August 26, 2021 • 47 mins
Javier began his career in media heading up a team at Univision which successfully brought the network into the digital space in the early 2000s. After leaving Univision, Javier formed DangerTV, a digital platform focusing on 'danger-centric' content. Javier walked David through the complex environment of the streaming space and explains why the natural appeal of danger puts his service in a unique position to succeed in an incredibly complex industry.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm David Grosso and you're listening to follow the profit.
David Grosso here with a very special guest, someone who
started his own streaming platform based on Danger. His name
is Javid and he's the founder of Danger TV. What's
(00:20):
up here, guys? How are you doing? Pleasure to be here.
Thanks very much for the invitation, looking forward to the chat.
So how did you get here? How did you kind of,
you know, eke out in existence and entertainment, which, as
a reminder, isn't the easiest industry on the planet. Well,
I started off for all intents and purposes, at Universion, right.
(00:42):
So when Univision was coming out of bankruptcy, they had
a magazine called Mass and so I became the ad
sales director pretty young and we did pretty well. But
the chairman of the company wanted to get into television.
Oh um. We bought a cable company called Gotta from Televisa.
(01:05):
I was the largest production company in Latin America and uh,
and he was like, look, run it. And it was
really it was the best thing in the world in
the sense that there I had nobody, no precedent, no whatever,
you know, to to work off. So it's like make
as many mistakes, just just get it right. So we
(01:27):
got that going, and then we had Mexican Soccer Um,
which nobody had ever put on Monday through Friday. So
we put that on and every cave, every cable operator
within a week was calling me saying we had to
cut a deal because everybody's calling me. All these Latinos
are calling me from Mexican Soccer, right, And so that
we bought. We bought the company from telling million, and
(01:48):
we sold Univision to the Venture Capitals in two thousand,
two thousand and eight. Contribution to the enterprise value was
a billion and a quarter. So, oh so it's good, right,
And then it took sonds. Yeah, it was good. So
it's like two thousand, two thousand, two thousand one, our chairman,
(02:09):
my chairman asked um if if I'd be interested in
starting the digital group? So I did. Did you really
sell like a well, you know, kind of getting in
the mix and everything else. So then we put together
a team. Everybody back then Broadcast, everybody thought Broadcast couldn't
figure out digital, right, because they're like, you don't get community,
(02:31):
you don't get the interactivity. So we're like kind of
like you know, how hard could it be? You know,
I mean it just like it didn't seem too hard
for very well, so we got involved. We actually ended
up partnering with a O. L. And that when you know,
probably took us UM a year to become number one
(02:51):
in the space. And so that became a big success.
And and when we sold the company, that part of
the company was worth about a half a billion, so
you know, so I got to be So it gave
me great experience in kind of getting into businesses that
filled a lot of promise, but nobody really knew what
the business model was, right, So when you kind of
come into those sorts of situations on a regular basis
(03:12):
and you're kind of predisposed to that sort of situation scenario,
you know, like there is no game plan, Like you're
gonna have to iterate, right, You're gonna have to pivot,
You're gonna it's gonna be two steps forward, one step back,
and the sooner that you kind of get a handle
on that, the sooner potential success can eventually come. And
(03:36):
you know, and it's you know, the one thing I
always tell people that asked me about like entrepreneurship and
my stuff and media and everything else. Is it. Look,
it takes a steel stomach, you know, it takes a
steel stomach, like it took me. We at at Universion
dot Com. We lost something like seventy five million dollars
(03:57):
in the first three years at people that the finance
guys called me Mr. Bracketts because you know, you always
put brackets around a loss, so like lukos, here's Mr.
Brackett's right, and so like you have to like take
it and swallowed. But like, as long as I was
getting fired, like I was like, okay, like call me Mr. Bracketts.
And then after three years, one day they called me Mr.
(04:18):
Brackets and I was like, you can never call me
that again. They're like, what are you trying to tell
me You're gonna break even? I said, I'm not gonna
break even. I'm gonna be profitable this year. And then
we had seen we kind of figured out how banners
worked and how we could price them, and you know,
bring in special events like World Cup into um into
the whole thing, and so then that went through the roof,
and so that gave me the opportunity. The company was
(04:39):
sold in two thousand and eight. I stayed on for
a year wasn't for me with the new guys, right,
and so I left and then I got involved in
UM QR codes, which are kind of popular now because
of COVID right when you scan. So we did that,
my brother and I UM, and we sold a company,
the q Our Code Company, to a company called Augmented Technologies.
(05:03):
The important thing there was that we had, or that
at least for me, was that I realized I just
wasn't an Hispanic guy, right, that I could be, you know,
a global guy, you know, like there's no like if
I've got the right idea, you know, and I think,
you know, I knew I could. I knew I could
figure out things strategically, and I thought to myself that
(05:25):
given the time, I could figure out the right tactics.
And I also had a ton of people on knew
at that point. So that led to Danger TV and
that was after we sold the company, the QR Code Company.
Guys were the guys that I was working with, which
included my brother about who advises the nfl UM and
(05:45):
our chief technology officer UM, a guy called Scott Falconer.
We were all gay together, like you know, we got
to do something like does anybody have we like, let's
keep the team together, right, Let's keep the band together.
And so I said, yeah, I got an idea. I said,
you know how Netflix just keep fund growing like wild
and they're like yeah, I said, well, at a certain point,
all those people that were watching Netflix used to watch
(06:08):
cable and while they were watching cable, they saw cable
television with ads. But now they're not getting ads on
Netflix because Netflix is spot right subscription based the O
D right. So how is corporate America making up for
(06:30):
that loss of impressions that it used to rely on?
And then they were like, well, so what's the you know,
what's the magic formula? And I was like, let's give
it to them free where we give the video for free,
and they're like, how are we going to get the content?
And then my theory was and by the way I'm
making it seem like my my mind was all of
(06:50):
us together out of it, Scott Falcon myself, We're like
we started to go to all the programming festivals and
we told everybody the world's change. You're not going to
get that license fee from you know, sci Fi channel
from this from not because they're all gonna a ton
of these things are gonna go down because everything is
going streaming, right, So what you want to do is
(07:12):
reinvent your model. Not expect license fees, but rev share
on ad sales. Right, I'll give you you give me
your content for free, and I'll give you the revenue
that I make off and now at least you get
to buy the Apple. And so that took, and I'd
(07:32):
say for two years they doan't me to go to hell,
you know, And that took. That took a pretty thick skin.
But then um, but then you know, like I've in media,
like the minute one guy does something, everybody starts saying,
you know, wait a minute, he did it, maybe we
should try it. And then what you do is once
(07:52):
you once we had enough content to launch a channel,
then when you cut a commission check right, and you're
saying like, oh, by the way, this quarter, here's twenty dollars. Right.
These guys never expected anything right there, like he's not
gonna make it. This is just a test. I'm like, oh, yeah,
by the way, at the quarter. Then like a year later,
(08:13):
it's twenty five a month, right, And so that starts
to get into the into the corporate Zeitgeist, and then
everybody starts to say, hey, what about else, We'll give
you content. We'll get the content. We'll get the content.
