Mesmeric Moves: How to Thrive When the Media Shifts | Michael Holstein

In this episode of the Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim speaks with Michael Holstein of Mesmeric Media about the evolution of his company, the challenges faced in the content industry, and the importance of taking risks in content creation. They discuss the shifts in audience preferences, the impact of partnerships, and the need for innovative ideas in a saturated market. In this conversation, Michael Holstein discusses the importance of partnerships in entrepreneurship, the dynamics of defining roles among partners, and the complexities of navigating the production landscape. He emphasizes the need for collaboration, the significance of understanding production budgets, and the evolving nature of media production. Holstein also shares insights on how to connect with him and his company, Mesmeric Media, for potential collaborations.

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Christian Brim (00:01.818)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. A special shout out to our one listener in Barcelona, Spain. We are not translating this into Spanish for your benefit, so hopefully you can understand it. Joining me today, Michael Holstein of Mim-Mim-Mim-meric Media. Did I get that right?

Michael Holstein (00:16.875)
Yeah

Christian Brim (00:31.504)
Eventually, no Mesmeric media my apologies Okay, my apologies welcome to the show

Michael Holstein (00:31.638)
No, you were close. Mesmeric. Like mesmerizing, but different.

Michael Holstein (00:41.472)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Christian Brim (00:43.632)
Well, let's start there. What is the origin story of Mesmeric?

Michael Holstein (00:48.814)
Um, so I ran a company, um, for, I don't know, 15, 12, 15 years called the content farm, um, based out of Washington, DC, producing television, movies, all that stuff. Um, and a couple of things happened. Um, about two years ago, I was trying to scale up, um, even at a time when the industry was scaling down. Um, so I met a couple of guys who had a production company out of Philadelphia.

They did a lot of commercials, branded content, things like that. But they had what I didn't, which was kind of hard skill infrastructure. So editors, graphic designers, camera ops, and I had developers, investors, lawyers, all the things that I did. So it was just really, I don't know, just a good fit all around. We had the same kind of ethos, same work ethic, like the same stuff.

like each other's work and most of all kind of like each other as people. So we partnered up for lack of a better way to describe it. And I wanted to rebrand to reflect the new entity. And at the same time, you know, when I started my company, I thought content and content forum was good name. And now in this world of anybody with like a iPhone is a content creator. The whole idea.

Christian Brim (01:53.298)
very important.

Christian Brim (02:15.334)
Hell, I'm a content creator. mean...

Michael Holstein (02:17.198)
Well, it's not necessarily bad, but also like everybody in the street comes to be content creator, right? Uh, so when I made it, wasn't necessarily that easy of a entry point. Um, but it of just felt dated, you know, even the idea of the farm, like we're just churning out content. So, um, went looking for a new name and, just through sort of, I don't know, process of elimination, trial and error available domains, whatever it was, um, found our way to Ben's Merrick.

Christian Brim (02:21.841)
Yes.

Christian Brim (02:30.61)
Mmm.

Michael Holstein (02:47.022)
which yeah, it's a cool name, hard to pronounce obviously. But yeah, so far so good with it, we like it.

Christian Brim (02:50.266)
Yeah, clearly.

Christian Brim (02:55.6)
I love it. excuse me. When, when you guys joined forces, did you, create a new legal entity or is this more like a joint venture? Okay.

Michael Holstein (03:05.208)
We did. No, this is a formed entity. So it's not just the branding and the ID, but a new LLC. And I still have Content Farm that runs a couple of projects and they still have J2 that does some of their commercial work. But for all of our sort of traditional TV movie work, everything's under Mesmeric heading now.

Christian Brim (03:30.5)
Okay, so going back a couple of years ago when you were you said you were trying to scale up when everybody else was scaling down. What were some of the challenges you ran into there?

Michael Holstein (03:42.51)
It's just been a really weird couple of years in the content industry. So, I mean, you start with the proliferation of content, the short attention spans, and then factor in the mergers and acquisitions in the industry. So, you you're talking to the head of a network one day and they may not be there the next. They may not know who owns them or the budgets are frozen, things like that. And then of course, obviously there was COVID, there was the actors and writers strikes, even the

Christian Brim (03:51.654)
Yes?

