Candle Media’s CEO unpacks Disney’s next chapter

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at accenture.com/spotify.

All right. Welcome to a new episode of The Opening Bid podcast. I'm Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sazi. And like I always say, this is the podcast that will make you a smarter investor, period. And this is a very special episode for really many reasons. One, we are taping this inside Spotify's beach house at Cannes Lions. For those of you not familiar what the hell that even is, every year Cannes Lions, big advertising media festival. Lots of the big media brands come here, set up on the beach, tell people what they're working on, and ask for money, and say lots of great things. Yahoo, I should mention, is down under the beach. We have the best beach setup. I love the Spotify setup, but, you know, I do work for Yahoo. But we appreciate Spotify for having us. And the second part of this special shout-out is my guest. Kevin Mayer, Candle Media CEO. Good to see you.

Always good to see you.

You remember me from day one. I can't believe I'm actually sitting in this beast house with you. Like, I was just starting my career basically, man.

And it's going great. Thank you.

Congratulations too. I wasn't looking for the applause. You know, I was just trying to like, you know, get into the vibe here. It's my first time sitting down on one of these podcasts. Usually I sit at stools. A little uncomfortable, but you know.

That's great. And it's air-conditioned, so no complaints. This is pretty good. Always good to see you.

So what has been— I followed your whole journey here at Candle Media, even when you're back to launch. You know, this year As you're talking to folks, looking for deals, doing what you do, you know, what's been top of mind?

Well, a lot of things are happening in the media business, which I guess we'll end up talking about. But, you know, Candle Media spans the whole spectrum of media. We have traditional media, we have Hello Sunshine, you know, film and television, Reese's Book Club, a lot of community efforts online that are, that are, that are working on social media. That's a great business. It's fully exposed to the traditional media ecosystem in a way that's, you know, interesting. Well, I can't wait to talk about that.

Do we have to talk about like how media's like dying? I mean, it just—

Media is having a tough, tough moment.

Well said.

It's having a tough moment. And it doesn't seem like there's any relief in sight in the short term. I think that, you know, the contraction of the, you know, the maturing, I should say, of the streaming businesses, that was gonna be the savior of media when pay TV in the US has been declining so dramatically. Well, pay TV is continuing to decline. I don't see any end in sight there. It might hit a stable point at some level of subscribership, but who knows? It's an old model and its time has passed, I think.

For those not familiar with your career, I mean, you spent, what, many years at Disney?

25 years at Disney.

So you've seen this evolve in a big way. What is next? And, you know, we'll dive more into it, but Warner Brothers is splitting up into 2. You have Comcast splitting up. It feels like the whole industry is falling apart.

It's subject to a lot of headwinds. And there really are, Brian, some major, major headwinds here. And pay-TV is at the center of it. For many decades, pay-TV was a growth— it was a growth medium. Households, if you wanted one channel, you had to pay for all channels. That is a nice business model. So you could make the argument that media was overearning for a long period of time. They were pulling more profits out of the ecosystem than than the value they were providing. And that's, that's what I would call overearning. So great business while it was in growth mode at Disney. ESPN was leading the charge. It was awesome. And then ever since 2013 or so, it started to peak and then it's been coming down. So it's not a new phenomenon, but pay-TV is under very big pressure. That's where the earnings come from. That's compressing the business in a big, big way. Streaming was a bit— was a savior and it had its growth moment and that's becoming mature too. Not only the US, but around Disney, right?

Yeah.

Yes. And the streaming business, you have to, you have to be in it. Consumers expect to, to access your high-quality programming over the top in these, you know, in streaming. That's, that's, that's the model that consumers want. You got to meet them where they are. That's a, that's just a paradigm. You have to do it. But it's not as profitable as pay-TV. No one expected— we all knew it would never be as profitable. And these are, these are tectonic shifts that just happened. Look at the music industry. You know, they had the bundle, the CD bundle. Until 1999, then that fell apart from piracy. Remember CDs?