And so today we're probably closing in on about of content. Right,
we're making a couple of million dollars in AD sales
(08:36):
after splitting, after our share split, UM with the platforms
people like Samsung TV plus, Roku YouTube, you know, etcetera
and um. In the business it's called FAT a fast
channel re advertising support and television and UM and it's booming,
you know. So so that's Latin. Now you just you
(08:58):
heard the whole, the whole horror story because you know
that that's went down. How do you deal with being
Mr Bracketts though it seems like you've been Mr Bracketts
a few times in your life where you know, you know,
don't lend a lot of credence to what you think
is going to make money. That's not true if you
end up making money, right, like I mean, Jeff Bezos,
(09:20):
I think they still have. I'm not sure if Amazon
has made you know, eb da right, So if you
walk in, because the bottom line is I am a
good example because we ended up you know, I had
to make I had to raise an early round, right
in early stage round. And when people look me up,
they were like, oh, oh, this guy took on gall Vision.
(09:42):
When he took it on, it had twenty five it
was worth twenty million dollars and had five million subscribed
five million. We had five million subs through the cable
operator at Galla Vision, and when we sold the company,
we had ninety millions. Right. It went from It went
from um a business that we bought for million that
(10:02):
we sold for a billion. Right. So then you say
Gallo Vision, I mean Univision dot Com. And then it's
the same thing. You're like, wait a minute, they dropped
the hundred million dollars on it, but we made five million. Right,
that's a five increase on your investment. Where do you
get that? Right? And so with that comes confidence and
(10:22):
the final thing is on the third on this business, UM,
I put my own money in and it's been for
as thick as skin as you need. Those prior successes
gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted, including
if I wanted to invest in it, to have the
resources to invest. Right, So that's not really what's much
(10:46):
more important is that is it's not you know, losing money,
Mr Brackett's whatever. What's really a lot more important is
what's your vision right, and how are you going to
pull it off right? And how you're gonna pull it off, Like,
don't just don't bs me about how you're gonna pull
it off. Show me some examples, show me where the
(11:07):
trends are going. And they felt so like, you know,
right now we're speaking with Sam some TV plus, with Huawei,
the Chinese mobile company, with other companies all in Latin
America to bring Dang TV to Latin America. So now
people start saying dang. You know how he had said
he wanted to go global and he's going global because
(11:32):
we're going global in five years, will be all over
the world, right, So you just have thought. So that's
the difference. So like when you say back to the
original question about the calling Mr. Practice, I don't give
a day about being called Mr. Practice. I felt that
kind of where kind of like a badge of honor,
right because I could because I had the steel stomach
that was required to get through it. And everybody goes
(11:53):
through it. Diesos went through it, Ted Turner went through it.
You know, that's the deal. So can you tell me
the difference. Can you explain the modern TV landscape to us?
S v O D A v O D T v
O D. There's a lot of acronyms in this industry.
I'll just I'll just for the sake of time, I'll
just break it up into two spot and avon. Right,
(12:14):
So um avon is what we do, right, doesn't mean
we won't go spot we're talking into So that's advertising
supported v o D. That really breaks up into two buckets.
In advertising supported d O D, you have a linear channel,
which is like day part oriented one o'clock, two o'clock,
three o'clock, four o'clock, right, you replace, you keep that
(12:37):
basic um programming guide up for a week and then
you and then you refresh it with that's that's called
a linear loot. Then you have your v o D,
which is more like traditional v O D video on
demand where you can so we the way that we
look at it is you sample on linear and you
(13:02):
binge onto v o D like you see like in
my case, you see something. We have a show called
Human Prayer, right, which is animal attacks. Stuff is a
wild so you watch it. You just happen to one
day go through your stands on TV said you see
it and you're like, dang, you know, like that is
a rag pillow. Right, let me go to v O D.
I'm gonna watch all ten Human Pray series and you know,
(13:25):
so you sample on linear, you binge on on on
v O D. So that's kind of the way um
a VOT has has um materialized today. So the big
difference is that it costs a lot it's called cost
of acquisition to get a subscriber, right, because you have
(13:48):
to market where it's It's a lot easier to get
a viewer if you're confident with of your if you've
got a great brand name, if you've got good content,
your your your airtime looks professional, you've got great promos um,
that becomes a lot of you. So it's a lot
easier to get into a vod than it is Spot. However,
(14:14):
the really big money is an spot. Right. So like
one example I bring up to people is are you
familiar with Curiosity Stream? No, I'm not telling me about
its stream was founded by the founder of Discovery Guy
called John Hendricks. Right, they charged two dollars a month. Right,
(14:36):
they have eighteen million subscribers, So you know, you hear
two dollars a month, You're like, oh, yeah, it's a
nice little service, right until you do the maths and
then you're like two dollars time at M he's making
thirty six million dollars a month, right, is making a
half a billion cash a year right now? For those
(14:56):
eighteen million subs to create half a billion in advertising revenue,
it's it's virtually impossible. Right, So the question is can
you get to the eighteen million at two dollars or
it might be twelve dollars for Netflix? Right, And there's
a variety of different costs of acquisition models, and so
(15:18):
then you say they seem like they're totally separate. But
what I think is occurring is that today this whole
thing about free television like Danger TV. Right in second quarter,
we had twelve streamers, twelve that cable channels and streamers
that advertise on Danger TV. Now, why did they advertise
(15:40):
on Danger TV? They advertise on Danger TV because they
knew we were free, like a free channel to a viewer.
So what the person that's watching free TV is more
likely to still not have made up his mind against
all his subscription decisions. Right, So now all of a sudden,
(16:01):
guys are advertising on my air saying I can find
forget the impression, I can find a new subscriber here.
So are you familiar with Pluto? Yeah, of course, Okay,
So Pluto's three it's owned by Viacom, So Viacom. You're like, okay,
Viacom has got Paramount Plus right as their streamer. And
(16:24):
then you say, oh, so what they did was they
put all these shows behind a pay wall of subscription,
and then they can still get the advertising on on Pluto.
At first glance, that's right, until you realize, right that,
wait a minute, Paramount I mean Viacom is now going
(16:44):
to promote Pluto, So that's only going to get bigger.
