It’s Friday, and Obsession will compete at the Golden Globes in the comedy/musical category. Not sure Nikki would agree with that classification…

DOUBLE DATE

The double date: Chicken Shop Date has lived on YouTube for the past 12 years, racking up a total of 115 episodes with celebrity guests like Andrew Garfield, Billie Eilish, Jack Harlow, Louis Theroux, Daniel Kaluuya, and Cher.

Now, as it heads into its grand finale, Amelia Dimoldenberg’s long-running flirty-casual interview series is also coming to Netflix.

Chicken Shop Date’s final season premieres on Dimoldenberg’s YouTube channel today—and it’s hitting Netflix at the same time. Per Variety, the streaming service has also licensed past episodes of Chicken Shop Date, including Dimoldenberg’s interviews with Garfield, Harlow, Damson Idris, Central Cee, Sabrina Carpenter, Ryan Reynolds, and Hugh Jackman.

It’s not clear from Variety’s reporting whether Netflix is getting all 115 past episodes, or only a selection of high-profile installments. In the past, Netflix has done both kinds of back-catalog deals.

The context: In fact—much to YouTube’s certain chagrin—Dimoldenberg is just the latest in a long line of creators Netflix has tapped for distribution deals.

The streamer’s back-catalog deals aren’t the ones truly worrying YouTube, though. It’s the agreements with creators like Salish Matter, Alan Chikin Chow, and the Stokes Twins, which go beyond simply licensing and redistributing premade content. Those partnerships are essentially full-scale development deals, where Netflix is backing production of exclusive new shows.

While Chicken Shop Date is closing its doors, Dimoldenberg’s agreement with Netflix could signal a future development deal in which the streamer is involved in whatever is next for her. But that, of course, is pure speculation.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

POD TALK

The show: Five years after its launch by Viner-turned-podcaster Noel Miller, TMG Studios has a roster of 11 shows and an eye on expansion. One of its newest productions, Superior Exotics II, ventures into the largely unexplored format of fictional podcasts.

Superior Exotics II stars comedians Milo Tucker-Meyer and Kyle Chase as convenience store “employees.” Forty-minute episodes are recorded live during their “shifts,” and follow their characters alongside a rotating cast of “customers.”

The bones of the show are fictional, but the meat is all improv. Miller credits Tucker-Meyer and Chase for imbuing Superior Exotics II with their star power, and says TMG Studios is looking for similar camera presence as it expands its roster.

The context: Fictional shows hearken back to the early days of radio dramas. While there have been occasional standout hits in recent years (such as The Magnus Archives), fictional podcasts are still relatively uncommon.

But Miller sees a clear opportunity for programs that blur the lines between scripted and unscripted. Exploring fictional podcasts, he says “comes from a place of: What is a podcast? What is a YouTube channel? There’s no hard lines anymore, it’s all this weird amorphous thing.”

That format fits well into a world where “people don’t trust what they watch, people believe false media is real and vice-versa, when you’re asking what is a YouTube video, what is a podcast, there are no boundaries.”

Miller sees that new status quo as “simultaneously demoralizing and very exciting,” but he also has a strict rule when it comes to embracing the current internet zeitgeist—generative AI has no place at TMG Studios.

“If we’re the last human-led media channel and everything else is prompted and generated in a data center,” he says, “well then so be it.”

Superior Exotics II is airing now on TMG Studios’ site and its own dedicated YouTube channel.

THE BIZ

The firm: Live Nation is getting into the creator biz. The Ticketmaster parent—which bills itself as “the largest live entertainment company in the world”—is funding a new firm called Creator Nation, which will primarily focus on facilitating live events for digital content creators, fans, and brands.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Creator Nation will be led by husband-and-wife co-founders and industry vets Alexis and Scott Fisher. Alexis previously founded influencer/music artist management company Timeline (acquired by Live Nation in 2024), while Scott founded talent firm Select Management Group (acquired by Propagate in 2025).

As Alexis explained, Creator Nation will work with individual creators, brands, marketers, and other management firms. She told THR that the company’s offerings are like a restaurant menu, where creators can choose to go à la carte instead of committing to a full prix fixe.

According to THR, Live Nation will provide both financial support and logistical support for Creator Nation. The entertainment company has controlling interests in hundreds of venues around the world, which of course makes arranging live events much easier.

The context: That being said, Live Nation is not living easy at the moment; in fact, it’s spent much of 2026 in court. In April, jurors ruled that it and Ticketmaster have a monopoly on the live events space that constrains competitors and results in jacked-up ticket prices for consumers.

Now, the publicly traded multinational corp is facing a separate lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, which claims that it enables scalpers, double-dips on service fees, and deceptively prices tickets. Will creators be able to look past all that legal drama to trust Creator Nation with their livelihoods?

WATCH THIS 👀

The skit stars: YouTube may have evolved over the past 20-odd years, but viewers haven’t moved on from one of its earliest video formats. And really, what’s not to love about a quick skit with tongue-in-cheek lines and a less-than-believable costume?

Whether creators are anthropomorphizing vegetables or embodying a bird who’s just seen two friends get taken out by one stone, short skits and solid puns still snag millions of views on the daily. Just ask the star behind Eric’s Realm.

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