TOGETHER WITH

It’s Wednesday, and Obsession could have had a different ending—at least, in terms of distribution. According to director Curry Barker, an early offer from Netflix would have made the $500M+ box office hit a straight-to-streaming release.

THAT’S SHOW BIZ

The rationale: Last year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the Oscars would air on YouTube beginning in 2029. Now, on the film festival circuit, AMPAS execs are explaining the rationale behind that strategic switch-up.

While appearing on a Zurich Film Festival panel alongside Backrooms director/YouTuber Kane Parsons (aka KanePixels), AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer explained that the Oscars’ move to YouTube is meant to reverse the ceremony’s declining ratings and help it “reach a large audience.”

The expanded audience doesn’t just consist of TV screen viewers. On YouTube Shorts, film clip channels have pulled in millions of weekly views by sharing Hollywood magic with fans around the world. Kramer wants those viewers to tune into the Oscars, and YouTube is the easiest place for them to do it. 

As he explained, “more people outside of the U.S. watch the Oscars than in the U.S., and this allows us to capture that audience a lot more.”

Then there’s the matter of YouTube’s creator community. Kramer spent plenty of time gassing up co-panelist Parsons, who—in addition to delivering one of the biggest box office hits of 2026 in the form of Backrooms—reaches 3.6 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. In Kramer’s estimation, Parsons’ “fandom traveled from YouTube to the theaters,” meaning “YouTube can inform a theatrical fandom.”

The context: When you add up all of those trends, bringing an Oscars broadcast to YouTube becomes a no-brainer.

The deal is a win for YouTube, too. As the platform attempts to position its creators as artists on par with traditional studios and directors (including through a years-long Emmys push), broadcasting the Oscars could give it a much-needed dose of Hollywood credibility.

From October 12-15, the world’s #1 global content marketplace will return to Cannes—and when it does, attendees will have the opportunity to meet studios, distributors, creators, agencies, and investors from 100+ countries.

Here are three MIPCOM events you won’t want to miss:

1. “The YouTube Analytics Playbook: Algorithms, Audiences, and Fandoms”
Janik Höhne (YouTube Strategic Partner Manager - Film & TV) and James Loveridge (Little Dot Studios Co-Managing Director) will demystify the YouTube algorithm and equip your team with the analytical framework to turn raw viewer data into actionable content strategies.

2. “Broadcaster Story: The Pivot to YouTube with RTL”
Join Stephan Schmitter (CEO, RTL Deutschland) and Pedro Pina (VP, YouTube EMEA) to explore how global broadcasters expand their content distribution with YouTube.

3. “Creators Connect: Vertical Originals”
Sit down with Scott Brown (CEO/Founder, Second Rodeo Productions), Dawn Yang (Global Head of Entertainment, TikTok), Tanya Cohen (Co-CEO, Made By Us Studios), and Sandra Ouaiss (Producer at Elephant International, Webedia) to discover how vertical storytelling is creating opportunities for creator-led originals and studio partnerships.

This year, 10,600+ participants are set to attend MIPCOM Cannes—including decision-makers from Amazon MGM Studios, Disney, FOX Entertainment, Paramount, Sony Pictures, and YouTube.

Ready to connect with the industry’s leading forces?

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

AD WORLD

The revelation: Back in August, Twitch faced community outrage and a class-action lawsuit after its CPO acknowledged that if content scraping was “opt-in, nobody would opt in.” Now, another AI-centric revelation has creators on edge.

During an episode of The Snarketing Podcast, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy mentioned that the platform is using AI to evaluate whether streamers are squeaky-clean enough for brands to run ads against their content.

That process seems to be a recent expansion of a pre-existing system. As Clancy explained, Twitch already asks streamers to label their content in certain circumstances (e.g. if they’re playing games with “mature themes” or drawing 18+ art). The purpose of those labels, Clancy said, is so “when you as an advertiser tell us what your brand considerations are, you can make sure that it doesn’t appear [next to] stuff that doesn’t match your brand.”

But “lately,” he added, Twitch has been “using AI to also identify streamers that may not match a brand.”

The response: Creators aren’t happy about that addition. As SteveInSpawn (a Twitch partner with almost 30,000 followers) pointed out, creators often purposely edit their behavior to be brand-safe on sponsored streams—something an AI won’t necessarily pick up on if it’s making judgments based on unsponsored content.

Queer creators who tag their streams LGBTQIA+ are also worried that an AI rating system could exacerbate existing prejudices.

“In the past I’ve tested it and confirmed that I get less ad money if I had queer-related tags…so I am worried this dumb AI monitoring will mean I no longer get money from ads on Twitch,” LuminusRed said.

Twitch will need to address those concerns if it wants to maintain the trust of its community—and continue fostering the authenticity that Clancy himself has said is Twitch’s main appeal in the age of gen AI.

#FINTOK

The context: TikTok Shop is expected to generate over $100 billion in GMV this year—and TikTok is eager to keep the cash flowing.

Earlier this year, the platform applied for two financial licenses. One was a “direct credit company” license that would allow it to lend money directly to users, while the other (an “electronic money issuer” license) would let it function like Venmo. The latter license came into play in August, when TikTok began testing ways for users to send money via DMs and experimenting with digital payments in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Now, the platform has announced One Pay, a new financial feature aimed at getting creators reliably and quickly paid for their sponsored content.

The feature: The tool will be available through TikTok One, where brands and creators with at least 10,000 followers can find one another for new campaigns by using the TikTok Creative Exchange. TikTok One also serves as an avenue for creators to make ads for brands’ company accounts, and to earn back-catalog cash by letting brands retroactively use their existing organic content as ads.

The addition of One Pay will allow creators to get paid for all kinds of brand deals directly through the TikTok One marketplace. And, according to Mashable, TikTok is doing this for free, taking zero cut of creators’ earnings.

On top of the regulation that comes with having payments processed by the platform, TikTok says creators will get paid “in under 30 days after a video posts, which is quicker than the traditional terms common in the industry.”

TikTok has also announced TikTok One Plus, an invite-only collection of “high-quality content creators” who will collectively get shots at exclusive brand deals. That offering sounds a lot like YouTube Select, which already puts top-performing, brand-safe creators together in a single premium package.

WATCH THIS 👀

The White House AI Accord: Earlier this week, the biggest names in AI—including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and SpaceX/xAI founder Elon Musk—met with President Donald Trump to sign a voluntary new safety agreement.

According to Forbes, that accord outlines “four layers of controls and audits,” which ask AI companies to monitor the development of models through internal controls and teams, external auditors, and an independent committee.

According to Zuckerberg, “the basic idea is that we want to give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way that we intend.” Check out this video for his full summary of the “historic conversation” between the White House and Big AI.

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