Michael Holstein (04:12.11)
fires in LA a couple months ago were detrimental to our industry. But I've always been of the mindset that in times of trouble or times of turmoil, there's also opportunity. So it's a chance to buy cheap. And I guess by scaling up, was just increasing our capacity to do more things. It used to be, I don't know,

Christian Brim (04:18.448)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:28.434)
100%.

Michael Holstein (04:41.614)
For every 20 ideas we had, five would go into development and one would get picked up for a show. And those numbers just kind of got so stretched out. So it was like out of a hundred ideas, 10 maybe get deeper development and one gets picked up for a show. So we just needed to be able to develop more, quicker, better, faster, cheaper, all the things to fill this hole in the market. even as networks are getting cheaper and cheaper, there's more and more need for

hours of television. You know, got to put stuff on air with whether it's via fast channel streaming cable, whatever the format, there's just a lot of empty space to fill. yeah, we started scaling up with an idea of, you know, the more ideas, the better and kind of having a big tent policy and just seeing what sticks.

Christian Brim (05:12.572)
Right.

Christian Brim (05:33.98)
Do you feel like the market has reached any type of saturation or had a fundamental shift?

Michael Holstein (05:46.286)
Definitely a fundamental shift. Saturation? don't know. I don't think so. In fact, recently, just in the past couple of months, there's been increasingly positive signs of life that networks are open for business again and buying shows and things like that. yeah, the fundamental shift is absolutely. I even now that people are, well, for a while there was just no buying.

Now there is buying, least in theory. But budgets are shrinking. Nobody really knows how to track things the same way. So, you know, it used to be shows on television and here's the Nielsen rating and, you know, whatever. But now between streaming and people consuming stuff on social and, you know, even going way back to DVRs, I mean, it's just been years and years and years of sort of chipping away at the

fundamental way to benchmark successful content. So with that shift, think comes uncertainty on the part of the buyers, the networks, which translates to less tolerance for risk, would say, only really putting into play the very bankable projects. whether that's super unique content or A-list talent or access into

Christian Brim (06:49.392)
Mmm.

Michael Holstein (07:15.526)
unique worlds. They're just less prone to like take a step. Like if somebody now were to go to discovery and pitch naked and afraid, they'd shoot it down an heartbeat. But it's existed for 20 years. you know, so we kind of found there to be a hole in a marketplace because of, I don't know, overcautiousness. And I'd say, I mean, the other fundamental shift, which again, seems to be rectifying itself and

Christian Brim (07:28.167)
Right.

Christian Brim (07:38.19)
Yeah.

Michael Holstein (07:44.238)
I don't mean this politically at all, but for a few years we hit this point where we'd pitch a show to History Network or whatever, History Channel, which their audience is 98 % white males and they'd say literally, hey, we can't buy any shows that feature white males anymore, which is just absurd on its face. Obviously, we are a very diverse company.

have a lot of projects now, like some of our biggest ones, are with, you know, black and non-white creators, but, you know, the idea that they were going to sort of create this box checking system, lot of the networks, you know, so we took a show about special forces or whatever to the history channel, which is, couldn't be more in their wheelhouse and they can't say, well, there's not enough black and brown people in this. Okay. But in 19.

sixties or forties or 1800s in special forces that, know, that was the reflection of reality. Like we love elevating. Right. Exactly. Right. And we love, we love promoting underrepresented voices and we're fully in favor of, but also it's like, I don't want it to be performative, you know? I mean, the analogy I always use some big football fan was the NFL has always had this Rooney rule.

Christian Brim (08:43.045)
Right.

Christian Brim (08:47.44)
You are the history channel, right?

Michael Holstein (09:06.402)
where before a team can hire a coach, they have to interview a black person. So for years it was Art Shell from the Raiders and everyone, including Art, I'm sure knew he wasn't getting the job. You know, they could have been had a assistant coach, offensive coordinator who for years has been sort of groomed to take over when the head coach leaves and they still to go through this sort of performative, you know, process where we interviewed a black person. And to me,

Christian Brim (09:07.356)
Right.

Christian Brim (09:29.189)
Right.

He should have charged for those interviews, right?

Michael Holstein (09:34.67)
I mean, hopefully he got first class airfare at least, nice hotel. But yeah, so we don't want to be performative about it. We love working with diverse creators, but we don't want to do it just to check a box. So I think that has been a big shift in the industry.