Pluto is only gonna get bigger. And say you're like,
they'll make that much more advertising, and then you're like, right,
but there's even more to that, right, And what's more
to that is that you have potential subscribers there. So
now Paramount Plus can advertise on Pluto basically for free, right,
(17:12):
and you've got millions of people that if they're watching,
Like I go back to Data TV, we had twelve
streamers and cable channels advertising on our air basically looking
for subscribers. Right, they have to pay me. But if
I have a strategic like Pluto's got with UM with Viacom,
it gives you this depository for new potential subscribers. And
(17:36):
that's why we're part of the of that ecosystem. But
of but the package of getting an AVAT channel together
with an SCAT channel that reaches critical mass that has
got the same type of content is um. You know,
that's kind of like the holy grail if you can
make it all work. Tell me about danger TV. Why
(18:04):
danger UM? I'd say I'd start off with that when
I when we started to look at the whole Netflix
example I gave you earlier. So you think about people
that are cord cutting, right, So, like you know they're
watching Netflix and they say, screwed, I don't need cable anymore. Right,
(18:26):
We through the through a variety of different ways, realized
that it was young men. We're a huge You can
imagine you're coming out of college and you're like, oh,
do you want to you want to pay a hundred
dollar cable bill and you're like, screw a hundred dollar
cablele pay ten bucks for Netflix and I'm done, right,
And so then we started to think, well, if there's
(18:47):
all young men are primarily young men that are doing this,
what would attract young men, right, because that's what we're
looking for. And so know, I was like, I think
it's gonna be danger right now. You still working on them,
you know, I love the company, still love the company.
(19:10):
But I was never a Novella fan, right right you
started there. They are very similar and as Hispanics, we
had to watch them growing up, so we kind of
become allergic to them. Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying like
I'm not Look, there's there's a lot of stuff. It's
gotten much better in a lot of in a lot
of different ways, right, and so, but it wasn't my
(19:31):
like I was always kind of like, yeah, I'm part
of this. I've gotten rich off it, right, But like
it's not like I loved it right now you go,
you said, well what do you look? And I was like, well,
I like all that danger stuff, right, you know, like
you know, whether it be you know, special forces training
(19:52):
or whether it be um, animal attacks, disasters, crime, like,
I go, all that stuff like that that's what keeps
that's great, right and so, and so I would explain
that to my partners, and then my partners were like, well,
what should we call it? And I thought to myself,
(20:13):
I've got three kids that are I mean today they're um,
eighteen to twenty two, but back then they were probably
you know, thirteen to seventeen, and the one word that
you always heard was authentic, right, authentic. It's got to
be authentic for this generation millennolegency has gotta be authentic.
So I was like, call it what it is. It's danger.
So then there so I was like, I want to
(20:35):
call it Danger TV, right, and all the guys are like,
done right, because we're all guys, right, We're like you instant.
It was like once we came up with the name,
we were like, oh my god, this is the easiest
elevator pitch of all time. Like what is Danger TV about? Like, uh,
I think it's about danger, right, That makes it a
(20:57):
lot easier, right, Like uh yeah, danger, you know, and
so um and so there was a U R L
farmer in China that had that had the trademark. So
the guy I was like, I'll give you a thousand
books on the trademark, and the guys like ten thousand,
and I said three thousand or our Walk and Nobody's
ever gonna ask you because nobody's ever gonna find you
(21:18):
and freaking China again and the guys like deal. So
that we got the trademark, right, and so then now
we had the trademark and we had the idea, and
then now it was about going out to all the
to all the video festivals and convincing um, all these
catalogs that um, you know that we were worth a
(21:40):
chance and that was you know, that was hard, but um,
but we got done. So what do you get? What
type of shows can I watch on Danger TV? Well,
I mean you can get on it right now if
you're in front of a computer, just go to danger
tv dot com. But you let the war crime or
give a couple of ideas. I'll tell you what the
monsters are. So we you've got probably our biggest show
(22:02):
on YouTube is UK Border Force. UK Border Force people
are trying to smuggle stuff into Heathrow Airport, right, and
then they get pulled aside. Now you're like, okay, I
get it. Like cocaine, Well that's part of it. But
then they're smuggling like wildlife, you know, and you'll see
like a guy with like armadillo's in a double bag.
(22:23):
You know, you're like, you gotta be kidding that you
brought armadillo's over from like Pakistan or whatever might have been,
you know. And then there was one guy that tried
to smuggle in his grandmother, right. So yeah, so it
was like totally brad at to some degree. Some of
these guys like even though it's illegal and everything else,
and you know, you have to have rules and everything else,
(22:44):
you can't help, but you know, you're kind of like
all they want to do is get fine. It's like
everybody's got, like you see a humanity in it, right,
Like everybody just wants to have a pretty good, you know,
decent life, like you know, you know, three meals a day,
a roof over there like that. That's and they're coming here.
They're coming to the West to figure it out. And
(23:05):
then at the end of the day, the immigration officers
like you're going back to Pakistan and you're like, oh, man,
what a bummer, even though he should have been caught
and he was trying to sneak it in all that time. Stuff.
So we've got that type of stuff. Then we've got um,
the animal attack stuff is Big right and so and
right now more on the not it's not so much immigration,
(23:27):
but just like in terms of rescue, we have Coast
Guard series right so, Coast Guard Alaska, Coast Guard Northwest, Passage, Um,
Animal Attack, Human Prey, Human Praise, a six show and
a lot of them. We have Fairmont shows that have
appeared a couple of years ago on Netflix, on Discovery.
(23:48):
So we're getting, you know, pretty high quality of stuff
right now. We've got UM, We've got a couple of
survival shows where guys go out, you know, into you know,
like the baddest place in the baddest the bad assets
place in Canada, and you know you're left with like
your rifle and UM and you gotta live for a month.
(24:12):
And the guys you know like hunting, you know, crazy stuff.
So it's like a little bit of it's a little
bit of everything. It really is a little bit of everything.
You know. The people that UM are coming to us UM,
you know, I can kind of get a kick out
of that. What usually see is people come in for
one thing and then they start to find the other stuff. Right,
(24:35):
So it was always part of the strategy was to
cross pollinate danger, so you start off with you know,
let's says let's say it's cocaine smuggling. But then you've
got um special Forces trained. So we've got Special Forces
guys from all over the world, right, and they're getting
the crap beat out of them, becoming specially you're like,
oh my god, you know, like I hope that God,
(24:56):
I'd never pick a fight with a Special Forces guy, right,
because you're a dead man, you know. Anok A matter
of words from philand United States, you know wherever. So
it's it's back to the Univision analogy for example. I
mean for me, it's just it's just a much It's
(25:18):
a more compelling form of entertainment than UM then almost anything,
you know. I mean, you know, maybe the NFL matches
it for me. And we're seeing that, we're just seeing
our growth um just continue, especially post COVID. So do
you feel like do you feel like live programming is
(25:41):
going to be a big deal with streaming? Absolutely? So.
I heard about the Running of the Bulls, you know
our Spanish heritage. Can you tell me about that? Well,
we've got we want to do Running with the Bulls, right,
and so we've got a series on the air right
now called the Matador series, and it's like following Mattadors
(26:01):
in Spain and you know, you see guys getting tossed
by bulls and you know, like just crazy stuff. So
we want to go live and we think there's like
a bunch of live um spectacles right that you know
probably isn't that far off from the Roman Colosseum days, right,
(26:23):
like like the running of the bulls in Pamplona is
out of control? Right then you say, what about surfing
Mavericks when it's or Nazare when it's cranking at a
hundred feet right as a surfer? Right, So like that
is badass, right, you know, so we're like, yeah, we
want to do that. Then I'm not sure if you've
ever heard of the uh the Isle of man t T.