I do remember.

That was a great business for me.

It was. I showed up at Sam Goody, got my 10 CDs. I remember Columbia House where you would—

Oh, the mail-in catalogs? Yeah, yeah, the tapes.

What a terrible business model that was. I mean, that was just—

It was not good for consumers, I'll tell you that. Now consumers are benefiting. There's more choice than ever. It's more convenient than ever. You can get the programming you want on the device you want at the time you want, the location you want. It's great for consumers. And consumers are now in command in a way they never have been. And that's, that's causing pressure on traditional media.

Can I ask you just a normal human question? With TVs declining, why won't my cable bill go down? Will it ever go down?

Cable bills go up. That's all they ever do. That's all they ever do. Look, there will be a repackaging that happens. In the past, the bill you have now, it's all the sports channels, it's all the general entertainment channels, all the news channels. It's a very expansive bundle. That's the only way you can buy cable TV. That's one of the reasons it's not in favor anymore. Because again, if you just wanted to watch a few channels, you got to pay for 120 channels, 200 channels, 300 channels. If you're not a sports fan, you had to pay for sports before. Sports are very expensive. That is not consumer friendly. That is changing dramatically. And until they— you see these new packages forming, I think sports— there may be sports packages. If you're just a sports fan, all you buy is sports. If you're a general entertainment fan, you don't have to buy sports going forward. So I think you'll see some repackaging, but it's a little late.

Unfortunately, are you signing up for $300 a year for ESPN+ that's going to launch later this—

Of course. I'm at Disney. I launched ESPN+. I'm definitely signed up for it. By the way, that's a good deal. I think they're going to be, you know, $300 a year. I think I never heard the yearly price, the annual price. But, you know, $30 a month. It's a— they have a lot of sports. Probably 60% of all the sports that are in broadcast are on ESPN. It's going to replicate everything that you get in your pay-TV bundle for $30 in sports. And it has extra features. And I think the plans that they're having, the interactivity that is part of that platform, when you see it come out, when you see it launched, I think it's later this summer.

Sports betting, betting too.

Yeah, that's betting. They did a deal with Penn Sports Betting and they'll— and if you think about it, you're watching live, you have your fantasy sports going and you have your betting going and it's all on the same screen and you can place bets, you can do prop bets, who's going to score the next touchdown. You can do all this stuff in real time. while watching the high-quality stream that ESPN's providing. I think it's a winning business model, but it's not pay-TV. All I need to be able to do is, like, order food.

If I just be able to order food from it, then I have no reason to go to work. Like, you're just on the side. It's the true super app. Like, why even leave the app? But my question is, you know, on the linear— going back to linear TV networks, what happens to these assets? So Comcast splits this thing off with its strange name. You have Warner Bros. Discovery, uh, that asset out there.

Which is also split.

Yes. So they just— these— the linear networks or the TV networks, they're floating out there. Like, what happens to them? Does private equity come in and buy them? Do they get managed down to nothing over time?

I think private equity is the solution here because the private equity guys know how to manage these businesses in decline. They're still profitable, in some instances highly profitable, but they're on a very substantial secular decline curve, which is immutable. I think it's going to continue to happen. So these linear assets are shrinking. It's very difficult to manage a growth business alongside a really declining business like that. So I think it is smart to split them. Disney's might be a unique, unique company in that regard because there's a lot of synergies between the two. But if you just have cable networks and you have a— and you have a studio, those should be split because studios are more stable and they're not in high growth mode either, by the way. But at least they're not declining in the same way the cable assets are. And most of these studios have a stream— have a streaming service associated with it. So you You keep the streaming service like Warner Brothers did and Comcast, and you keep the content and IP generation engines, keep those together, that's stable to growing, and these assets that are declining so dramatically, better managed by someone who knows how to do that.

Aren't you glad you don't have to be part of this crap? You can just do what you do.

Yes.