Christian Brim (09:51.763)
That's interesting that you said that, that the risk tolerance has gone down because I think that's a reflection of the uncertainty that you were referencing where I don't know exactly how I'm going to make money on this or how much money I'm going to make on it. so I was talking to a producer here in Oklahoma city that had a, it was essentially a,

Michael Holstein (10:09.878)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (10:21.084)
bank robbery plot that was based in the Civil War and like they came upon a cache of Confederate gold or something. don't know. Anyway, he went to go pitch the deal in Hollywood and they loved the story and they said, but we want to put Channing Tatum as the lead and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what this is because he wrote it as well.

Michael Holstein (10:45.166)
Right.

Christian Brim (10:50.866)
And, and, I realized that that conversation is like most of the investors and, and people that are buying this stuff in general are pretty risk averse. Like they, just, they, want a known quantity. Would you, would you say that's true?

Michael Holstein (11:10.574)
It's crazy how true it is. And it's not even just that they want it. Of course they should want a known quantity. Although I would also argue the economics are better to develop somebody versus to acquire somebody. So you could hire to maintain him or you can take that money, know, the $20 million he's going to command or whatever, stick that into marketing and create yourself a new one. mean, the smartest thing Food Network I think ever did.

Christian Brim (11:25.361)
Yes.

Michael Holstein (11:39.522)
was have the next Food Network Star thing, which was like a talent incubator. they got, you know, it's now essentially the Guy Fieri network and he came out of that sort of process. So one of the things we do try to do is, you know, create talent, not just use existing talent, but yes, it's your point. Networks will come back to us, we'll pitch them something and say, yeah, this is great.

you know, can we have Denzel Washington narrate it? And by the way, the budget's $25,000 an hour or something, you know, so like, like you can't have everything, right? You can't have a name, quantity, high production value, low budgets and all of the things. So, but yes, networks are more and more just seemingly drawn to safety, whether that's in.

Christian Brim (12:10.799)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Brim (12:25.223)
Well, and it seems like a lot of the content, and this kind of tracks with what you're saying, is that it's, good Lord, formulaic, like, creativity. It's kind of like, I've seen this before, it was just different time period, different actors, different, you know, storyline, but it's the same damn show.

Michael Holstein (12:40.705)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Holstein (12:51.374)
Yeah, sometimes literally. So we've been on, I forget what network it was. We were on a call a few weeks or so ago with a network and they said, literally, we could bring out the best new show, right? Whatever it is, cast, writer, everything. Or we could rerun, I forgot what the show was, NCIS or Law and Order, one of those things. We could rerun that and get the same

rating the same viewership, why are we going to spend $50 million on launch day when we can just run something from our catalog? Which is fine, and I understand that, but at some point you burn through that and you have to develop new audiences and you have to develop your new tent poles and take risks on things like that. It's a stopgap measure. It's fine, I guess, to retreat to safety, but for the long-term view, it seems like to me not

Christian Brim (13:42.49)
Yeah.

Michael Holstein (13:49.752)
Good business.

Christian Brim (13:51.323)
No, and that's the nature of any industry. When they find profit, they hold onto it and become more risk averse. I think the best example for our purposes was like Kodak. And, you know, for years they'd been making so much money off of film that they completely missed the boat on digital.

Michael Holstein (14:07.512)
Yeah.

Michael Holstein (14:18.423)
Right.

Christian Brim (14:18.45)
And not that they didn't know it was coming, but that their answer to it was this camera that printed, it was a digital camera, but it printed kind of like a Polaroid. And it's kind of like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Michael Holstein (14:25.56)
Yeah.

Michael Holstein (14:30.602)
Mm-hmm. I remember that. Right.

Michael Holstein (14:42.126)
Yep. Yep. And I get it. It's an expensive business. The competition is fierce and among networks for eyeballs, more so than ever. So yeah, I think you can go one of two ways with that. You either retreat to safety and, I don't know, tread water with your safe products or you take a big swing at trying something different or creating new tent poles.

