the biggest streaming service on television — not laptops, not phones, television. And YouTube had been that for about a decade before the TV industry noticed. The reason is that everyone was chasing Netflix, everyone wanted their own mini HBO at $15 a month, and in the process they tore down cable and linear TV with their own hands. But news, talk, comedy chat, lifestyle, daytime shows like Drew Barrymore's, travel, weather — roughly 60% of television content — they never built for streaming, effectively ceding the whole thing to YouTube. Now when viewers want to watch people talk about home renovation, talk about the Knicks, or watch a funny person talk about the news, their first instinct is YouTube, and it's all free.
— Adam ConoverThe math of streaming has no room for game shows
Conover tells the story of pitching a game show to a streaming platform: he came with a big IP and thought the pitch was good, and the rejection was "we can get someone to watch one episode, but we can't get them to watch a whole season in a weekend." He was stunned — your business model requires viewers to binge a whole season over a weekend, but game shows were never watched that way. What the anecdote illustrates is the mechanism: streaming treats "subscription conversion" as the only metric, so it keeps only the premium content that drives subscriptions, and the middle layer — cheap, high-volume formats with a steady audience — gets systematically abandoned. YouTube is exactly what caught that layer.
— Adam ConoverCable's books were in the black; streaming no longer knows how to do that math
Conover says his old show on truTV was "in the black": how much it cost to make, how many ads it sold, at what ad rate, how much came back from the cable company — all of it was calculable, which is why it ran five seasons. Now there are two problems. First, streaming doesn't know how to make a show profitable; they run weird math like "how many people signed up for Apple TV to watch this." Second, they voluntarily gave up decades of accumulated advertising business — CBS can get the rate it gets for Colbert's slot because CBS has spent a hundred years negotiating with advertisers like Johnson & Johnson and knows what delivering two million viewers is worth, and that can't be rebuilt overnight. Netflix convinced the whole industry that advertising was never coming back, everyone dismantled those businesses, and now they're trying to rebuild them on Peacock.
— Adam ConoverThe algorithm is the gatekeeper, and it's harder to talk to than CBS
Faced with the rebuttal that platforms let anyone upload, that this is democratization, Conover's response is: then you are the gatekeeper, the algorithm is the gatekeeper. It used to be three networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, and you had to please them; now it's YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and because the business models differ, YouTube barely competes directly with the other two on long-form, which means there's effectively one door. Worse, the old gatekeeper was a specific person you could go persuade; now you go to Netflix and say this show is a good idea, and they say the algorithm says no, they have no room to make the call. He thinks good shows happen precisely when "the exception gets made." His conclusion: the media ecosystem is now more concentrated and more closed than before, and the only thing that changed is that anyone can upload for free and YouTube will host it.
— Adam ConoverYouTube wants to be a cable company, not a channel
Conover offers his own theory: YouTube doesn't want to be a channel, it wants to be a cable company, and it treats the Adam Conover channel as a cable channel — you negotiate your own brand integrations, you do your own business development, it's just the pipe and takes a cut off the top. So YouTube doesn't pay creators, but it has started doing its own upfronts, connecting creators with advertisers, giving shows more placement, trying to "light the pilot light" without putting in money or infrastructure. Netflix's model is the opposite: pour money into production, own the premium end. It's a competition between two giants, and creators are stuck in the middle.
— Adam ConoverHe took a Worldcoin ad, then refunded the money and deleted the video
Conover walks through that own-goal: Sam Altman's orb company approached him, asked him to shoot a video at an event and post it, for a lot of money. His judgment at the time was "this product looks like garbage, but the audience will hate it, whatever, the money can fund the things I want to make," so he took it. At the keynote, his assessment was "this is the funniest vaporware I've ever seen, it will never ship, it's the biggest pile in tech." The problem is the audience only saw the uncomfortable surveillance-product version, not what he felt in the room. In the end he pulled the video, refunded the money (he was paid nothing), and instead made a 25-minute video trashing the product, which he also didn't monetize. His takeaway: creators often only realize they've crossed a line after they've crossed it, and in a media company that becomes institutional memory, while for an individual creator you just have to carry it yourself.
— Adam ConoverThe organizing target isn't YouTube, it's Mr. Beast's employees
Asked whether creators could pressure platforms the way a union does, Conover says that if a thousand YouTubers went to negotiate together, YouTube wouldn't even pick up the phone — there are another thousand teenagers willing to work for free. So once he puts on his labor organizer hat, he thinks the target isn't YouTube itself but the channels: the biggest YouTubers aren't really individuals, they're companies, Adam Savage is basically making a daily cable show, Hank Green has a whole crowd behind him. YouTube's interest is also in making big channels bigger. The path he foresees is channels continuing to inflate until they're big enough to organize, and then the top 100 channels negotiating revenue share with YouTube — but that becomes a B2B negotiation that may not benefit the employees inside those channels. And what truly can't be organized is the "dark matter": the people posting once a week to promote their dental practice, or dreaming of going full-time and never getting there, whom Instagram never told anything. That part can only come through government regulation, the way states handle gig workers and rideshare drivers, and it will be very slow.
— Adam ConoverIn their own words · checked verbatim
I feel the word creator was created by the social media companies as a way of tricking people into entering into an extremely inequitable economic bargain
Adam Conover5:15
did you know that YouTube is the largest streaming service on television sets on not on forget laptops, forget phones
Adam Conover8:21
to the people from YouTube, I would say, well, you're the gatekeepers. The algorithm is the gatekeeper.
Adam Conover41:28
they have more power than anyone who ever worked for CBS or ABC ever did. And it's actually worse because people aren't in charge of it.
Adam Conover42:32
the media ecosystem now is more concentrated, more closed off than it ever was before. The only difference is now anybody can upload anything for free and YouTube will host it for you.
Adam Conover43:34
the most pernicious lie the tech industry tells is about its own inevitability
Adam Conover1:05:27
half of it is just mark zuckerberg lying to people over and over again so we don't need to accept it as some as some law of the universe
Adam Conover1:06:29
Figures
| Share of TV content ceded to YouTube in the cable era | about 60% | 8:21 |
| Episodes of Adam Ruins Everything on truTV | 65 | 10:25 |
| What Conover spent to self-finance a stand-up special | five figures in dollars | 23:57 |
| Length of Conover's YouTube video about Worldcoin | about 25 minutes | 55:58 |
| What Conover was paid per blog post for AOL early on | $12 | 40:25 |
Glossary
- in the black
- On the books, revenue exceeds costs — the show pays for itself through ads and revenue share.
- vaporware
- A heavily hyped product that will never actually ship or will never work.
- upfronts
- The annual event where networks presell next season's ad slots to advertisers; YouTube now does them too.
- AVOD
- Ad-supported video on demand — the free, ad-monetized model rather than subscription; YouTube's main channel is one.
How to listen
Founders and investors working in content, media and platform ecosystems, and anyone who wants to know where the "creator economy" rhetoric came from and how platform bargaining power actually works.
The host's intro in the first two minutes and the three mid-episode ad reads can be skipped.