The Rebooting Show

Brian Morrissey
  • 4.9 (54)
  • BUSINESS NEWS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
The Rebooting Show

The Rebooting Show gets into the weeds with those building and operating media businesses, giving an open view into how the smartest people in the media business are building sustainable media businesses. www.therebooting.com

  1. 10H AGO

    Inside Dude Perfect’s highly profitable business model

    An enduring challenge of the media business is finding leverage in models. This used to be fairly straightforward. Newspapers had leverage as quasi-local monopolies, Magazines had leverage that allowed Vanity Fair to pay a writer nearly $500k for three articles a year – and still be nicely profitable. And so on. It’s increasingly hard to find that kind of leverage beyond a few exceptions to the rule.  The closest is likely in lean creator businesses that have created valuable intellectual property that can be monetized in various ways. Dude Perfect is a great example of this. The four dudes from Texas A&M went from viral trick-shot videos on YouTube to building a very profitable media franchise with diverse revenue streams Beyond YouTube ads, Dude Perfect developed business lines in merchandise, licensing and live events.  It is a testament to the benefits of bootstrapping. According to an investor deck I saw, Dude Perfect grew to $35 million in revenue with over 50% EBITDA margins. That attracted a $200 million valuation in a funding led by Highmount Capital to expand the business. Andrew Yaffe, the Dude Perfect CEO who joined in October 2024 from the NBA, spoke to me on The Rebooting Show about how to build enduring franchise value in this kind of creator-led media business.

    45 min

  2. MAR 17

    Morning Brew's Robert Dippell on moving into B2B

    Morning Brew CEO Robert Dippell joins me to break down the fundamental differences between consumer and B2B media, why so many publishers underestimate the challenge, and how Morning Brew has built a thriving B2B business alongside its flagship newsletter. We also discuss the role of events, the shift to creator-led media, and why some of Morning Brew’s early growth strategies wouldn’t work today. Check out The Rebooting's new audience development research report, in collaboration with Omeda.

    50 min

  3. MAR 10

    Adam Ryan on why newsletters are a channel, not a business model

    Adam Ryan, CEO of Workweek, joined me this week to discuss his recent warning that the newsletter sector is overheated. Some points from the conversation: Newsletters are a commodity. The number of newsletters is growing faster than the number of readers. AI tools and cheap platforms like Beehiv have made launching one easy, but most newsletters lack true audience affinity.The inbox is not really a direct connection. It’s a platform like any other, subject to change. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection has broken open rates, AI tools like Superhuman summarize newsletters without opening them, and inboxes are being segmented, reducing visibility.Paid growth is a weak foundation. Many newsletters rely on paid acquisition and cross-promotion. The moment that engine turns off, engagement often collapses because there’s no real audience connection.Winners are thinking beyond email. The most successful publishers are building businesses around community, events, and services. Morning Brew, Workweek, and Lenny’s Newsletter all extend beyond just newsletters.Newsletters are a starting point, not a business. They are an MVP—a way to build an audience—but real success comes from expanding into new distribution and monetization channels.

    54 min

  4. FEB 25

    B2B lessons for B2C

    Sean Griffey, until recently the CEO of Industry Dive, joined me on The Rebooting Show to discuss the big things Industry Dive, and by extension a lot of B2B, got right.  Sean was rarely mentioned in the collection of digital media CEOs of the recent decade. Yet Industry Dive achieved one of the standout exits of the category. He led the B2B publishing company to a $525 million exit to Informa. At the end of 2024, Sean left his role at Informa TechTarget to enjoy “semi-retirement.”  I’ve found over the recent years that the worlds of consumer and business publishing are coming together. It used to be they spoke differently and had different priorities. Now, you have publishers like Punchbowl and Puck executing B2B strategies. Semafor relies on events as the bulwark of its revenue model. Publishers are more likely to talk up their newsletters than ComScore numbers. Some of the lesions we discussed: Focus on a specific audience. Industry Dive would turn off ads if it had a story picked up by Reddit that led to a flood of viral traffic. That’s because the people arriving weren’t the “right people.” B2B isn’t about reaching everyone.  Know who you’re writing for. A trick of B2B that narrows the focus: Write for a specific job title. Media properties nowadays can be messy, but they need to have a person in mind (and know enough similar people exist). Get receipts. Industry Dive focused its business model on marketing services and lead generation. In B2B, budgets are far greater for demand generation than branding or thought leadership.  Do more with less. Industry Dive operated dozens of publications in verticals like wast management, retail, marketing and Tk. But it operated a single platform. That allowed it to quickly move to create new brands, even if it sacrificed unique branding elements. Go direct. Media companies have three core areas: creation, distribution and monetization. Sean criticizes consumer publishers for relinquishing control over distribution by chasing search and social traffic and monetization by relying on programmatic advertising middlemen. B2B media markets have developed differently, allowing companies to avoid those kinds of dependencies.