I mean, this is— I mean, these sound like awful gigs, especially right now over the past year and a half. You're gonna spend most of your time in spreadsheets. You can't necessarily talk about amazing content creation. And everything's managed down to the penny and you're firing people. I mean, this sucks.

It's not— this hasn't been a good few years and it's been, it's been tough. All the CEOs, you know, I know them all. They— it's had— it's been, it's been, it's been difficult. And do I, you know, do I wish I was in that seat right now? You know, probably not. But they're still good seats. They're still— it's a fun job. And these are, you know, you're creating movies and film and TV. It's fun.

Is content Content will be the, the thing that gets hurt at the end. No, if you are so focused on cutting expenses and letting people— laying people off or letting AI roll through your creative departments, like, what does it mean for content?

Content's squeezed right now, and it takes a lot of money to create great content. If you're doing traditional film and TV length content at a high production value, it's expensive. It's getting more expensive. AI might come, might be helpful there a little bit because AI is a tool that can help increase efficiencies in creating video and storylines and everything else. You have to be careful how you— you have to titrate that very carefully. You can't really depend on AI too much, but as a tool for creative executives and creative people, I think it'll actually help with the efficiency. But content's squeezed. There's no longer the revenue base to afford as much content as once was the case with when peak TV was peaking 3 or 4 years ago, there's just not enough money to cover that anymore. So content is definitely coming down.

I caught up with Deborah Lee, former BET CEO. She's on the board of Warner Brothers. She couldn't talk much about that situation, as you can imagine, but she made a good point that we may be at peak streaming. How much more content can we stuff on here? I mean, I only have 2 eyeballs. Like, you can only watch so much content.

I think she's right. I think that's what you're seeing. The streamers are buying less content. You know, Netflix is an outlier. Netflix has kind of kept their $17 to $18 billion content spend pretty constant. It's a little bit more sports in there than there used to be. So entertainment content's gone down probably a little bit. But the other streamers, they were in growth mode. Remember 3 or 4 years ago before the Netflix reset of 2 years ago, before they had that flat quarter or down quarter, actually, I remember the investors really pivoted and said, okay, not growth anymore, it's profitability. So finding profitable growth has been the key. And all the other streaming services have had to cut back on their expenses and the amount of content they're offering. In some, in some instances, I think it was a wise thing to do and you should have done it anyway. In other instances, it was just driven by the economics.

What do you mean? It seems like to your point on Netflix that quarter that I remember that quarter, it was real. It wasn't a good quarter. But since then, something has been unlocked at Netflix.

I mean, Netflix is back.

Every quarter has been not just a little beat. I mean, explosive sequentially growth numbers, profitability. I mean, what, what drives that?

Netflix is really good at what they do. They invented streaming essentially. They know how to manage it. There are 3 levers if you're streaming. It's customer acquisition, it's ARPU, you know, average revenue per user per month, and it's churn. They— and they know so much about their consumers and they have so much experience delivering content to their consumers and getting feedback from their consumers about what content they love. They can rescue a subscriber who's at risk because they can see it. Oh, this person used to watch 3 hours a week. Now they're at 2.7 and then 2.5. We have to get some content in front of them to save them. They're incredibly good at that. They have the systems in place to do it. I think all the other streamers are getting there, but they're way far ahead. So they know how to market, they know how to price, and they know how to save customers. And that's the key.

You know what content got me recently? I forgot if this was Netflix or Amazon. Nona, did you see that?

I haven't seen it. Oh, gosh.

I mean, what a hell of an idea.

I mean, I don't even know what it— what is it? Tell me. It was.

This guy, uh, he ended up opening a restaurant, maybe in Brooklyn or Jersey, based on a true story, and he hired— Italian restaurant— hired retired grandmothers to cook for the restaurant. So he hired 4. I mean, I'm like, why didn't I think of that? What a hell of an idea. Open the restaurant with 4 Italian grandmothers that clearly knew how to cook. I mean, it's an actual restaurant. I mean, that's—

Have you been there?

