The future of entertainment with Katie Couric, creator Michelle Khare, and YouTube’s Mary Ellen Coe

Summary

Katie Couric explores the dynamic future of entertainment with YouTube's Mary Ellen Coe and creator Michelle Khare. They delve into YouTube's dominance in streaming, how creators are evolving into production studios, and the platform's innovative features that are transforming the viewing experience. Mary Ellen highlights YouTube's commitment to creators and groundbreaking AI tools, while Michelle shares her experience blending traditional filmmaking with modern storytelling on YouTube.

Highlights

• Katie Couric visits YouTube and chats with Michelle Khare and Mary Ellen Coe about the future of entertainment. 🎤
• Michelle Khare transitions from DIY creator to production powerhouse, blending Hollywood vibes with digital storytelling. 🌟
• YouTube continues to be a juggernaut in the streaming world, surpassing giants like Netflix and Disney. 🚀
• Television viewing of YouTube content has surpassed mobile, transforming viewership habits. 📈
• Creators are using innovative AI tools to push creative boundaries and engage audiences on a global scale. 🤖

Key Takeaways

• YouTube remains the number one streaming platform, boasting a broad and engaged audience. 📊
• Creators like Michelle Khare are moving from solo efforts to full-scale production studios, redefining content creation. 🎥
• YouTube's innovative features, like Multiview and Watch With, are revolutionizing the viewing experience, especially on TV. 📺
• Fan engagement is crucial on YouTube, with instant feedback shaping future content. 💬
• New AI tools are aiding creators in generating ideas and translating content globally. 🌐

Overview

In an exciting exploration of the changing landscape of entertainment, Katie Couric visits YouTube headquarters, chatting with YouTube's Mary Ellen Coe and creator Michelle Khare. Discussing their excitement for the platform's future, Coe and Khare highlight how YouTube remains a leader in the streaming space, leveraging its vast creator ecosystem and robust features to stay ahead of the competition.

Michelle Khare discusses her evolution from a solo content creator into a full-fledged production studio, merging elements of traditional filmmaking with the cutting-edge storytelling techniques afforded by platforms like YouTube. As Khare explains, this new era allows creators greater control and connectivity with their audience, resulting in high-quality, engaging content that rivals traditional media productions.

