TOGETHER WITH

It’s Wednesday and streaming services are going all in to hype up original series. Apple TV’s latest stunt is lighting up Hollywood with a 500-foot Godzilla made up of 3,000 drones over Hollywood to promote Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

GAME ON

The partnership: Major League Baseball is stepping into the short-form spotlight. With the Opening Day of the 2026 season just weeks away, the MLB has announced an “expanded content partnership” with TikTok that will bring highlights, behind-the-scenes features, and creator-led baseball content to the For You Page.

An in-app MLB Hub will be stocked with highlight reels from each team’s busy, 162-game season, and brands will be able to advertise on that hub through a product suite called TikTok GamePlan. The MLB’s TikTok partnership goes off-platform, too. During Spring Training in Arizona, a TikTok-branded lounge popped up at the MLB Player House.

The context: Baseball has had a strong presence on TikTok for years now, with some ballclubs—like the New York Yankees—partnering with the platform as early as 2020. Sluggers like Mookie Betts have launched digital channels, and creators like CouRage and Katie Feeney have been tapped for alternative broadcasts that look to turn younger generations into baseball diehards. The MLB itself has dipped its toes into the creator economy through partnerships with (and investments in) influencers like Jomboy.

Now, as fans await the start of the World Baseball Classic, the league is focusing on international growth. Thanks to stars like Shohei Ohtani (pictured above), the MLB’s localized accounts surged during last year’s World Series, with traffic increasing 5x year-over-year. In 2026, an expanded partnership with TikTok could prove to be the key to reaching more fans worldwide—and keeping them invested all season long.

In 2025, Agent Opus participated in the first-ever live human-AI video creation battle. Now, Agent Opus is onto its next big innovation—and its next cash-fueled challenge.

Introducing Agent Opus Story Mode: The only tool you need to create full-length, social media-ready AI videos.

With Story Mode, you can create videos in your custom style, choose from preset styles, or turn audio files into videos. Either way, your video’s style and graphics will be consistent throughout every scene.

The best part: Agent Opus is giving away $10K to creators who use Story Mode.

From now until March 6th, creators can enter OpusClip’s Story Mode Challenge simply by creating and posting one original video made with Story Mode. Here’s how it works:

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

STREAMING BIG

The data: Microdramas might be bite-sized, but the viewership they command is far from insignificant. According to research consultancy/industry analyst Omdia, microdrama apps are now getting more engagement than streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+.

Omdia pulled data from U.S.-based mobile devices and compared time watched on ReelShort (aka the vertical video platform launched in 2022 by Crazy Maple Studio) to time watched on premium streaming services known for long-form content.

That data showed that ReelShort—which offers hundreds of original scripted microdramas—gets 35.7 minutes of use per day, per active user. Netflix, meanwhile, comes in at 24.8 minutes, Prime Video brings 26.9 minutes, and Disney+ is at 23 minutes (per Deadline).

Data from other regions showed similar patterns. In the U.K., microdrama platform FlickReels is getting 22.39 minutes of watch time per day per user versus 21.47 minutes for Prime Video. And in Mexico, short-form app DramaBox brings 27.9 minutes, beating Prime Video (23.8 minutes) and Disney+ (22.5 minutes).

The context: Omdia’s findings are especially interesting considering their emphasis on engagement over pure user numbers. In the U.S., Netflix has 12 million monthly active mobile users, while ReelShort has 1.1 million. With just those figures to go off, you’d think Netflix was far outperforming ReelShort. But when you drill down and look at the actual engagement time, ReelShort is the winner.

As Omdia Head of Media and Entertainment Maria Rua Aguete noted, there’s an obvious takeaway to all this data: “microdramas are no longer a niche experiment.”

PHONKY PHRESH

The genre: If you don’t know Slxughter, you’re probably not a member of Gen Alpha. The Russia-born, Brazil-based producer composes tracks notable for their heavy, distorted basslines—and for their popularity among Gen A “brainrot” viewers. Over the past month, Slxughter music has generated more views on YouTube than any other artist. Not even Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny can keep up.

Slxughter is one of the most prominent producers of phonk music, an electronic subgenre influenced by Southern hip-hop and funk. Phonk hit the big time in 2025, with songs by Brazilian phonk artists supplying the backing tracks for scads of brainrot-style YouTube Shorts uploads.

“Passo bem Solto,” a track by the Italian producer ATLXS, is arguably the standard bearer of the phonk movement. Shorts featuring “Passo” topped YouTube’s year-end rankings in multiple countries in 2025, including India and Canada. Now, mainstream artists are getting in on the phun, too. In November, producer Diplo released a phonk mixtape titled d00mscrvll Vol. 1.

The cultural impact: Gen A’s infatuation with phonk has made it a key ingredient of today’s “kidslop”, but it’s also part of a broader cultural phenomenon that is pushing Brazil to the forefront of internet discourse. Brazil-based producers like Slxughter and Portuguese-language tracks like “Passo bem Solto” underscore phonk’s close ties to South America’s largest nation, where a national obsession with Roblox has allowed many Brazilian creators to rank among YouTube’s most-watched channels.

Brazil’s time in the YouTube spotlight may wax and wane as Gen A tastes evolve, but the nation’s music scene has clearly cemented itself on the internet stage.

WATCH THIS 👀

The film adaptation: After attracting 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube, Kane Pixels (aka 20-year-old creator/filmmaker Kane Parsons) is gearing up to bring fans to theaters this May. The first teaser has officially dropped for Backrooms, A24’s film adaptation of the found footage horror series that Parsons first premiered on his YouTube channel.

Directed by the creator himself, the upcoming movie stars Hollywood notables like Renate Reinsve (who played the lead role in the international hit The Worst Person in the World) and Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Check out a sneak peek at Backrooms here.

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