No, I haven't been there, but that's the content I need. I need to see more of those stories.

Well, they're inexpensive too, right? Right. Something based on reality. And that's why you see a lot more factual TV happening, because it's cheaper and it's less expensive. But Netflix continues to churn out huge hits, high-quality content. So does Disney. So does Warner Brothers. And, you know, they all can create hits. It's just the expense is not being covered by the revenue. And you're going to see consolidation. And that's what these— that's what these— and streaming and the entire business is consolidating. But streaming has to consolidate, too. Should there be a Paramount Plus and a Peacock? Does that make sense? Just think of the redundant operating expenses that entails. It's millions, tens of millions of dollars a year just in technology expense and platform expense and employee expense. It's a lot. Why shouldn't those be together in a declining business? Economics 101. If your revenue is declining, you take your expense bases and collapse them. And that's what you're going to see that in streaming.

How is that coming up soon too? So if I'm Netflix, I see Comcast doing its thing and You think, I guess, the new Comcast team that manages that streaming asset, they say, all right, we're just going to fall under the Netflix umbrella? Those talks, like, is this chatter that that can happen?

I don't know. I don't know the chatter that is going on out there. But yeah, I think you'll see— I don't think Netflix is going to buy or merge with any streamers. I think the smaller streamers were going to merge among themselves in a kind of a horizontal merger situation because they just don't have enough revenue to cover the expenses delivering content over the internet in a high-quality way is not cheap. And you— and that's where the cost base really accrues. The big technology platforms that have to be deployed globally, it's— you have to spend on content, you have to source content from around the world because people expect foreign content now and they expect the highest quality content. You're in a pitched battle with Netflix and Disney Plus, which is doing really well. It's just hard to do that when your revenue isn't growing the way it should.

Well, I'm not cheap either. I mean, I'm up to $500 million a year. Kevin. No, I guess hang with us.

We have to consolidate you too. Yeah, yeah, please.

Oh no, don't tell anybody that. Oh, actually, I just sat on a hot mic. All right, we'll be right back on Opening Bid.

This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at accenture.com/spotify.

All right, welcome back to Opening Bid. We're having a special, uh, episode here at Spotify's Beach House, uh, at Kenton Lions, having a great chat here with, uh, friend of the show Kevin Mayer, uh, Candle Media CEO. So we haven't talked a lot about Disney. I talked to you last year down on the Yahoo Pier about the state of Disney, and I remember asking you, are you still advising Bob Iger?

Are you still— Not officially, no.

Not officially. Why has Disney made a decision to spin off its TV assets?

It's an interesting question. Disney has some very strong cable assets. Look at FX as a case in point. That's a Fox— that was Fox-owned cable network, general entertainment, edgy content, great content. I love FX. I'm, I'm not sure if you enjoy those shows or not, but we— the first thing we did, we bought control of Hulu back in 2018, 2019. I was still running, running it then. We took FX, and John Landgraf is the, you know, runs FX. He's probably the best TV executive there is. He's awesome. And the— we collaborated on, hey, why don't we take FX, that brand, and then put it into Hulu as a key brand on Hulu? And then we look, we still have the network. We still get paid by, you know, by cable operators on a per month, per subscriber basis. It's profitable. But start taking the content and sharing it among— sharing it with almost immediately when it's deployed Hulu streaming service and channel, you know, linear channel network. So you're taking one piece of content and deploying it into— against 2 revenue streams almost. It's almost like creating consolidation when there was none to begin with. So taking 2 revenue streams, you're amortizing this content over, over both of them. And that can create a beneficial financial outcome. So if you're— if your cable networks are strong enough and your brands are strong enough, there could be a rationale for doing that. I could just as easily make the argument that Disney should spin off their linear networks. You know, Bob and the team there thinks that, that cost sharing, that revenue amortization is the right way to go. If you have weaker networks and it's not really— you don't have the same high-quality content to share among the two, it's probably best to spin them off. If you— if you're— if your networks are mostly, which most cable networks are, just reruns with very few originals, it doesn't make sense to have them anymore. You don't get the same benefit that I just described that FX and Hulu had, for instance. So if you're making a lot of original content, it could make sense to do it. Disney is an example of that. If your cable networks don't enjoy that, off they go.