Mary Ellen Coe shares insights on how YouTube supports its creators, including the use of innovative AI tools to inspire and aid content creation. By offering groundbreaking features and a unique platform for fan engagement, YouTube not only fosters creativity but ensures advertisers enjoy unparalleled reach and engagement. Together with Khare, Coe paints a picture of a dynamic, creator-focused future for YouTube's next two decades.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Creator Wall Tour In this chapter, Mary Ellen Coe and Katie Couric begin by expressing excitement about their meeting at YouTube. Mary Ellen introduces the 'creator wall,' showcasing memorabilia from well-known creators including a signed ball from Dude Perfect. The chapter highlights the significance of these iconic pieces that celebrate YouTube's most memorable moments and creators.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Meeting Michelle Khare and Discussion on YouTube's Future The chapter begins with Katie Couric welcoming Mary Ellen Coe. During their conversation, they introduce a special guest, Michelle Khare, a popular YouTuber known for her series 'Challenge Accepted.' Khare makes an exciting entrance, adding humor to the meeting as they indulge in a friendly banter about YouTube challenges.
• 01:30 - 02:00: YouTube's Competitive Edge In this chapter titled 'YouTube's Competitive Edge,' the conversation revolves around the evolution of YouTube creators from solo content creators to establishing expansive production studios. Michelle Khare expresses enthusiasm about this transition, highlighting the emergence of large-scale production empires. Mary Ellen Coe describes this transformation as ushering in a new era of media and entertainment with boundless possibilities. The chapter illustrates eagerness and anticipation from industry voices like Katie Couric and Mary Ellen Coe regarding the future growth and potential within this digital landscape.
• 02:30 - 03:30: High-Quality Content and TV Viewership This chapter features a discussion with Katie Couric and Mary Ellen Coe about the competitive landscape of streaming platforms. YouTube is highlighted as a leading platform, maintaining its position as the No. 1 streaming platform as reported by Nielsen for two consecutive years. The conversation also notes that YouTube has even led over major media platforms like Disney, Netflix, and Amazon Prime in some months.
• 04:00 - 05:00: YouTube's Interactive Features The chapter titled "YouTube's Interactive Features" discusses the platform's capabilities and offerings, emphasizing its vast creator content, comprehensive music library, live sports coverage, and blockbuster films. These elements combine to provide an engaging and interactive viewing experience for users. Highlighted by a dialogue with Katie Couric, there is a mention of how people often associate creators with DIY content, showcasing the diversity in the type of content available on YouTube.
• 05:30 - 06:00: Fan Engagement and Audience Trust The chapter discusses the importance of creating high-quality, polished content to engage fans and build trust. Michelle Khare, a content creator, shares her perspective on how YouTube serves as an ideal platform that blends traditional Hollywood filmmaking with modern storytelling techniques. This approach not only fulfills her lifelong dream of making a TV show but also resonates well with her audience. The team is composed of experts from both the digital realm and traditional filmmaking, ensuring a well-rounded content creation process.
• 06:30 - 07:30: Supporting Creators' Creativity The chapter discusses the integration of traditional and digital creative worlds, highlighting how creators are adapting their content for different viewing environments. Mary Ellen Coe mentions the living room as YouTube's fastest growing surface, with television views surpassing mobile. This trend reflects in creators increasingly producing 4K content suitable for larger screens.
• 07:30 - 09:00: Advertising and Brand Partnerships The chapter 'Advertising and Brand Partnerships' explores the evolving landscape of television viewership, emphasizing the shift towards digital platforms like YouTube. There is a discussion on the enormous consumption of YouTube content on televisions, averaging one billion hours watched. The chapter attributes this trend to innovations in viewing experiences, which include interactive features tailored to engage the new generation of viewers. These advancements suggest a significant shift in how audiences consume content, highlighting the interplay between technology and media consumption habits.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Advice for Aspiring YouTubers The chapter discusses innovative features on YouTube aimed at enhancing user experiences, especially for live event streaming. These include 'Multiview' for watching multiple stages of an event simultaneously, and 'Watch With', which allows creators to provide live commentary and reactions. Michelle Khare appreciates the development of television viewing on YouTube, highlighting how these features can transform the way users watch sports and live events.
• 10:00 - 10:30: Closing Remarks and Gratitude The chapter titled 'Closing Remarks and Gratitude' wraps up the content with a focus on the importance of creating engaging and high-quality content. The discussion emphasizes the goal of not only attracting individual viewers but also engaging their families, making the content compelling enough to draw the attention of people even if they are just passing by, like in a living room or kitchen setting. There is a mention of Katie Couric asking for more insight into the production process of each episode, indicating a focus on the behind-the-scenes efforts that go into making the content appealing.