(26:47):
The Isle of man t T is a motorcycle race
around the Isle of man It's called the Islament. It's
the time fraile. You go one at a time and
the average speed is you know, anywhere from a hy
miles an hour. Right. Usually a guy dies every year, right,
just goes off the cliff. And you know, so we're
like nobody's covering this stuff, and the thing about danger
(27:10):
is not only did we like the authenticity of the word,
but we felt that, um, we refer to it as
a core emotion, right, and we think core emotions can
resonate anywhere in the world, because every single guy on
the planet knows what dangerous because you're the guy. You're
supposed to be the one that protects. You're the protector,
(27:31):
and it's life and death, right, and you're like, dang,
you know, here comes you know, here comes an elephant
charging at me, or whatever the heck it is that
we're coming, or it's a paramilitary, or it's a paramilitary,
it's a terrorist, you know, or whatever it might be.
And so we like the idea that we think we're
tapping into an emotion that can resonate anywhere in the world.
And we think that's what's gonna drive between the brand
(27:53):
name just being a cool brand name. That we think
tapping that core emotion is what's gonna drive us into
becoming a global brand. And I'm saying global, I don't
think it's gonna think three years will be all over
the world. So do you see original programming in your future? Yeah? Absolutely,
what type of original programming? Obviously, danger an example. Right
(28:14):
now we're doing um, we're developing branded content show. Right,
so the next thing about the brand content show is
that the brand puts up their money. Right. But the
branded content shows title is Survival Home and Gardens, right,
So Survival Homes and Gardens is doomsday prepper. So it's
like you see a bunch of different places all over
(28:36):
the United States where guys are doing wild doomsday prepping
for all sorts of stuff, whether it be tsunamis, whether
it be nuclear disaster, whether it be you know, tornado,
whether it be wildfire, and like how does how do
you make it right? You get caught in a wildfire
in northern California's everything's going down? You know, do you
(28:57):
have a bunker? What does that bunker require? You know
what you know? Weapons? Like how do you defend yourself,
you know, against the animals? How do you defend yourself
against wild animals? You know? Like all that stuff, the
materials of your home. How much food do you have
to stock for? Right? Can you grow it? Right? Like?
What is medicinal plant life that if you get you know, hurt,
(29:19):
So all that kind of stuff is what dudes, they
guys do and women You know and families, you know,
so we want to have right now. They just had
a CNN UM special. Coincidentally, we didn't know about it
until it came out called Bunker Boom Boom, and Bunker
Boom is just about you know, the whole dudes. You
(29:40):
can imagine COVID wildfires, rising sea levels, like there's uh,
I'm not gonna say it's a majority, but there's a
group of people that are like that are expecting, you know,
disaster of biblical proportions, you know, imminently, and they're preparing
for it. So we're like, you know, do I think
(30:01):
that's gonna occur? No, but it doesn't matter. What I
think is what they're doing. And uh, and we're covering that.
So we want to cover that. We got you know,
the stars and all that type of stuff that built
into it. Do you see yourself as a competitor to
(30:24):
mainstream sports. We've seen the politicization of sports recently and
a lot of people tuning out, but that same kind
of desire to watch competitions. Is that something that you're
kind of channeling that energy as what you mentioned as
a core emotion. I don't know, I I hope so
UM I think that'd be wonderful. I think I'll give
(30:45):
you an example of something that I think doubled our views. Right,
And it was during COVID, So COVID hits and all
of a sudden, sports are out, right. So we went
to a couple of the platforms that were carrying us,
like Samsung TV Plus, and we said, you have an
(31:05):
incredible opportunity right now to tap adrenaline, to trap adrenaline
people that are looking for adrenaline and there and right.
And it's always been sports. It always been the NFL
with Paul, and we said, in light of the fact
that all that stuff is closed off college football blah
(31:26):
blah blah, let us be that ADRENALINOK fixed right, So
and they're like, so, what do he want us to do?
And we said, we want you they get the inventory
these platforms like Samsung TV Plus, but if they're getting
it from me, they're getting it from everybody, right, And
they've got like two inter channels. So we said, so
(31:47):
that means you've got remnants space that you don't sell
of the inventory that you get from everybody, including me, right,
run our promo cross channel, right, and that way everybody's
gonna start to realize, dang, what's this danger TV thing? Great,
I can go on on Sunday afternoons. I can get
my wild Animal attack fix or my you know, my
(32:10):
Special Forces training fix or whatever. And it worked, you know,
like you know, all of a sudden, it was like boom,
you know, and the views started to come in and
that many more advertisers and UM. And so it doesn't
it's not an exact answer to your question, but I
think I would say, I think we have elements that
(32:31):
are UM. Lives that are sport like, right, you know,
you know, competition, right, except that the except that what
you're what you're competing for. You know, a lot of
cases in our case, there is your life, right, you know,
not you know, it's not the you know, it's not
the Super Bowl ring you know, etcetera. And I'm a
(32:53):
monster and nfel fan, right. But like so that whole
thing is UM. I think people find and everything that
we're seeing is UM is fascinating, you know, and and
compelling and for advertisers. UM. I think the idea of two.
I think there's two things that that advertisers are realizing
(33:13):
about fast channels like US is You've got two things.
You've got value, right because we're free. You can't get
a better value than that, right. And you're getting adventure.
You're getting value and adventure. And you think, like every
SUV spot is out in some mountains somewhere, you know,
(33:33):
Geico is telling you be prepared because we'll cover you,
you know, and and it's and it's affordable, you know.
So we think we like the idea of the space
that we're in um plane to value and adventure. So
what do you feel about the future of entertainment Because
we have these big conglomerates that basically control the landscape,
(33:57):
and then we have people like you that are trying
to disrupt it. In some cases they're playing nice with
some of the conglomerates, but in a lot of times,
you know, there's a fixed by here. Our population growth
isn't that high anymore in the developed world. So how
do you feel about the future of the legacy entertainment
conglomerates like the one you used to work for. I
(34:17):
think it totally depends on what the commitment to creativity is, right.
So you know, in the case of um somebody like Televisa,
their masters at at Novella's right. Now, last year I
(34:38):
think the biggest show on Netflix was Money Heist, right,
Money highst was a Spanish language out of Madrid show.
It's right, so it was a Spanish word, but it
was it was money hist and it's about these um,
(35:00):
these professional criminals that decide to take the breaking to
the bank of Spain and then they end up pulling
it off, and it's it's crazy, right, unbelievable. I loved it.