What do you think over time Disney will have to— just given the structural headwinds in industry, it's going to have— they will have to make that decision to follow everyone else or they're going to They're just going to stick it out, or that's up to the new CEO.

It's up to the new CEO. I think that's the right— that's the way it should be too, Rolly. It should be up to the new CEO, whoever that is.

Yeah. I mean, do you think— I mean, is that near? Is that— I mean, the decision I've heard could come later this year. I mean, it has to come at some point. I mean, Bob's not going to stay there for the next 10 years.

No, I think not. And I think that it will come. I think they've said either late this year or early next year. And I have no— I have no inside information on that at all. Zero. But they're gonna— I mean, there will be a new CEO.

How does—

how does—

how to take us through that process? Like, how do you— what does the next CEO of Disney need to, to do? Or who— who would— not who is this person, but what's the skill set they need, you think?

Disney's a creative company at heart, so you have to have a creative— you have to have some creativity in that a new CEO is really good at at least managing creativity well. You don't necessarily have to be a creative executive, but you have to know what creativity is. You have to be able to manage creative people. The egos around Hollywood, you got to be good at that. I mean, it's not easy.

They're around every corner.

They're around every corner. You run into an ego here and there. So, so you have to be good at that and you have to have the right temperament to deal with that. It is not easy. It's not for everyone. But by and large, I think the biggest skill set you have, you have to have a real strategic business sense because there's a bunch of assets at Disney. That are globally deployed, is multifaceted from theme parks to consumer products to movies to film to TV to Disney+, Hulu, ESPN over whatever they're, you know, ESPN, which is not called Flagship, just ESPN, the streaming service. You got to manage a lot. And then you have to also decide what assets do we keep, what assets do we add. So there's a whole portfolio management issue that's, that's, that's lurking there. So you have to be a pretty strategic business executive. You have to know the nuts and bolts of how business works. You had to be pretty good at finance. You had to be creative-friendly. That is a hard person to find. Not many of them around.

So new CEO starts some point next year. You know what? You know, what do they do that first 6 months? Every, every new CEO comes in, they try to get to understand the people, the operations. But theoretically, this person may come from inside Disney, like, and Bob is handing them off. Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, is handing them off an asset that's been restructured. Hulu is now part of the company, part of a new acquisition. Like, what else is there to tinker with or do?

If I were going to advise the new CEO of Disney, I would say stay close to Bob Iger for the first 6 months. Really take that apprenticeship to heart because Bob is an amazing CEO. There's very few like him. If you can just be at his side and look at, you know, the whole company now, I mean, I think it will come from internal. I just expect that it will. And I think it'll be one of You know, Dana Waldner, Josh D'Amaro, that's likely, it seems like to me, one of those two. I don't know. Again, I really do not know. But get close to Bob, stay stick by his side and just learn how he does things because he's, he's amazing. And I did that. I was super close to Bob when I was there. That's how you learn. So it doesn't sound that exciting. Stay close to Bob. Learn the businesses that you haven't come from. In Dana's instance, that would be theme parks and consumer products. And in Josh's instance, it would be the media businesses. Learn from the best, Bob. That's what I would— that's what I think the first 6 months should be all about. And then you got to start making decisions.

As someone that, uh, I watched— full disclosure, I watched Bob's masterclass. So he taped a masterclass.

I know, I've seen it. Yeah, I mean, I've watched it twice and I'm like, wow, he's good, isn't he?