The future of entertainment with Katie Couric, creator Michelle Khare, and YouTube’s Mary Ellen Coe Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 MARY ELLEN COE: Oh my gosh, Katie! KATIE COURIC: Mary Ellen, I’m so happy to see you! MARY ELLEN COE: Good to see you, thanks for coming to YouTube! KATIE COURIC: Are you kidding? I’m so excited to be here. I’m such a fan girl. I see all this. MARY ELLEN COE: Look at this. This is our creator wall. And we have memorabilia from some of our OGs, like Dude Perfect. This is one of the signed balls they use for the trick shot. This is the famous YouTube slide.
• 00:30 - 01:00 KATIE COURIC: How fun! MARY ELLEN COE: Yeah. It wouldn’t be a YouTube visit without creators so we have someone really special to visit you today. MICHELLE KHARE: Hello! KATIE COURIC: Wow that’s quite an entrance! Hi, how are you? MICHELLE KHARE: So good to see you. KATIE COURIC: One of my favorite creators. MARY ELLEN COE: This is Michelle Khare, Challenge Accepted. KATIE COURIC: Was this the easiest challenge you’ve ever accepted? MICHELLE KHARE: I don’t know, that slide actually goes pretty fast! KATIE COURIC: So great to see you! It’s the 20th anniversary of YouTube, what are you excited, both of you, about the next 20 years?
• 01:00 - 01:30 MICHELLE KHARE: I’m really excited about the transition from being solo creators to studios. And I think you’re gonna see a lot more creators building really big production empires. MARY ELLEN COE: It’s like a whole new era of media and entertainment. Possibilities are limitless. KATIE COURIC: It’s so cool. MARY ELLEN COE: I can’t wait to see it. KATIE COURIC: Alright let’s go sit down. MICHELLE KHARE: Let's do it.
• 01:30 - 02:00 KATIE COURIC: Mary Ellen, YouTube has become such a juggernaut in the world of entertainment and culture, but it’s gotten a lot more competitive since YouTube launched. How do you continue to distinguish yourselves from other platforms? MARY ELLEN COE: Nielsen reported that we’re the No. 1 streaming platform, and this has been two years running now. In fact, there have been several months where we were the No. 1 media platform, ahead of our partners like Disney, and Netflix, and Amazon Prime.
• 02:00 - 02:30 So, it’s a serious responsibility, but I think, we really have the best creator content around the world. And you take what fans love about creators, and then you combine that with the most comprehensive music corpus of anywhere in the world and live sports, and blockbuster films, and that’s YouTube. It’s an incredible, engaging viewing experience. KATIE COURIC: Michelle, I think when people think of creators, they often think of scrappy DIY content,
• 02:30 - 03:00 but your content is really high quality and so polished. Can you tell us about why it works for your platform and for your fans? MICHELLE KHARE: Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to make a TV show. And what’s really cool about creating on YouTube specifically, is that we’re able to bring a lot of the things that I love about traditional Hollywood filmmaking and merge it with the forefront of modern storytelling. So our team is actually half people from the digital world,
• 03:00 - 03:30 half people from the traditional world. And I think that you can see that expressed in the final content itself that we’re really trying to blend these two worlds in a different way. MARY ELLEN COE: The living room is our fastest growing surface. So just recently we announced that television viewing of YouTube has surpassed mobile. And what’s happening now is creators are actually creating for that environment. So we’ve seen like a 35% increase in 4K uploads.
• 03:30 - 04:00 And there are all kinds of features that really are lending to a whole new generation of TV viewership. KATIE COURIC: I read a stat recently that people are watching one billion hours, on average, of YouTube content on their television. MARY ELLEN COE: Absolutely. What do you think is driving that trend? MARY ELLEN COE: It’s the innovation in the viewing experience. So we work on a lot of features to make it much more interactive for this next generation.
• 04:00 - 04:30 So things like Multiview, which I don’t know if you’ve watched a sporting event in Multiview. We live streamed Coachella so that you can see four stages at once, and it really creates this very dynamic viewing experience. We’re also doing Watch With, it’s called, so that creators like Michelle can do commentary on events they’re excited about, they can do reactions to. And so it will fundamentally change the way people watch sports or live events. MICHELLE KHARE: I love the growth of television viewing of YouTube.
• 04:30 - 05:00 And for our channel, it’s the No. 1 surface. So that’s something we think about all the time, is really making something engaging and premium-quality enough that not only will one person watch, but their family, as they’re walking through the living room or maybe cooking in the kitchen, they’ll be drawn to the content as well and lean back and really listen. KATIE COURIC: Talk to me a little bit more about what goes into producing every single episode of your show.