There's just a lack of a lack of tolerance for that right now in the industry. And that was part of, again, part of our ethos when we formed as Merrick was, you know, we're not just gonna, I don't know if it's like the 80-20 rule, right? Or 80 % safe stuff, 20 % take a swing. We're not, you know, bound by that, but at least some percentage of our time and efforts and revenue is going to be spent on new ideas and new things versus like just what feels.

safe in our wheelhouse. far, honestly, mean, the things we've, when we have stepped out of the comfort zone, think are the ones we're getting the most results on recently. I think there's probably among audiences and consumers just, you know, who don't care about the business part of it. Like, hey, give me something new and interesting to watch.

Christian Brim (16:06.802)
Yeah. Well, you, uh, uh, it tickled my ears with 80 20, you know, that, that Pareto principle is, is one I discuss in my book profit first for creatives. And it, you know, for those of the listeners that don't know about the Pareto principle, he was a 19th century Italian economist who did a study on land ownership in Italy. And, uh, he discovered that 20 % of the people owned

80 % of the land. But over the last century and a half, people have expanded that to include pretty much any endeavor that includes human behavior. And that that axiom is that 20 % of what you do, 20 % of what you do produces 80 % of your results. And

In my mind, what that means is finding out what the 20 % that you do really well and do more of it and less of the 80 % because some of the 80%, there's kind an inverse rule to that, that there's some small percentage of your efforts that are actually counterproductive, that actually work against you. And of course you want to eliminate those, but figuring it out is the hardest spot. And you mentioned

Michael Holstein (17:12.142)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (17:33.49)
filling a hole in the market. So if you were going to define that in layman's terms that didn't understand the industry ins and outs, what would you say that hole is that you're filling?

Michael Holstein (17:48.585)
So I think I think it's a willingness to take chances on non-traditional content. you know, people tune into Discovery Channel to see guys working hard jobs or, you know, the Food Network to see, well, it used to be cooking now it's like food based game shows or whatever. So for us, it's, you know, it's okay.

Christian Brim (17:59.635)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (18:04.081)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Holstein (18:13.75)
Here's a hybrid project that's a dating show and a cooking show or here is, you know, we have a show that we're taking out to market now about the last race track in Alaska. And it's, you know, it's putting unexpected things in front of people. still, you know, TV used to have and still sometimes does. Increasingly, think it's, you know, maybe HBO and occasionally Apple kind of having these big scripted shows that capture the zeitgeist, but

Christian Brim (18:29.308)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Holstein (18:42.474)
Unscripted TV, you know, had these breakthrough moments, you know, the when Survivor was born. Well, I mean, for better or worse, look at what The Apprentice did. So, so we're trying to sort of get back to that era of, you know, exploration and trying new things. And, you know, again, with that 80 20, I don't know how it shakes up for us. But at least some portion of it and of our development time is chasing

things that aren't just, you know, whatever the network mandates are. So if everybody's saying, now we want shows about, I don't know, house flipping or paranormal or true crime, like things that are in aren't going to be in forever. and it shifts on a dime. You know, it's like, want nothing but paranormal shows. And then one day somebody or the powers that be over they are decided to have had enough paranormal shows. Everybody wants, you know,

Christian Brim (19:27.238)
Right.

Michael Holstein (19:40.364)
Right now, everybody wants sports, which is like, but they don't want to pay for league fees, right? So everybody, mean, networks that you would never think want sports, we'll have conversations with, well, we want sports, but not sports. Like we want, we're not going to pay, you know, NFL, MLB, the rights to broadcast the game, but we want a cooking show, a travel show, whatever that explores sports and things like that. Because, you know, sports and to a lesser extent, guess, news are really the only things keeping live.

Christian Brim (19:45.777)
Right.

Michael Holstein (20:10.2)
commercial TV, a float, things that you need to watch in real time. So now everybody wants to be sports adjacent. people who spent the past two years doing nothing but true crime, because that was the hot genre, now find themselves having to ship. So we're trying to not.

be beholden to what the mandates are and what's in the zeitgeist at that given moment and just be cognizant of the fact that it's always changing.

Christian Brim (20:41.754)
Okay, I'm going to pivot here for a minute. What's it like? Well, how has it changed your business having partners?