I mean, he's good. Like, what, what has made him so good? Uh, you know, these CEO jobs, you don't keep them forever. Some cases, short shelf life, 3 to 5 years. You make it past 5 years, you're like, all right, I've done something right. But I mean, Bob's been the face of this company for well over, what, 10 years?

Oh, and well, in 2005 is when he—

He was back at ABC.

No, we bought ABC, Disney did, I was there at the time, in 1996, I think it was. He came and then he was the Chief Operating Officer. I don't have each date memorized, but for about 5 or 10 years, he was the Chief Operating Officer. Then he ascended to— when Michael Eisner left in 2005, From 2005 to 2020, you know, that's 15 years there. He left for a couple of years famously, came back famously, and has been back for several years. So, you know, it's probably close to 20 years. But when you have someone like Bob Iger, you keep them.

Yeah, I don't know any other CEOs that have been on leading— I mean, I think Mary Barra is on what, on the Disney board?

Yeah.

I mean, she's been there.

She's another great CEO.

Yeah, great CEO. I mean, they just have that knack. You also led TikTok. I did, briefly, in the US.

No, no, globally.

Globally, globally, globally. Key decision for them, June 19th. If that deadline is going to get extended or not, what happens? Like, what?

I have no idea. Look, if the Biden administration had won the last— if Kamala Harris had won the election, I think TikTok would now be banned, frankly. I think that's the probable outcome because I think that You know, that was the— that's where they were going. They were behind that. Trump came in. I don't know what he's going to do. He used TikTok to help win the election. So, you know, he wants to keep it around. I know he said a few times, you know, I have a soft spot in my heart for TikTok. So do I, by the way. It's an incredible product, an incredible service. So I hope it doesn't get banned. I hope desperately it doesn't get banned. I don't think it will. I think he'll probably extend again. It's a complicated thing. They have to— you know, the law that is in place, he has to follow the law, obviously. I think you have to get down below 20%. ByteDance and Chinese ownership has to go below 20% from the from the 100% that it is now. I suspect they'll end up bringing new investors in. They'll do they'll make some sort of deal with to get ByteDance below 20% without actually selling it to to another company, and I think that would probably satisfy the national security concerns. What I don't know what happens like who runs it? Is it part of TikTok still? You coming going back? Yeah, and it would only be the U.S. at that point. So yeah, that'd be then your previous statement would have been right. Look, it's a great— it's great. It's just a great thing. I hope that Trump does solve it because it would be a shame to rob that voice from Americans. It's an important platform.

You know who also echoed that? I'm surprised. I talked to Ex-CEO Linda Yaccarino here at Cannes Lions, and she— I forgot the exact quote, but she said, we don't support any social media company being shut down. And that left an impression on me because if they do shut down What a huge potential tailwind to X, Facebook, Instagram. I mean, if it is shut down, like, what does it mean to the broader ecosystem of social media?

Well, I'll tell you something. You can look at it. It's happened. So when I was— when I was CEO of TikTok, we got shut down in India. It is still shut down in India. What happened? Reels became, you know, Instagram Reels became essentially TikTok. What would happen here? Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts. You know, YouTube has now taken a big swipe at that vertical video, short-form video business, and they're doing really, really well. So there are 2 other platforms, I think, that are already in place that have huge user group, you know, user bases and have a similar technology that TikTok has. And TikTok's lead in AI has diminished somewhat. You know, the For You page was for a long time— that For You feed was unimaginably personalized. You couldn't even imagine how they're doing it. It was like magic. And frankly, Reels is kind of similar and YouTube Shorts definitely is. And Neil Mohan is crushing it, and so is Meta. It wouldn't— it would— it would be bad. I think it shouldn't be banned, but that's what— that's where people would go, to those 2 platforms, I think.

I've only made one post on TikTok, and I'll tell you why. I can't seem to get the cuts right, and the technology to use it— I mean, it took me like an hour, and I was going to lose my mind. I don't have the patience to do it.

Because you're not a 12-year-old.

Is that what— is that what—

I don't think.