Was amazing though is for decades, not years, decades people
would say you can't use a Madrid accent to reach
(35:25):
Hispanics in a broadway. You can't. Why because it's colonial
Spain and we were We used to work for that, right,
so that whole thing would be you needed back. Especially
when I started Univision, it was called or before that
s I Am went of Spanish International Network, it was
called um neutral Spanish Broadcast neutral, like no accent, right,
(35:49):
if you're gonna air to any accent, you'd probably air
to a Mexican one, because of all us Spanish a Mexican. Right,
So so you know, Netflix said, I don't give a day, right,
I don't care if that's the rule, right, we think
this is a great story. We think it's a different story,
(36:10):
and we think it's going to resonate, and they made it,
you know, and then now they've got there's another one
that's kind of bilingual UM that's called It's about an
orphanage in Um in Mexico and they go out and
a fishing they need the orphanage they're gonna close down,
and then they go out into the fishing torny and
(36:33):
they win the fishing torny with the kids as the fisher.
I mean, crazy, but it's like it's so you need
that level of creativity, You need that just complete And
then so then you're like, so, who's the guy in
charge of that creativity? Right? And if you've got a
great creative head or a great CEO or some combination
(36:54):
of that, I think you'll be in good chap. Right.
If you don't have that, I think you can have
a lot of problems because I don't think you're gonna
be able to rely on life as it used to be.
I think it's I think it is innovate, innovate, innovate, innovate, creativity, creativity, creativity, creativity.
(37:15):
So the predominant theory is that people are under forty
don't have an attention span, but long form content is booming.
So how can you explain that to us, because you know,
young people can't sit still for thirty seconds, but they'll
binge watch something for three hours. Yeah. I can't really,
I can't really explain to you except that all I
would say is that the stuff that that they're binging
(37:37):
on for three hours, whether whether it be ted Lasso
or whether it be you know Alone you know on Netflix,
which is a wild survival series, or whether it is
UK border Force on Danger TV, is that they're compelling,
you know, and it's hard to get that level of
compelling nous in you know, a you know, a four
(38:00):
minute chapter on on Snap right, Like that's hard, right,
Like you can get that doughe and say dang, you know,
like I flew out of the plane or look at
that shark attack or whatever, but that whole story, the
richness of it for a great story, is very difficult
to capture. And I think that's what it is, is
that you just can't capture it on short form and
(38:21):
you can capture it on you know, on long and
by the way, with kids on Long, like you're like
Pat they're watching long form. I remember we had this
show UM, which will remain nameless, and I thought it.
I thought it was horrible, right, I just like this
a piece of jump. And so then I was talking
to my son one day and I go, hey, you
if you watch any Danger TV late? He goes, yeah,
(38:43):
I saw the show, and I go, really, I got
to show the piece of jump, right, like, how did
you like? How did you sit there and go and
we don't even show a weapon because it was all
about weapons until like fifteen minutes into the show, and
he goes, I fast forwarded, And I was like, that's
(39:04):
the difference. Like for a kid, a long form show
might be five minutes of fast forwarding to the action parts. Right,
So then all of a sudden they decide what long
form is and which fork form is. It might be
long form in how I described my content, but to
the kid, he might have seen the entire show in
five minutes. So that's UM. And I've experienced that firstand
(39:28):
I fascinated, you know. I was just like, oh my god,
I never thought about that. You know, we do fast forward.
I can attest to that. So do you think, well,
do you think we'll see more fast TV channels and
niche specific platforms like here's like Danger TV. You know,
that's a tough question because I don't think there's a
ton of court emotion elements, you know, and I do
(39:50):
think to become a significant business that you do have
to become a global player with fast right. Um. I
think there's another thing is like if you try to
get into Sandsung TV plus now it's tough, right, So
you can't be if everybody's not going with a Roku
example where you've got ten thousand channels at Roku and
(40:11):
you've got to sit through it and hope that search
finds it. You know, blah blah blah. Um, you've got
two channels. You know. We recently went to Visio and
Dizzio told us we're putting a pause on adding new channels,
and we're like, you've got to have Danger TV on there.
You've gotta be kidding me, right, And they're like, no,
(40:32):
we're not kidding you. We're putting a pause. You know.
You know what I'm gonna This is interesting, Haper, and
this is an interesting part of the conversation. In the past,
hardware specifically your television never determined what channels you could
have access to, and not a lot of people think
about that. The television that you buy might ultimately determine
(40:53):
what you're watching, There's no question, especially if you want
if you don't want to pay for cable and you
don't want to pay for neh like the television that's
gonna tell you where you're gonna watch, right, and the number,
you know, I mean it could change, you could change tomorrow.
I'm not at that O E M. Original equipment manufacturer, right,
so it could go, you know, could go they go
to a thousand maybe, but I haven't heard of anybody
(41:15):
going to a thousand, you know. And I don't hear
the phone companies going to a thousand. I hear there,
you know, the number that seems to be around two channels.
So if you can't get in there, like we've already
had people come to us and say, can you take
my channel and integrated into Danger TV? Right, so that
(41:36):
we start to become a platform, right, And they're like,
because we can't get in there, so we'd rather get
of the revenue and split it with you, which actually
ends up being a quarter because you also have to
split it with a platform. Right, That makes nothing at all, right,
So I mean we look at that as a positive
development for us because we're in most of the places
(41:57):
that we want to be in there, even though we're
not in all of them. And by the way, everything
that we're doing in the United States, then you have
to do it in Latin America, then you have to
do it in Europe, then you have to do it
in China, Southeast Asia, Africa are a lot of the
fast TV channels right now American that are being consumed abroad.
I don't know. The thing about about it goes back
(42:18):
to core motion, right, So I think that's the thing
that everybody liked about what we do right there, Like
they get that, you know, they get the core motion
concept and um, and they know that that's going to
resonate around the world. So you're like, you know, and
by the way, there's a lot of these platforms that
are that are emerging, and you know, they're like your
(42:39):
core motion. You're like, we want you right, like we
want you right. So like for us, I think it
will be a lot easier than for other people just
because of what I'm experience, just because I'm getting calls
for people asking me to take their channels on under
my wing, and you know in certain cases, I'm sure
we're going to consider in certain cases depending on the
(43:00):
quality of the content. Like for us, really there's three
parts to our formula. Right is to always look for
better content, right. Second is to create wild promos, like
great promos because Danger offers that, right, because it's Danger, right.
And then the third thing is to get launched on
everything that we can make money on. We can't make
(43:23):
money on it, we're not interesting, but it's just that thing.
Better content, better promo and promos, more launches. So these
days it might sound ridiculous because the whole world is
seemingly tooled for males, that there might be a market
opportunity viewing males as an underserved demographic. Is that the
way you saw Danger TV? Yeah? I did, but it
(43:46):
really wasn't so much about males. Or let's just say
it wasn't just a being male, It was mail being underserved,
not only as male, but as a v o D product. Right,
So one thing is to say, hey, I got you know,
I got mails. But if you're like but in a
world that's moving to v o D where you watch
(44:07):
whenever the hell you want, to watch and you can
want and you can binge on entire series that I
didn't see it, and I was looking for it, right.
I was consciously that started with this show that I
mentioned earlier called Human Prey, because when I was coming
up with the idea, what I always do was I
bounced it. I test drive it with my kids. Right.
