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Exhibitor and conference sessions still nestle deep tech dives about compression alongside ‘how tos’ on podcasting but this no longer feels incongruous.
For years, traditional television viewed the creator economy as adjacent but signs are that YouTubers are now taking over the roost.
“Creators have gone from individual talent to next generation studios,” said Rajarshi Lahiri, YouTube’s Head of Content Partnerships (UK & Ireland) at the Media Technology Production Show (MPTS) in London this week.
You can’t find a broadcast conference now without a YouTube exec on the programme but what they have to say always pales beside the energy and invention of creators themselves.
“YouTube is fundamentally a relationship business,” explained Jordan Schwarzenberger, CEO & Co-Founder, Arcade. “The product is the relationship between creator and audience. They understand audience relationships in a way legacy media often still does not.”
TV producers are belatedly trying to co-opt learnings from creators, if not the creators themselves, into their formats.
But Schwarzenberger said that many people entering YouTube from broadcast still treat it like linear TV. “‘We’ll make great content, put it out, and people will find it.’ But on YouTube, that logic collapses. The algorithm doesn’t reward prestige, budgets, or legacy. It rewards connection.”
Arcade are the management and ventures company behind Europe’s biggest YouTube group, The Sidemen, which has amassed 244 million followers. Yet success did not come overnight.
“The reality is that most major YouTube businesses are built over years of relentless consistency,” Schwarzenberger said. “Everyone I know who’s succeeded on YouTube has probably been making videos for 10 years, including the Sidemen. They never missed a Sunday [their regular content upload].”
Schwarzenberger also noted that creators are having to respond to shifts in audience behaviour. Pushing out content is no longer sufficient. The feeds have to be personalised to sub-groups and tailored to platforms.
“Ten years ago, people consumed maybe 100 pieces of content a week. Now it’s thousands. You’re competing for tiny slices of attention,” Schwarzenberger said.
“Platforms now serve content based on interests, not subscriptions. That means creators must constantly earn attention — not rely on followers.”
This is where many traditional media businesses still underestimate creators, he said. “What may appear spontaneous on screen is often underpinned by extraordinarily disciplined operational thinking. From understanding thumbnails, distribution, retention and audience psychology at an obsessive level.”
For Lahiri, the key misunderstanding is treating YouTube as a single-format platform. “The creators seeing the greatest success are those strategically connecting Shorts, long-form video, livestreaming and memberships,” he said.
This interconnectedness is increasingly important as creators diversify revenue beyond advertising. Lahiri pointed to the rapid rise of creator-entrepreneurs building product lines and direct-to-consumer businesses through YouTube’s online shopping function.
But for all the money and monetisation opportunities flooding into certain creators from brands, creators themselves seem to instinctively want to keep corporates at arm’s length. Authenticity is an over-used term but creators know that if they lose integrity with the audience for one second, their following will collapse.
This attention to dialogue with the audience extends to being wary of getting involved with the red tape of TV partnerships and also to technology that risks undermining the direct connection.
“As AI-generated content increases, human creativity and personality become more and more valuable,” Schwarzenberger said. “Audiences want raw stories, real perspectives, and genuine connection. That’s why I think creators are entering a golden era.”
How to make a million
Grassroots storytelling and street talent is fundamental to the success of Million Youth Media (MYM), a platform designed to amplify youth voices and encourage social discussion through film.
Coo-founder Teddy Nygh argued that digital platforms allowed him to bypass traditional industry gatekeepers at a time when broadcasters showed little interest in the kinds of stories he wanted to tell. “We didn’t have to wait for permission,” he explained. “We could start creating, reaching people and tackling issues that mattered to us immediately.”
That thinking led to the launch of MYM in 2012 on YouTube.
“It was never just about views,” Nygh said. “It was about creating work that could stand for something and spark conversations.”
It now offers 730 films attracting 100 million viewers worldwide. More than half of views come from around 15 films, ten of which Nygh directed.
“We’ve reached a point where I can say, almost with certainty, that if we shoot a film today and upload it tonight, it will hit a million views,” Nygh said. “Algorithms change, but somehow we’ve managed to achieve that repeatedly.”
So what’s the formula? Nygh says it always starts with why. “If your ‘why’ is clear from the beginning it becomes much easier to protect the identity of the project.”
A key part of MYM’s production model involves integrating young people into every stage of filmmaking, from development through to delivery. “We mix experienced industry professionals with emerging talent. Whether you’re behind the camera, in front of it, shadowing, assisting, you’re on set, you’re paid, and you’re part of the process,
“That energy feeds into the work,” he believes. “When you bring together some of the best people in the industry working alongside brand‑new talent, you get something powerful.”
Passion projects
It may be harder for broadcasters to engage audiences but it’s also harder in the social media space. With so many creators the market is saturated.
“It’s incredibly hard to stand out and stay relevant,” said presenter and photographer Cam Whitnall. “You have to stay true to yourself and be driven by passion.”
Two million people follow Whitnall’s social channels which are all about wildlife. “Wildlife is universal so straight away, I knew I had something that could reach everyone. If I could make it engaging, informative, educational and fun, people would respond.”
The biggest lesson creators can teach traditional broadcasters is speed.
“I’ve worked on productions made exclusively for TV where I wasn’t allowed to share anything on social media because everything was under embargo,” said Ash Dykes, Explorer & Extreme Athlete. “Then the show wouldn’t come out for a year or two. By the time it airs, the moment has passed.”