Michael Holstein (20:50.286)
Uh, yeah, mostly for the better. Um, I know, are we going to publicize this or not? Um, I have great partners. I love our team. wouldn't partner up with people if I didn't. I mean, I think for me, doing good work is important, but enjoying who you do it with and trusting them is maybe even more important from a, you know, business sense and a personal wellbeing sense. So, um,

Christian Brim (20:52.944)
We're not going to let them listen to this episode. So you can say whatever you want.

Christian Brim (21:10.546)
Sure.

Michael Holstein (21:18.702)
So I've always sort of had partners and I think people make sort of the mistake, I'm sure you and Candice and Talia and people went and somebody's an entrepreneur and they're, must be great to not have a boss. Like, no, everyone's your boss when you're an entrepreneur. So, and it's sort of the similar, I think it's kind of analogous to partners. I mean, you can be a one man band in terms of running the company, but you still have contractors, you still have camera people. So, having partners, think just sort of,

Christian Brim (21:30.393)
You

Michael Holstein (21:48.194)
defraes that burden, defraes the risk, brings in new ideas. And it's nice to have, you know, somebody to kind of be in the the trenches with you for battle and know you have a good team with you. Yeah, I've enjoyed it. I think maybe when I was, I don't know, 30 years old or something, starting out the idea of like, sharing creative control or not being the decider would have driven me crazy. And

I think I probably still ultimately end up making sort most of the decisions in our company. But just by virtue of fact that I've been doing it longer, just old. so yeah, I haven't found really any negative to having partners in this construct at least.

Christian Brim (22:40.028)
Yeah, I think it sounds, well, I guess first comment I'd say is, that, it doesn't matter whether you're an entrepreneur by yourself or a partner in a partnership or, you know, you have a hundred employees and you're the only owner. You still have to play nice with everybody. You know, I mean, you, you can't, you can't just be the tyrant that says this is what we're going to do. I mean, you can, but it definitely.

Michael Holstein (22:59.832)
Def right.

Christian Brim (23:08.626)
limits your abilities. I think the people that can get away with that, like that are the true, you know, maybe a Steve Jobs, right? That have that creative genius that can be the taskmaster. Those are very, very few and far between. So my follow-up question to that is how do you guys segregate work?

Michael Holstein (23:12.472)
I play.

Christian Brim (23:37.358)
among partners. So you're all owners. So do you have different roles?

Michael Holstein (23:39.758)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, maybe more unofficially than in the articles of incorporation, but, it's kind of how we actually formed. I worked for years with a buddy of mine named Chris, who is a great field producer. We're doing a show and he's the best at being out in the field, getting the guys there on time, getting the scenes we need, making sure we've got coverage of everything.

Christian Brim (24:10.322)
hurting cats.

Michael Holstein (24:11.662)
Yes, he is an outstanding cat herder. I am a horrific cat herder. Big ideas and deal making and whatever. Interacting with media and talent management. I have my strengths and I know where my weaknesses are with our new partners, Philadelphia team. Similarly, one is really great with finance. He's awesome with budget and

operations, keeping the trains running on time. And the other is super creative. So he oversees the graphic designers and the editors and color, even down to color correction. So it's really been nice and everyone's kind of been able to step into the role they're most comfortable in, but have some overlap with others. you know, so you have some support if you're out sick and something needs to be done or want to go on vacation and things like that.

So yeah, I don't know if we just got lucky in kind of finding roles that are, you know, complimentary without being contradictory to each other. but it was also intentional in finding the right partners was to, you know, not find someone who's got the exact same skillset as you. So, yeah, so far so good. mean, you know, we'll butt heads, you know, not in an antagonistic way, but we'll have disagreements about do we pursue this project or this one or how much.

resource do we allocate here or whatever. And at some point, if we're really just at loggerheads and nobody will agree, somebody has to make a decision and in our company, I do that. But it's very, very rare that that's the case. We agree on much more than we disagree on. And when we do disagree, a lot of times something better comes out of it.

Christian Brim (26:01.53)
Yeah. One of the things that I've noticed with partnerships in the past, and I actually fell into this trap myself in my experience where, you know, you, you see somebody else that, that has a skillset that you don't. And it's, it's like, that would be an ideal partner. But, but my, my question that I put back to everybody considering bringing on partners, because I don't, I don't think most people understand the

Michael Holstein (26:14.638)
You

Christian Brim (26:30.95)
gravity of a partnership. It's as as my lawyer says, it's like a marriage without sex. And he's very correct in that it's that level of commitment of in each other's business. And, you know, you have a lot of potential relationship conflicts, whether that's personalities or values or whatever. But the question I pose to people considering partners is

Michael Holstein (26:37.896)
heh.

