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It's Tuesday and Meta is catching heat after suggesting that disappointed skywatchers simply create their own Northern Lights with AI.

Today’s News

GOING LIVE

Can Netflix revive live TV? A new show will put the streamer’s late-night chops to the test.

The decline: Live TV is in a downward spiral—and late-night talk shows are feeling the full force of that decline. Last month, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon became the last major late-night talk show to cut back on a five-night schedule. Most of its counterparts (including Late Night with Seth Meyers) had already scaled down. Others, like The Late Late Show (whose last host was James Corden in 2023) have ended altogether.

The hard truth is that people aren’t willing to tune in at specific times anymore, especially given the deluge of commercials that comes with watching cable. But could shifting the late-night talk show format to streaming be enough to recapture viewers’ interest?

The show: Netflix is willing to bet on it. After securing sports-heavy live programming deals with the NFL and WWE, the streamer is adding a live variety talk show to the roster. According to Variety, Netflix has signed a deal with comedian John Mulaney, who will host, co-showrun, and executive produce a weekly show that’ll debut sometime in 2025.

The context: The Saturday Night Live alum has already filmed multiple stand-up specials for Netflix. His latest, Baby J, racked up nearly 380 million minutes of watch time within its first seven days on the service. Mulaney is familiar with Netflix’s live TV aspirations, too: the comedian hosted the streamer’s first live talk show, John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A., as part of the most recent Netflix is a Joke Fest.

That production was a milestone moment for Netflix, but it certainly wasn’t its first foray into comedy. The streamer has already produced over 350 original stand-up specials starring 200+ comedians, and a number of them have been nominated for Emmys and Grammys. Now, we’ll have to wait and see whether Netflix and Mulaney’s combined comedy chops are enough to resurrect one of cable’s most iconic genres.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Short-form content is taking over the YouTube charts. Of September’s 100 most-viewed channels, 79 were primarily active on Shorts. (Tubefilter)
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• A lawsuit filed by Kentucky against TikTok suggests that the platform’s own research connected “compulsive usage” to “a slew of negative mental health effects.” (Engadget)

• Analysis from The Markup found that Meta earned between $590,000 and $800,000 from assassination-related political ads in the 10 weeks following the attempted shooting of Donald Trump. (Gizmodo)
  
  

• Tech reviewer/YouTuber Marques Brownlee has added a $1.99 “Standard” tier to his Panels wallpaper app after acknowledging that his team had initially “failed on the price front.” (The Verge)

👂 HAVE YOU HEARD?

Have you heard? KSI (probably) got trolled by Drake.

From Hurricane Milton to creator feuds, October is off to a rocky start. There’s a lot to sum up from the second week of the month, so let’s dive into some of the wackiest headlines you might have missed:

Just Trolling: Did Drake take a shot at KSI’s new song on Adin Ross’ stream? The track (titled “Thick Of It”) has gotten a pretty negative reception, so Drake’s request that Ross play KSI’s “banger” on stream was probably a troll move.

Creator Commotion: MrBeast just rented out an entire movie theater to eat Lunchly—in honor of his partnership with none other than Hawk Tuah girl Hailey Welch. To top it off, the beast man screened Welch’s Talk Tuah podcast on the big screen while listening to the aforementioned KSI song.

Hurricane Edition: Hurricane Milton captured the attention of TikTok viewers across the country as creators recorded their efforts to batten down or evacuate. In one of the more uplifting narratives, creator Jason Jensen (aka Greatness Reinvented) hit the jackpot at a Mississippi casino shortly after evacuating from his Florida home.

Court of Law: The TikTok lawsuits keep coming. 14 state attorneys general have now accused the popular app of harming the mental health of its underage users—and that isn’t the only legal matter weighing on TikTok’s mind (or its wallet). The platform has reportedly set aside $1 billion to pay E.U. fines.

Check out our full weekly roundup here to read up on Crocs’ spoof on “Shoes” and George Santos’ Fortnite run.

CAMP STORIES

The country of Switzerland partnered with Creator Camp. The result: A bunch of bangin’ tourism films.

The phenomenon: It’s no secret that social media is a driving force in the tourism industry. In fact, 60% of TikTok users say they’ve visited a new place after seeing it featured in travel content—and companies like Southwest and LOST iN are starting to catch on. Tourism boards are looking to cash in on the power of travel content, too: cities like Dubai have put together major creator initiatives, and there are tons of creators on TikTok sharing info about which tourism boards welcome influencers.

The camp: Most recently, the country of Switzerland partnered with Creator Camp to bring 80 creators to Saas-Fee, an alpine resort village often overlooked by American tourists. That event—sponsored by Notion, Patreon, and RØDE—was the seventh retreat hosted by Creator Camp, a company founded by creators Max Reisinger, Simon Kim, and Chris Duncan.

Creator Camp’s goal is to hold multi-day retreats for content creators that “shape a better internet by fostering deeper connections and providing more space for meaningful stories online.” Its Saas-Fee event did exactly that: creators spent three days exploring the village and the surrounding region before forming small groups to create 90-second short films in just eight hours.

Creator Camp screened the resulting videos at the first-ever film festival in Leukerbad, where Gawx, Schyguyy, and Aawoza’s film, A Love Letter to the Mountains, took home the grand prize of $20,000. Creators Nneka Julia, Amanda Rach Lee, Linh Truong, and Tiffany Tan received $10,000 for their runner-up, Drop.

LISTEN UP 🎙️

This week on the podcast…

Big Macs are getting chickenier: McDonald’s is jumping into “dupe culture” with the release of a new menu item—and who better to spread the word than one of Twitch’s top streamers? Tune into the latest episode of Creator Upload to hear all about Kai Cenat’s new role as the official Chicken Big Mac taste tester.

Also on the agenda for this week: Shorts are getting longer and the Sidemen are embracing their true identities as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Find out more on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.