That's what—

no, I think—

I'm not asking what your age is.

Maybe that— no. 43. I mean, I— we both look fabulous. But the thing is, I just— I didn't have the time to do it. I've been spending more time on— I mean, I've always been on X. I've been on X since 2011. But, uh, Instagram, you know, I guess it's the speed and the immediacy of creating content. Uh, that's why it's got me.

Yeah, look, it's, it's hard to create content. That's why if you look at these social— you know, TikTok isn't really social media. It's more like it's social entertainment. As is YouTube, by the way. There's not a lot of communication or social activity that happens on those 2 platforms.

Neil's crushed it.

Neil's crushed it. He has totally crushed it.

Totally different platform. Now the AI stuff is hitting on there.

It's amazing. But it's hard to do. So I think the participation rates, the uploading rates of people, of uploaders to users, is pretty small. I think there's probably 5 or 10% of the actual user base is actually creating content. Um, and, and I think it will continue. It's hard, you know, to make a really good, um, TikTok or YouTube Short that you're proud of. It takes some effort. Yeah. You know, especially for us old folks. I, it's hard to do using CapCut and all those things.

Hard to do that. I don't have time. I can't even— CapCut is—

and it's the best one. It is the best one.

Frustrating. Frustrating. Anyway, um, we've talked a lot about other, other companies. We talked a little bit about Candle Media. Like, what, what's your— what's next for you and Candle Media? Um, new projects? Who you working with? You mentioned what, Reese Witherspoon?

Yeah. Yeah.

How do you work with her?

She's great. Reese founded Hello Sunshine. That's the first company that we bought in Candle Media. That is a very sort of social media forward, engagement forward, highly curated brand that's very multiplatform. We've had a really good success there. It's been tough because I just described the headwinds in media and they're exposed to that, obviously. So it's— growth has been hard to come by, but their creative output is amazing. Reese's involvement is great. We have a really great CEO over there called Sarah Harden, and it's a business that creates great product, great creative product. And she also— we also have Reese's Book Club that she's put together over the last decade, which is a very powerful voice for women. It really is. I mean, you talk to women, you know, 25 to 54, that kind of traditional age age group. She's like the Oprah Winfrey for that group. She really is. She's achieved that. And so she has a lot of resonance with that, with that audience. And she's very big and very active on social media. So the whole concept there was taking traditional content, extending that storytelling to social media and creating commerce opportunities out of that. We've also done some live activations where we just— she just announced today at Cannes, actually, she was here for a couple of hours, announced this thing called Sunny. which is a new brand that Reese's is going to take that exact same approach of curation, book club activations for Gen Z girls. And Gen Z girls have probably been, you could argue, have been underserved today in storytelling. And I think that's a great, great outcome there. So Hello Sunshine is part of Candle. And the other big asset we have is called Moonbug. And for those who have parents who have small kids, they'll know Cocomelon, which is an amazing preschool.

So addicting. My nieces and nephews, all they watch is Cocomelon.

Well, I don't know about addicting, It's very engaging.

I knew you were gonna get me on that one. But I'm just repeating what my brother told me. I mean, it's just— I don't have any kids, so I mean, I see what they watch all the time. It is— they're glued to it. Let's just put it that way.

They're glued to it. It's very enriching. I mean, we create that content very carefully. And it's meant to— it's soothing. It's nursery rhymes. It's fun. It's very gentle 3D animation. These things run 3 to 7 minutes. They're for free on YouTube. On YouTube, we have almost 200 million subscribers around the world, just to the English language channel. We have other channels too. In total, Moonbug has 750 million subscribers on YouTube. And Moonbug, unlike Hello Sunshine, which is more traditional media-centric and then extending into other platforms, Moonbug is focused on YouTube. And every property we have within Moonbug, it's Cocomelon, it's Blippi. You may have heard of Blippi too, which is more of a live-action show. There's Little Angels. We have 29 different properties and they're very, very big. Cocomelon being the biggest one. Those originated on YouTube and then we took that YouTube success and multi-platform that. So it's a different approach. It's starting with social— you can call it social media, so even though I just said it wasn't— call it whatever you want to call it, social storytelling. And, um, and that's where it starts. And then we created from those shows, we repackaged every season. There's about 3 hours of content we make every year for Cocomelon. Again, 3 to 7 minutes each show. Go on YouTube, we take those, we pull them together in 3 1-hour episodes, just the same stuff that's on YouTube. And we licensed it to Netflix and it was the number one show on Netflix from 2021 to today.