Christian Brim (27:00.334)
Okay, is that something you could hire rather than bring on a partner? Is that a person you could hire? It doesn't sound like maybe I'm hearing something that you didn't say, but like you were you were trying to scale up and then you decided to form a partnership. Is that kind of the thought process that you went through?

Michael Holstein (27:22.818)
yeah, yes and no. mean, I didn't want to scale up because when I was doing it was, you know, still kind of coming out of the turbulent time. So, we've always relied on contractors when there's big costs involved, right? So instead of buying edit bays and cameras, it's been more economical to buy time with a contractor. so in the partnership, think it was just a case of.

Christian Brim (27:40.87)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Holstein (27:52.973)
Everyone bringing different skills to the table. Equity for sure, know, putting in some cash to help on the scaling up part of it. But I didn't necessarily know what I wanted when I decided it was time to scale up. still don't know. But I just know that there has to be. Yeah. Yeah. I'm totally comfortable with admitting how little I know. But you know, just

Christian Brim (28:02.244)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (28:10.194)
That's great.

Michael Holstein (28:18.802)
reflection of where the market is. Like I said, you just have to have so many irons in the fire now to have something to hit. I don't think you can be niche anymore. Rather than take on more employees or take on more contractors, I want... The other thing is I don't want to be doing this forever. I want to be on a beach in five years. I need partners to do that, not employees.

Christian Brim (28:29.553)
What do you, what do you.

Christian Brim (28:42.876)
What do you mean not being niche anymore? What do you mean by that statement?

Michael Holstein (28:48.366)
Uh, you know, you'd have production companies and some still can make it who just do a certain genre. So, actually, so, you know, one of our members of our board of directors, um, used to be the chief operating officer for original productions. did Bering Sea Gold, Storage Wars, Deadliest Catch, but everything they did was mail skewing Discovery Channel shows. And their, his old company.

Christian Brim (28:56.282)
Okay.

Christian Brim (29:13.713)
Right.

Michael Holstein (29:16.494)
You know, it was acquired by a bigger company, but they're having trouble now because, you know, there's not, it's just defined lanes anymore. Um, so instead of narrow casting, we really wanted to be able to broadcast, um, and, know, have a big tent. And I think the only way for us to do that was to not be niche. So while like I've done a lot of music for television, um, my partners in Philly have done a lot of sports. We're all sports fans. Like we all even do, we'd love to do sports and music and nothing else.

Christian Brim (29:24.786)
Got it.

Michael Holstein (29:45.996)
but we also want to pay our mortgage. So we have dating shows that we're doing and travel shows and cooking shows and things that weren't normally in our wheelhouse professionally or in our interest level personally, but they're paying the bills. So it gets, guess, again, a little bit back to the 80-20 thing, but if I can make a living of just doing music for TV or just doing sports stuff.

Christian Brim (30:02.769)
Right.

Michael Holstein (30:15.094)
like I would, but just because sports is hot right now, I don't want to put all our eggs in that basket. So, and music on TV is close to dead.

Christian Brim (30:22.854)
You're going to develop the, you're going to develop the, well I think the pickleball network is probably with the tennis network or something like that.

Michael Holstein (30:33.024)
I'm sure it's out there somewhere. I've watched Cornell on TV, know, they'll show anything. There's a lot of hours to fill and lot of channels to fill it. So we're just trying to create some interesting stuff that resonates with people.

Christian Brim (30:38.226)
That's crazy.

Christian Brim (30:48.178)
Yeah. Well, I'm thinking of an idea of pitching, uh, like a, a, uh, generation, uh, uh, challenge between, uh, on pickleball. Cause you know, those, those, uh, old ladies with knee braces that don't look, you know, they, they, they get out of the wheelchair to go play pickleball. Yeah. You don't want to play them. They're, they're, Yeah. Absolutely. So maybe a generational, uh, maybe, maybe you could get some like,

Michael Holstein (31:03.214)
Yeah, they're killers.

Right. No, they're clear. Yeah, they know the angles and how to move and all that stuff. So, yeah.