• 05:00 - 05:30 MICHELLE KHARE: So the Houdini Project, for example, I think that was over a year of preparation from our team, hiring a team of engineers to build the tank, finding a group of magicians and free divers to train me for it, and then ultimately presenting it in front of an audience. And so, I think some of these new tools are really exciting, because they’re a more modern take on how we can engage with our audience and give them a peek behind the curtain. And I think, really, that’s the benefit of YouTube: is that there’s a much more direct connection with the audience.
• 05:30 - 06:00 There aren’t all these layers in the way of people green-lighting things. I mean, really the only barrier to entry is the upload button. KATIE COURIC: So let’s talk about fan engagement, because that is such a unique part of YouTube, this direct relationship. How important is that and how do you build trust with the audience? Because I would imagine authenticity is so key. MICHELLE KHARE: The audience is our customer, and we listen to everything they say.
• 06:00 - 06:30 The second a video goes up, it’s really powerful and exciting to be able to see instant engagement and instant feedback in the comments section. And those are things that our team takes into consideration when we’re green-lighting our next episodes, because I really want to make something that matters to people. And when you make something that matters to someone, they’re more likely to share it and spread the word of that thing. KATIE COURIC: How is YouTube helping creators expand or push their creative boundaries?
• 06:30 - 07:00 MARY ELLEN COE: Yeah. So, creators like Michelle come visit us all the time, or we will go out and visit their production studios. We take very seriously the types of things they’ll say, “Well, you know, sometimes when you’re creating weekly it’s very hard to have inspiration all the time. What’s my new storyline?” So we’re looking at new AI tools to help generate ideas for storylines. Dream Screen, which was one of the tools we created so that if you have an idea or inspiration and you can’t render it,
• 07:00 - 07:30 you can do text to video prompts and to render just incredible backgrounds. We are working on a dubbing feature called Aloud, which imagine, Michelle’s content will translate all over the world. KATIE COURIC: Mary Ellen, why is YouTube such a powerful platform for advertisers? MARY ELLEN COE: It’s about reach and engagement, Katie. Advertisers know they can reach an incredibly broad audience.
• 07:30 - 08:00 Michelle mentioned her relationship with her fans and the feedback and that connection, and that’s really authentic. So it’s important. It’s not just swiping, right? It is an engaged relationship with the fans and that engagement results in more effectiveness for advertisers. And then, finally, we really have unparalleled return on ads spend. I mean it’s, advertising is all about performance, and our AI-driven
• 08:00 - 08:30 algorithms really do an incredible job of driving conversions for advertisers. KATIE COURIC: Let’s talk about ads and brand partnerships. What makes a successful partnership for you, Michelle? MICHELLE KHARE: I really think the best branded partnerships are ones where both the brand and the creator seamlessly fit together, and it weaves into the story very naturally. And I think a great example of this was last year, we got to do this incredible episode sponsored by Dove. It was a feature-film documentary about me
• 08:30 - 09:00 training like a black belt in tae kwon do for 90 days. And when we created that project, we thought originally, we were just going to put on YouTube and kind of go on our way. But, through the partnership, we actually premiered it at a film festival. We premiered it in a theater for our fans, and then ultimately on the platform itself. And I think that is just a great example of a brand elevating a creator who is already doing something cool. KATIE COURIC: And the creator elevating that brand, because there’s a halo effect
• 09:00 - 09:30 for the brand, supporting a badass woman like you. What advice would you give other people, Michelle, who want to start their own YouTube channel? MICHELLE KHARE: This is going to sound super cliche, but just start. And I think that is really scary for a lot of people, myself included. I think I procrastinated for a long time posting my first couple of videos, but honestly, you just got to do it because that is how you learn best. And I think that there’s a lot you can study online, but ultimately
• 09:30 - 10:00 just hit upload and see what happens. KATIE COURIC: I’ve learned so much from you all. Thank you both so much. MARY ELLEN COE: We’re so happy to host you today. KATIE COURIC: Thank you, and continued success to both of you. MARY ELLEN COE: Thank you. MICHELLE KHARE: Thank you. KATIE COURIC: Oh, oh, oh! [excited, jubilant laughter] MICHELLE KHARE: You did it, Katie!