Pretty cool.

Of any show. Like, I think the second biggest one is Grey's Anatomy. Yeah, that's how big Cocomelon is. And if you're a streamer, we talked about the 3 things that make streaming work. The biggest one is churn reduction, making sure few people disconnect as possible. And the biggest determinant of that is how engaged they are, how much content they're watching. Cocomelon is watched over and over.

Yes.

And over. If you have kids, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And the engagement is through the roof. So it really is helpful for a streaming platform. And we're moving that over, some of our main Cocomelon content from, from Netflix in 2027 to Disney Plus. I think that'll be a nice home for it. There's some— there's a couple of originals of Cocomelon that stay on Netflix. And we like to— we like to have our properties as distributed, as healthy as we possibly can. We don't want to be overdependent on one platform. So I think that moving them around makes some sense. It's very powerful. The, the audience for Cocomelon is extremely large. So you, of course, if you have that sort of audience, you have consumer products licensing capabilities, you have music. Music. You got to talk about music. So if you look at all— Cocomelon is mostly music. If you look at Cocomelon last year and the number of music streams that were listened to, including the video that has the music in it, there were more Cocomelon streams, or I think all of Moonbug, frankly, across all of our properties than Taylor Swift.

Wow.

Last year. That's how popular. So we have a big music business. We have a big games business we're building right now. We're getting into publishing. We have a movie that's been rumored to come out in a couple of years, which hasn't been announced.

So anyway, you want to announce it? You can.

Not really.

You can announce if you want. I mean, do you— are you— is that— are you going to continue to lean into children's content? Do you have another Cocomelon?

What a great— that's a great question. So if you look at that, That is really social media storytelling or, you know, that type of storytelling, taking it multiplatform. We've done it for kids and we're truly, I think, the biggest operator in that space now. And we're highly profitable and growing. It's a great company. You could imagine doing the same thing in other verticals, other vertical audiences. Now, we haven't really done that. We stayed in kids for the most part. But at some point you might say, hey, a little older kids, teens.

See those trick shot guys? I forgot the— I just talked to them.

Yes, dude. Perfect.

Dude Perfect, they just moved into a new headquarters.

Oh, those guys are crushing it too.

I mean, that is—

They're in Texas, I think.

They just moved to a big new place. I mean, they put out a ton of content.

When my kids were in their teens, and now, you know, a little older, but when they were a little younger, they watched that constantly.

Constantly.

And by the way, YouTube is the big winner here in terms of engagement with younger audiences. It's YouTube.

Kevin, good to see you, man.

Always a pleasure, brother.

I appreciate you doing this. I continue to follow your journey. Um, just pretty cool to even just be here and talk to you, man.

It's good to see you. Glad to see you do so well, too.

All right, I appreciate that. Very, very kind. Uh, Kevin Mayer, uh, Candle Media CEO. Talk to you soon. Be sure to share this all over the place. You want to share it? Share it with Cocomelon fans, Kevin. Just get it to, like, the children out there. They need to learn about finance. All right, uh, that's it for the latest episode of Opening Bid. Hit us with all those likes on all the social media platforms. On YouTube, you heard Kevin talking about, uh, Cocomelon on YouTube. Uh, well, I'm not, uh, involved with Cocomelon, but hit me with those thumbs up on YouTube anyway. Appreciate the love. Talk to you guys soon.

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