Christian Brim (31:18.354)
superstar athletes that don't play pickleball to be humiliated. That would be good.

Michael Holstein (31:24.002)
Yeah, well, yes, there was that show, Pros vs. Joes or whatever. We actually have, because it's hot now, we do have a ton of sports shows in development. And one is not exactly what you talked about there, but close to that, putting people out of their comfort zones, athletes and others and seeing how they do. I think that's always right. Right. Yep. Yep. And you get some people who are just

Christian Brim (31:28.816)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (31:46.394)
You can slam a basketball. Let's see if you can put some spin on a pickleball. Yeah, you do. You do.

Michael Holstein (31:53.848)
free athletes, right? And they can do it all. But you get others who, you their best skill in the basketball court is that they're seven feet tall, and that doesn't necessarily translate to the pickleball court. So

Christian Brim (32:01.924)
Right, it doesn't help you. No. Okay, so one, I just lost my question. Standby. now I remember. A lot of our audience probably don't understand the economics, like how the deal flow works on a production. Like where you're,

Michael Holstein (32:26.68)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (32:29.49)
you're talking about pitching things and like so let what would you say an average budget for one of your productions is?

Michael Holstein (32:40.602)
Boy, no. So we do almost all TV, not movies. And it depends on the network, but in broad strokes, a first season of a show will be between six and 10 episodes generally. And networks cap out for unscripted TV at about $300,000 an episode.

Christian Brim (32:42.002)
I mean, are we talking 10 million, 1 million?

Christian Brim (33:01.084)
Right?

Michael Holstein (33:10.477)
$200,000 an hour. So, you know, if we sell six by 60 show, so six hours of TV, you know, the best you'll get is maybe 1.5 to 2 million to make it, which we're really good at making money stretch, you know, and that's part of the thing of taking our team in-house being in Philadelphia and DC versus Los Angeles. You know, we have some sort of economic benefits and economies of scale.

But it's crazy now too, just the range of budgets. mean, we'll get on calls, our agent will set a call with a new streaming platform or network and you know they have deep pockets. But, and you know, they'll say, all right, know, our budgets $35,000 an hour. Like, all right, we're good. You know, we can produce cheaply, but we ain't that good. So yeah, normal TV show is, I don't know. I think if you can ever get it to stay in the

Christian Brim (34:00.465)
Yeah.

Michael Holstein (34:07.522)
hundreds per hour, you're in really good shape with the network. But they cap out right around 300 for unscripted now, and even that's few and far between. I'd say 250 is probably an average unscripted hour for premium cable.

Christian Brim (34:22.034)
Okay. So, so you, you come up with an idea, you, you develop the pitch, you go to a platform and network and pitch it. Then they're going to pay you for, you know, X dollars, you know, like in your example, let's say $2 million for the season is, is there any backend on that? Or is it just, you, you get paid upfront.

Michael Holstein (34:42.935)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Holstein (34:48.43)
Yeah, so. No, mean, so now there's increasingly more and more ways that deals are getting done. So there's the model you just talked about, which is sort of the traditional model. There's the corporate sponsorship model, which is rapidly growing. And I have a lot of experience in that, because I came out of PBS, which essentially has been doing that forever, just not calling it that. But it's, know, four or five companies kind of put up money and

product integration and things like that, integrated marketing, not just product placement, not just like, you know, I'm drinking a Budweiser. But, you know, really brand activation all around it and that funds it. And then there's sort of, well, then there's, you can fund with private equity and venture capital. And then there's sort of now increasingly like a hybrid model where some networks like Discovery, for example, where they have a lot of infrastructure and they need utilization across their.

Christian Brim (35:24.87)
Right.

Michael Holstein (35:45.742)
edit bays and their camera operators and all that stuff, rather than just saying, all right, your budget's $2.50 an hour for eight episodes, here's whatever, $2 million, bring us back eight episodes. They'll say, okay, well, we're going to handle this part of production services, you're going to handle that part, and we'll pay you producer's fee of X amount, and that's how it works. There is technically back end, but it's probably not...

secret that Hollywood accounting has never been kind to people who get paid in backend only. So if your deal is a gross point deal, great, know, dollar one transparent. get one cent of every dollar that comes in here. Cool. I'll take that. If it's 10 % of net, don't, it can be 90 % of net. I don't want it because they're going to find a way to make that net zero. But at least for the first couple of years, it's, I think it's, you know,

Christian Brim (36:38.225)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (36:41.606)
Yes.