I was like, this is the typeest show. Can you
imagine a show like this? So we see this thing
(44:28):
at Chimpanzee jumps oute of like some safari you know,
cage or whatever, and uh and goes wild. Right, And
so we see it, and my kids are like, dang,
that was so good, right, And they were all saying
that they don't watch cable anymore. They're like, we don't
watch it. That's like an old person thing. But that's
like for your age, you know, it's like and so
(44:50):
I was like, I was like, but what about that?
What about another show like the Chimp There like, yeah,
well for that show, we'd kill for another show like
the Chimp Show. And so I'm like, okay, let me
go back in. I go back in and there's no
v O D available for that series. So then I thought, dang,
they like they'd like to see more male stuff at
least as a pur taste, animal attack forever or whatever
(45:13):
that says about my kids, you know. And then two
V O D right, So both were underserved, and I
think that's where we saw the opportunity, not just the
male thing, it was a male thing needs bodta cool. Well,
thank you so much for taking the time to talk
to us today, Javier. Where do we find out more
about you besides Danger TV LinkedIn? So change in the
(45:44):
television landscape is all about guaranteed at this point, and
people are hiding and relying on formulas that work. But
as our guests showed us, none of those formulas that
worked in the past are going to work in the future.
We're watching as television is completely altered by our consumption
and habits, and it's like every other industry right now,
disruption is the name of the game. We can't make
(46:05):
up what's gonna happen next, but we can figure out
that what we already have doesn't work, and a lot
of the things that will grow in the future don't
exist yet. And that's why it's a really exciting time.
Startups and smaller companies like Danger TV and like Bold TV,
and like a million other places in the corner of
every place in America and beyond, are growing what will
(46:29):
be our media ecosystem in the future. It's scary and
it's exciting right because stability and business is something that
is greatly appreciated. But there is no stability anymore. Everything
is being disrupted and ripped apart and reinvented. And my
friends were living through that right now. And television is
just one example of every business on earth right now
(46:51):
that's being disrupted and forced to change before our very eyes.
I'm David Grosso for followed the Prophet. Thank you for
joining me today. If you enjoyed the podcast, give us
a five star review. Follow the Profit is available on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
get your podcasts. And of course i'd like to thank
my hard working staff as always for every episode. Until
(47:13):
next time. I'm David Grosso for Following the Profit part
of the Gingwich three network.
I'm David Grosso and you're listening to follow the profit.
David Grosso here with a very special guest, someone who
started his own streaming platform based on Danger. His name
is Javid and he's the founder of Danger TV. What's
(00:20):
up here, guys? How are you doing? Pleasure to be here.
Thanks very much for the invitation, looking forward to the chat.
So how did you get here? How did you kind of,
you know, eke out in existence and entertainment, which, as
a reminder, isn't the easiest industry on the planet. Well,
I started off for all intents and purposes, at Universion, right.
(00:42):
So when Univision was coming out of bankruptcy, they had
a magazine called Mass and so I became the ad
sales director pretty young and we did pretty well. But
the chairman of the company wanted to get into television.
Oh um. We bought a cable company called Gotta from Televisa.
(01:05):
I was the largest production company in Latin America and uh,
and he was like, look, run it. And it was
really it was the best thing in the world in
the sense that there I had nobody, no precedent, no whatever,
you know, to to work off. So it's like make
as many mistakes, just just get it right. So we
(01:27):
got that going, and then we had Mexican Soccer Um,
which nobody had ever put on Monday through Friday. So
we put that on and every cave, every cable operator
within a week was calling me saying we had to
cut a deal because everybody's calling me. All these Latinos
are calling me from Mexican Soccer, right, And so that
we bought. We bought the company from telling million, and
(01:48):
we sold Univision to the Venture Capitals in two thousand,
two thousand and eight. Contribution to the enterprise value was
a billion and a quarter. So, oh so it's good, right,
And then it took sonds. Yeah, it was good. So
it's like two thousand, two thousand, two thousand one, our chairman,
(02:09):
my chairman asked um if if I'd be interested in
starting the digital group? So I did. Did you really
sell like a well, you know, kind of getting in
the mix and everything else. So then we put together
a team. Everybody back then Broadcast, everybody thought Broadcast couldn't
figure out digital, right, because they're like, you don't get community,
(02:31):
you don't get the interactivity. So we're like kind of
like you know, how hard could it be? You know,
I mean it just like it didn't seem too hard
for very well, so we got involved. We actually ended
up partnering with a O. L. And that when you know,
probably took us UM a year to become number one
(02:51):
in the space. And so that became a big success.
And and when we sold the company, that part of
the company was worth about a half a billion, so
you know, so I got to be So it gave
me great experience in kind of getting into businesses that
filled a lot of promise, but nobody really knew what
the business model was, right, So when you kind of
come into those sorts of situations on a regular basis
(03:12):
and you're kind of predisposed to that sort of situation scenario,
you know, like there is no game plan, Like you're
gonna have to iterate, right, You're gonna have to pivot,
You're gonna it's gonna be two steps forward, one step back,
and the sooner that you kind of get a handle
on that, the sooner potential success can eventually come. And
(03:36):
you know, and it's you know, the one thing I
always tell people that asked me about like entrepreneurship and
my stuff and media and everything else. Is it. Look,
it takes a steel stomach, you know, it takes a
steel stomach, like it took me. We at at Universion
dot Com. We lost something like seventy five million dollars
(03:57):
in the first three years at people that the finance
guys called me Mr. Bracketts because you know, you always
put brackets around a loss, so like lukos, here's Mr.
Brackett's right, and so like you have to like take
it and swallowed. But like, as long as I was
getting fired, like I was like, okay, like call me Mr. Bracketts.
And then after three years, one day they called me Mr.
(04:18):
Brackets and I was like, you can never call me
that again. They're like, what are you trying to tell
me You're gonna break even? I said, I'm not gonna
break even. I'm gonna be profitable this year. And then
we had seen we kind of figured out how banners
worked and how we could price them, and you know,
bring in special events like World Cup into um into
the whole thing, and so then that went through the roof,
and so that gave me the opportunity. The company was
(04:39):
sold in two thousand and eight. I stayed on for
a year wasn't for me with the new guys, right,
and so I left and then I got involved in
UM QR codes, which are kind of popular now because
of COVID right when you scan. So we did that,
my brother and I UM, and we sold a company,
the q Our Code Company, to a company called Augmented Technologies.
(05:03):
The important thing there was that we had, or that
at least for me, was that I realized I just
wasn't an Hispanic guy, right, that I could be, you know,
a global guy, you know, like there's no like if
I've got the right idea, you know, and I think,
you know, I knew I could. I knew I could
figure out things strategically, and I thought to myself that
(05:25):
given the time, I could figure out the right tactics.
And I also had a ton of people on knew
at that point. So that led to Danger TV and
that was after we sold the company, the QR Code Company.
Guys were the guys that I was working with, which
included my brother about who advises the nfl UM and
(05:45):
our chief technology officer UM, a guy called Scott Falconer.
