My newsletter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/

Heading into 2025, we knew that MrBeast had a huge online following. After all, his main channel has grown to over 300 million subscribers and 74 billion views. He’s built out an entire studio in North Carolina and is mobbed by legions of fans wherever he goes.

But what we didn’t know was whether this online fame would translate into traditional Hollywood success. MrBeast famously signed a $100 million deal with Amazon to create one of the most ambitious game shows of all time, and it debuted in December with 1,000 contestants and $5 million in grand prize money.

Flash forward to today, and it’s clear that the show was an unequivocal success, with Amazon claiming it reached record viewership numbers. Now, Hollywood studios are casting about for other projects that can be helmed by popular creators.

What will those projects look like? To answer that question, I spoke to Lucia Moses, the co-author of a Business Insider piece titled “What MrBeast can teach Hollywood.” We discussed why previous creator-led shows failed, how the Beast Games viewership compared to other popular shows, and whether MrBeast’s production mishaps that led to a class action lawsuit will give studio executives any pause.

My newsletter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/

When JJ Hornblass got his first journalism job in the 1990s, his dad made a deal with him: he could spend a few years as a reporter, but he had to eventually make his way over to the revenue side of the media business. It only took JJ a few years to follow through on that deal.

While working as an editor at American Banker, he pitched his bosses on launching a print newsletter covering the mortgage securities market. When those bosses took too long to make a decision, he left his job to launch the newsletter on his own. Flash forward 30 years, and that newsletter has grown into Royal Media, a B2B media company that covers four niche industries.

In a recent interview, JJ explained where he found his initial subscribers for that first newsletter, how he expanded into new verticals, and why he’s so focused now on building and selling access to data platforms.

My newsletter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/

The Dispatch was launched in 2020 with a pretty straightforward thesis: that people would pay for quality, fact-based journalism. It certainly had a partisan lean – it was co-founded by conservative journalists Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes after all – but it steered clear of the wholesale rejection of reality that’s rampant in most pro-Trump media.

Flash forward to 2025, and that thesis has been vindicated. It recently crossed 45,000 paid subscribers without the help of huge VC investors. Now, it plans to diversify its revenue streams, and to accomplish that it brought on Mike Rothman, a longtime media veteran who helped build companies like Thrillist and Fatherly.

In a recent interview, Mike walked through his decision to join The Dispatch, what kind of advertising he wants to sell, and why brands are suddenly interested again in sponsoring politics media.