Michael Holstein (36:45.71)
I don't know, there's no magic number, but it seems to be when you hit your third year of a show, the bargaining power kind of shifts to the producer versus the network, and then you could get actually valuable back ends. One of the things we try to do, and we're going to try increasingly to do, is raise our own money so that we can green light things on our own and own them, because that's the only way you make money. mean, if you're just relying on

Christian Brim (36:53.319)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Holstein (37:14.156)
residuals, license fees, EP fees, whatever, you'll do fine, but you're not going to have crazy money. You own a concept and you're selling it around the world and you get a piece of the merchandise and the spin-offs and the podcasts and the books and all the things that can come with it is a game changer. at some point later this year, we're going to go out seeking enough financing to have a pool of green light.

money. We can start projects on our own. But yeah, we get back end points on all the deals. But I'll look at my bank account sometime. be like, oh, cool. I've checked for 36 cents from Amazon came in or whatever. So you aren't going to get rich off of backends. I'm sure they're not going to tell you one way or the other. So do not report transparently.

Christian Brim (37:55.155)
You're sure they did the accounting right? Yeah.

Christian Brim (38:03.774)
you couldn't, you couldn't figure it out. I mean, I, I know from my stupid book that I sell and it sells in, other countries and looking at the, you, you can't find, and I'm an accountant, right? Like you can't reconcile. Well, what was the conversion rate on that day? Yeah. Like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm just kind of trusting that they're doing it right. But yeah. Michael.

Michael Holstein (38:19.15)
Yeah.

Right.

Michael Holstein (38:28.096)
It's even harder with streaming because it's like...

Michael Holstein (38:35.427)
Okay.

Christian Brim (38:37.82)
Say again, I'm sorry.

Michael Holstein (38:38.158)
Did I miss you? I should go ahead that I missed you.

Christian Brim (38:41.362)
Yeah, you cut out for a minute, but go ahead.

Michael Holstein (38:43.36)
Okay. it's even harder when streaming's involved because, you know, do they count how many people tuned in or how long each person watched for some combination of it or so you get these sometimes reports. Sometimes they don't even really get those. And I mean, it might as well just be like random numbers on a page. So I mean, like you, mean, I, yeah, I mean, I went to law school, so I can read the contract and I know what I'm getting. But I can't read the ledger sheet. And even if I could, I probably wouldn't.

Christian Brim (39:01.298)
It might be random numbers, right?

Michael Holstein (39:13.12)
like it or be able to make sense of it. yeah, we like to get paid up front and we like to own our own content. And I mean, that's probably one piece of advice I would give anybody is, you know, don't give away the IP, the underlying IP, because that's your bread and butter someday.

Christian Brim (39:30.386)
I love it. Michael, how do people find out more about you? And if they have interest in learning more about what you do?

Michael Holstein (39:38.454)
Yeah, our website is mesmeric.media. You can email me. Let me do my best. M-E-S-M-E-R-I-C dot media, M-E-D-I-A. You can email me, Michael, at mesmeric.media. And yeah, our website, think, has a lot of our in-development shows and our processes. People can pitch stuff through us through there.

Christian Brim (39:43.986)
Spell that for us.

Michael Holstein (40:07.022)
I'm happy to speak to anybody who reaches out also. we're firmly of the belief that we're not going to pursue every idea, but there are no bad ideas. So we're here for all of it. I'm happy to talk to people and mentor people. And we're always looking for new ways to partner up and collaborate. yeah. Oh, bring them on. I guarantee you, I've heard, guarantee you'll be better than a lot of the ones we've heard. But we like them all.

Christian Brim (40:25.648)
You haven't heard my ideas yet, Michael. I mean...

Christian Brim (40:34.866)
Well, we'll we'll have those links in the show notes. Thank you, Michael, for your time and your insight. Appreciate it. Listeners, if you like what you hear, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message and we'll replace Michael until then. Ta ta for now.

Michael Holstein (40:43.93)
I see.

Michael Holstein (40:58.446)
Thank you.