We were all gay together, like you know, we got
to do something like does anybody have we like, let's
keep the team together, right, Let's keep the band together.
And so I said, yeah, I got an idea. I said,
you know how Netflix just keep fund growing like wild
and they're like yeah, I said, well, at a certain point,
all those people that were watching Netflix used to watch
(06:08):
cable and while they were watching cable, they saw cable
television with ads. But now they're not getting ads on
Netflix because Netflix is spot right subscription based the O
D right. So how is corporate America making up for
(06:30):
that loss of impressions that it used to rely on?
And then they were like, well, so what's the you know,
what's the magic formula? And I was like, let's give
it to them free where we give the video for free,
and they're like, how are we going to get the content?
And then my theory was and by the way I'm
making it seem like my my mind was all of
(06:50):
us together out of it, Scott Falcon myself, We're like
we started to go to all the programming festivals and
we told everybody the world's change. You're not going to
get that license fee from you know, sci Fi channel
from this from not because they're all gonna a ton
of these things are gonna go down because everything is
going streaming, right, So what you want to do is
(07:12):
reinvent your model. Not expect license fees, but rev share
on ad sales. Right, I'll give you you give me
your content for free, and I'll give you the revenue
that I make off and now at least you get
to buy the Apple. And so that took, and I'd
(07:32):
say for two years they doan't me to go to hell,
you know, And that took. That took a pretty thick skin.
But then um, but then you know, like I've in media,
like the minute one guy does something, everybody starts saying,
you know, wait a minute, he did it, maybe we
should try it. And then what you do is once
(07:52):
you once we had enough content to launch a channel,
then when you cut a commission check right, and you're
saying like, oh, by the way, this quarter, here's twenty dollars. Right.
These guys never expected anything right there, like he's not
gonna make it. This is just a test. I'm like, oh, yeah,
by the way, at the quarter. Then like a year later,
(08:13):
it's twenty five a month, right, And so that starts
to get into the into the corporate Zeitgeist, and then
everybody starts to say, hey, what about else, We'll give
you content. We'll get the content. We'll get the content.
And so today we're probably closing in on about of content. Right,
we're making a couple of million dollars in AD sales
(08:36):
after splitting, after our share split, UM with the platforms
people like Samsung TV plus, Roku YouTube, you know, etcetera
and um. In the business it's called FAT a fast
channel re advertising support and television and UM and it's booming,
you know. So so that's Latin. Now you just you
(08:58):
heard the whole, the whole horror story because you know
that that's went down. How do you deal with being
Mr Bracketts though it seems like you've been Mr Bracketts
a few times in your life where you know, you know,
don't lend a lot of credence to what you think
is going to make money. That's not true if you
end up making money, right, like I mean, Jeff Bezos,
(09:20):
I think they still have. I'm not sure if Amazon
has made you know, eb da right, So if you
walk in, because the bottom line is I am a
good example because we ended up you know, I had
to make I had to raise an early round, right
in early stage round. And when people look me up,
they were like, oh, oh, this guy took on gall Vision.
(09:42):
When he took it on, it had twenty five it
was worth twenty million dollars and had five million subscribed
five million. We had five million subs through the cable
operator at Galla Vision, and when we sold the company,
we had ninety millions. Right. It went from It went
from um a business that we bought for million that
(10:02):
we sold for a billion. Right. So then you say
Gallo Vision, I mean Univision dot Com. And then it's
the same thing. You're like, wait a minute, they dropped
the hundred million dollars on it, but we made five million. Right,
that's a five increase on your investment. Where do you
get that? Right? And so with that comes confidence and
(10:22):
the final thing is on the third on this business, UM,
I put my own money in and it's been for
as thick as skin as you need. Those prior successes
gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted, including
if I wanted to invest in it, to have the
resources to invest. Right, So that's not really what's much
(10:46):
more important is that is it's not you know, losing money,
Mr Brackett's whatever. What's really a lot more important is
what's your vision right, and how are you going to
pull it off right? And how you're gonna pull it off, Like,
don't just don't bs me about how you're gonna pull
it off. Show me some examples, show me where the
(11:07):
trends are going. And they felt so like, you know,
right now we're speaking with Sam some TV plus, with Huawei,
the Chinese mobile company, with other companies all in Latin
America to bring Dang TV to Latin America. So now
people start saying dang. You know how he had said
he wanted to go global and he's going global because
(11:32):
we're going global in five years, will be all over
the world, right, So you just have thought. So that's
the difference. So like when you say back to the
original question about the calling Mr. Practice, I don't give
a day about being called Mr. Practice. I felt that
kind of where kind of like a badge of honor,
right because I could because I had the steel stomach
that was required to get through it. And everybody goes
(11:53):
through it. Diesos went through it, Ted Turner went through it.
You know, that's the deal. So can you tell me
the difference. Can you explain the modern TV landscape to us?
S v O D A v O D T v
O D. There's a lot of acronyms in this industry.
I'll just I'll just for the sake of time, I'll
just break it up into two spot and avon. Right,
(12:14):
So um avon is what we do, right, doesn't mean
we won't go spot we're talking into So that's advertising
supported v o D. That really breaks up into two buckets.
In advertising supported d O D, you have a linear channel,
which is like day part oriented one o'clock, two o'clock,
three o'clock, four o'clock, right, you replace, you keep that
(12:37):
basic um programming guide up for a week and then
you and then you refresh it with that's that's called
a linear loot. Then you have your v o D,
which is more like traditional v O D video on
demand where you can so we the way that we
look at it is you sample on linear and you
(13:02):
binge onto v o D like you see like in
my case, you see something. We have a show called
Human Prayer, right, which is animal attacks. Stuff is a
wild so you watch it. You just happen to one
day go through your stands on TV said you see
it and you're like, dang, you know, like that is
a rag pillow. Right, let me go to v O D.
I'm gonna watch all ten Human Pray series and you know,
(13:25):
so you sample on linear, you binge on on on
v O D. So that's kind of the way um
a VOT has has um materialized today. So the big
difference is that it costs a lot it's called cost
of acquisition to get a subscriber, right, because you have
(13:48):
to market where it's It's a lot easier to get
a viewer if you're confident with of your if you've
got a great brand name, if you've got good content,
your your your airtime looks professional, you've got great promos um,
that becomes a lot of you. So it's a lot
easier to get into a vod than it is Spot. However,
(14:14):
the really big money is an spot. Right. So like
one example I bring up to people is are you
familiar with Curiosity Stream? No, I'm not telling me about
its stream was founded by the founder of Discovery Guy
called John Hendricks. Right, they charged two dollars a month. Right,
(14:36):
they have eighteen million subscribers, So you know, you hear
two dollars a month, You're like, oh, yeah, it's a
nice little service, right until you do the maths and
then you're like two dollars time at M he's making
thirty six million dollars a month, right, is making a
half a billion cash a year right now? For those
(14:56):
eighteen million subs to create half a billion in advertising revenue,
it's it's virtually impossible. Right, So the question is can
you get to the eighteen million at two dollars or
it might be twelve dollars for Netflix? Right, And there's
a variety of different costs of acquisition models, and so
(15:18):
then you say they seem like they're totally separate. But
what I think is occurring is that today this whole
thing about free television like Danger TV. Right in second quarter,
we had twelve streamers, twelve that cable channels and streamers
that advertise on Danger TV. Now, why did they advertise
(15:40):
on Danger TV? They advertise on Danger TV because they
knew we were free, like a free channel to a viewer.