He compared that to project on an Amazon expedition where he made content specifically for social media. “When I completed the expedition, the footage was online within two or three months. It was still fresh. Everyone could see it. Traditional press picked it up, and the community could engage with it immediately. In social media, if you wait a year, everything has changed.”
It doesn’t have to be perfect from day one, or day 201, they said. Just as long as you are prepared to put in the time to regularly post content and to change it to fit your audience.
“There’s no structured formula,” Whitnall said. “I’ve seen videos filmed in landscape, with no subtitles and they go viral. It’s just about putting it out there and seeing what happens. All it takes is one video. If that one hits, you’re onto a winner. Then the challenge is staying consistent and making sure you get that second video, that third video.”
It took six videos before Whitnall hit 100,000 views on TikTok. It took 100 posts on Instagram to reach 100,000 followers. And it took around 200 posts on YouTube to get over 100,000 subscribers.
“Consistency is everything in social media,” he stressed. “You have to keep connecting and chasing engagement. That doesn’t mean you need to post every day. But when you do post, make sure you love it.
“I’ve seen so many people give up after two or three posts because they didn’t believe in what they were doing. So I’m really clear with myself — every single post has to be something I genuinely care about.”
Production companies crack the code
Factual producer Air TV is re‑versioning medical or blue light unscripted shows like 999 Rescue Squad for digital. “It’s about taking a traditional high‑volume show, breaking it into different parts, and thinking about long‑form versus short‑form,” explained MD Matt Richards.
“We’re also doing original concepts. That’s the biggest learning curve. Changing the whole production model to make it repeatable, low‑cost, and doable in the margins of other shows we were producing.”
In March it launched YouTube channel First Landings capturing the moment student pilots make their solo flight. “If we thought of it as a TV show, we’d follow the whole backstory, getting to know the characters,” Richards said. “But for YouTube we strip it right down to the moment they begin their descent. It’s instantly repeatable, relatively low‑cost, and we can use AI editing and graphics to speed the production up.”
The channel may not yet be making any money but that’s not the point, he said. “We’re doing it to experiment. As a traditional TV production company, you’ve got a couple of options. You can say, ‘We’re not going into digital unless someone pays us,’ because that’s the old‑school commissioner model. Google is not going send you a massive cheque just because you put up content but you can find a way to do something that inspires the team, lets you test behaviours, and gets you moving.”
Most of Windfall Films’ content is still commissioned by a linear partner, but increasingly it is doing digital‑first alongside.
“We’re a producer, not a publisher,” explained Creative Director Dan Kendall. “Creators are both producers and publishers and that’s not our space. So we start by asking: Where is this going and what does that audience need on that platform? Because the platform changes the audience. Then we ask: What’s valuable to that particular audience? Then we work out how to tell the story appropriately.”
“In broadcasting now, big organisations expect producers to demonstrate digital experience. So for us, it was about getting that grounding so we could be taken seriously in that space, rather than expecting big revenue straight away.”
The Sun is a producer and publisher of its own content but its Director of Video Jon Lloyd suggested that the only difference between it and a solo creator was scale.
“We have 180 people across nine platforms making 25 long‑form shows every week and with 9 billion video views a year. And we’re about to start external commissioning. The crucial point is that there is no difference in quality between what we output for social and for traditional broadcast. The differences are workflow, format and audience. Just make something and put it out. Now anyone can do it.”
Lloyd worked in TV for many years before joining News Group and noted huge differences in delivering shows to digital compared to networks.
“In TV, I pitch to commissioners, we make the show, then we get the overnights and the feedback. We don’t really know what worked until after the fact. On YouTube, we have all the data from retention to drop‑off points. You can restructure instantly and you get instant feedback from your audience.”
Creators biggest kit mistakes
There were a number of big camera announcements this week, not least from Panasonic, Canon and DJI but cinematographer Keith Eccles dismissed them all.
“One of the biggest mistakes creators make is overspending on flagship cameras while neglecting lighting and audio,” he said.
Sharing his advice on the MPTS stage, Eccles stressed that “lighting and audio are way more important than a camera body or lens,” arguing that even an iPhone with good lighting and sound can outperform a cinema camera used badly.
Another common mistake, he said, is failing to fully utilise existing kit; “Many creators quickly replace gear when they’re unhappy with results, rather than learning how to maximise what they already own.” Eccles encouraged creators to buy versatile equipment that can serve multiple purposes, citing tripods designed for both landscape and vertical filming as an example of smarter investment.
He also warned against “chasing specs” instead of focusing on storytelling. With constant camera launches and social media hype around 6K, 8K and open-gate shooting, Eccles said creators often become distracted by features they rarely need.
“I shoot most of my work in 4K 50fps,” he explained, adding that an early documentary of his (now on Amazon Prime) was partly filmed on a Sony A7 III and partly on an iPhone. “Story is way more important than camera specs.”
He advised creators to “think seriously about storage and backup solutions early on.
“Reliable data management as an often-overlooked part of professional production,” he said.
Facilities offering postproduction and soundstages have to adapt too. It’s no longer just broadcasters and established production companies walking through the doors. Today’s customers include streamers, digital-first creators, branded content teams, podcasters, esports producers and social-native platforms.
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