    53 min

  5. FEB 17

    BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti on where social media went wrong

    BuzzFeed has always been a company that plays with the boundaries of media, technology, and internet culture. From its early days mastering viral content to its ill-fated attempt to build a sustainable news division, the company has been in a constant state of reinvention. Now, CEO Jonah Peretti is making perhaps his boldest move yet: transforming BuzzFeed into something more than just a publisher—into a social network. In Jonah's telling, this move springs from a frustration with the direction of social media, as platforms have turned to adversarial algorithms that addict users and prey on human weaknesses. It's a different social media than the heady days of 2012-2015, when BuzzFeed mastered the art and science of creating shareable content. Jonah and I discuss the media landscape and why it's not too late to come up with an alternative social network built around joy.

    55 min

  6. FEB 3

    Ad tech comes to TV

    The worlds of TV and internet publishing operated separately. The platforms, the dynamics and even the language used was completely different. Linear TV was brand focused and driven by scarcity dynamics while the internet quickly became a direct marketing machine. Those divisions have nearly erased, thanks in large part to the rise of streaming. Once TV began to be delivered across IP it was inevitable that the digital ad system would be ported over to be married with what was formerly a stodgy world. That’s led to a stampede of the Lumascape to TV, which has always had better ad options than what was on offer on webpages. The promise of streaming with programmatic ad mechanisms is to marry the sight, sound and motion of TV commercials with the targeting and efficiency of programmatic. In this spotlight episode of The Rebooting Show, EX.CO CEO Tom Pachys discusses the transition of the TV ad model that is underway in streaming, the similarities and differences between TV and digital advertising, and why out-of-home is now a fast-growing ad category.  Learn more about EX.CO's new CTV product.

    45 min

  7. JAN 28

    The outlook for AI and publishing in 2025

    This week, I'm joined by Pete Pachal, a publishing veteran who writes The Media Copilot newsletter that focuses on the intersection of the news business and AI. Pete and I discuss the recent breakthrough with Deepseek, and what it means beyond Silicon Valley and the stock market. We also get into how publishers are adapting to AI, why many of the product use cases are fairly basic to date, and how news consumption is likely to change as agentic AI takes off.

    1 hr

  8. JAN 20

    Axios' Sara Fischer on the alternative media's growth

    This is set up to be a banner year for alternative media. Axios senior media reporter Sara Fischer joined me on The Rebooting Show to discuss why institutional media has lost power and influence to an assortment of podcasters, YouTubers and independent creators — and steps it will take to adapt. Three key ones: Embrace curiosity. Much of institutional media feels like a set piece. Cable news shoutfests are obviously performative. Fact checks often come off as assembling facts to back up a preordained conclusion. Some of the most popular and influential independent creators present as curious. Speaking truth to power is not enough.Build around trusted voices. Later this month, Axios will roll out a membership program built around Sara’s Media Trends newsletter. Axios CEO Jim VandeHei has spoken of the need to elevate “stars,” particularly as AI does Smart Brevity by default. The market will drive this as unique talent has more options than ever — and the risk:reward ratio is often scrambled in the Information Space as the solo path is less risky and offers greater potential rewards. Pick a lane. The current news market is geared to ideological publications The Free Press, The Daily Wire, etc – leaving an opening for nonpartisan news, as hard as that is to pull off.  Thanks to EX.CO for sponsoring this series.

    54 min
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4.9
out of 5
54 Ratings

About

The Rebooting Show gets into the weeds with those building and operating media businesses, giving an open view into how the smartest people in the media business are building sustainable media businesses. www.therebooting.com

Information

  • Creator
    Brian Morrissey
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    156
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Brian Morrissey
  • Show Website
    The Rebooting Show

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