So what the person that's watching free TV is more
likely to still not have made up his mind against
all his subscription decisions. Right, So now all of a sudden,
(16:01):
guys are advertising on my air saying I can find
forget the impression, I can find a new subscriber here.
So are you familiar with Pluto? Yeah, of course, Okay,
So Pluto's three it's owned by Viacom, So Viacom. You're like, okay,
Viacom has got Paramount Plus right as their streamer. And
(16:24):
then you say, oh, so what they did was they
put all these shows behind a pay wall of subscription,
and then they can still get the advertising on on Pluto.
At first glance, that's right, until you realize, right that,
wait a minute, Paramount I mean Viacom is now going
(16:44):
to promote Pluto, So that's only going to get bigger.
Pluto is only gonna get bigger. And say you're like,
they'll make that much more advertising, and then you're like, right,
but there's even more to that, right, And what's more
to that is that you have potential subscribers there. So
now Paramount Plus can advertise on Pluto basically for free, right,
(17:12):
and you've got millions of people that if they're watching,
Like I go back to Data TV, we had twelve
streamers and cable channels advertising on our air basically looking
for subscribers. Right, they have to pay me. But if
I have a strategic like Pluto's got with UM with Viacom,
it gives you this depository for new potential subscribers. And
(17:36):
that's why we're part of the of that ecosystem. But
of but the package of getting an AVAT channel together
with an SCAT channel that reaches critical mass that has
got the same type of content is um. You know,
that's kind of like the holy grail if you can
make it all work. Tell me about danger TV. Why
(18:04):
danger UM? I'd say I'd start off with that when
I when we started to look at the whole Netflix
example I gave you earlier. So you think about people
that are cord cutting, right, So, like you know they're
watching Netflix and they say, screwed, I don't need cable anymore. Right,
(18:26):
We through the through a variety of different ways, realized
that it was young men. We're a huge You can
imagine you're coming out of college and you're like, oh,
do you want to you want to pay a hundred
dollar cable bill and you're like, screw a hundred dollar
cablele pay ten bucks for Netflix and I'm done, right,
And so then we started to think, well, if there's
(18:47):
all young men are primarily young men that are doing this,
what would attract young men, right, because that's what we're
looking for. And so know, I was like, I think
it's gonna be danger right now. You still working on them,
you know, I love the company, still love the company.
(19:10):
But I was never a Novella fan, right right you
started there. They are very similar and as Hispanics, we
had to watch them growing up, so we kind of
become allergic to them. Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying like
I'm not Look, there's there's a lot of stuff. It's
gotten much better in a lot of in a lot
of different ways, right, and so, but it wasn't my
(19:31):
like I was always kind of like, yeah, I'm part
of this. I've gotten rich off it, right, But like
it's not like I loved it right now you go,
you said, well what do you look? And I was like, well,
I like all that danger stuff, right, you know, like
you know, whether it be you know, special forces training
(19:52):
or whether it be um, animal attacks, disasters, crime, like,
I go, all that stuff like that that's what keeps
that's great, right and so, and so I would explain
that to my partners, and then my partners were like, well,
what should we call it? And I thought to myself,
(20:13):
I've got three kids that are I mean today they're um,
eighteen to twenty two, but back then they were probably
you know, thirteen to seventeen, and the one word that
you always heard was authentic, right, authentic. It's got to
be authentic for this generation millennolegency has gotta be authentic.
So I was like, call it what it is. It's danger.
So then there so I was like, I want to
(20:35):
call it Danger TV, right, and all the guys are like,
done right, because we're all guys, right, We're like you instant.
It was like once we came up with the name,
we were like, oh my god, this is the easiest
elevator pitch of all time. Like what is Danger TV about? Like, uh,
I think it's about danger, right, That makes it a
(20:57):
lot easier, right, Like uh yeah, danger, you know, and
so um and so there was a U R L
farmer in China that had that had the trademark. So
the guy I was like, I'll give you a thousand
books on the trademark, and the guys like ten thousand,
and I said three thousand or our Walk and Nobody's
ever gonna ask you because nobody's ever gonna find you
(21:18):
and freaking China again and the guys like deal. So
that we got the trademark, right, and so then now
we had the trademark and we had the idea, and
then now it was about going out to all the
to all the video festivals and convincing um, all these
catalogs that um, you know that we were worth a
(21:40):
chance and that was you know, that was hard, but um,
but we got done. So what do you get? What
type of shows can I watch on Danger TV? Well,
I mean you can get on it right now if
you're in front of a computer, just go to danger
tv dot com. But you let the war crime or
give a couple of ideas. I'll tell you what the
monsters are. So we you've got probably our biggest show
(22:02):
on YouTube is UK Border Force. UK Border Force people
are trying to smuggle stuff into Heathrow Airport, right, and
then they get pulled aside. Now you're like, okay, I
get it. Like cocaine, Well that's part of it. But
then they're smuggling like wildlife, you know, and you'll see
like a guy with like armadillo's in a double bag.
(22:23):
You know, you're like, you gotta be kidding that you
brought armadillo's over from like Pakistan or whatever might have been,
you know. And then there was one guy that tried
to smuggle in his grandmother, right. So yeah, so it
was like totally brad at to some degree. Some of
these guys like even though it's illegal and everything else,
and you know, you have to have rules and everything else,
(22:44):
you can't help, but you know, you're kind of like
all they want to do is get fine. It's like
everybody's got, like you see a humanity in it, right,
Like everybody just wants to have a pretty good, you know,
decent life, like you know, you know, three meals a day,
a roof over there like that. That's and they're coming here.
They're coming to the West to figure it out. And
(23:05):
then at the end of the day, the immigration officers
like you're going back to Pakistan and you're like, oh, man,
what a bummer, even though he should have been caught
and he was trying to sneak it in all that time. Stuff.
So we've got that type of stuff. Then we've got um,
the animal attack stuff is Big right and so and
right now more on the not it's not so much immigration,
(23:27):
but just like in terms of rescue, we have Coast
Guard series right so, Coast Guard Alaska, Coast Guard Northwest, Passage, Um,
Animal Attack, Human Prey, Human Praise, a six show and
a lot of them. We have Fairmont shows that have
appeared a couple of years ago on Netflix, on Discovery.
(23:48):
So we're getting, you know, pretty high quality of stuff
right now. We've got UM, We've got a couple of
survival shows where guys go out, you know, into you know,
like the baddest place in the baddest the bad assets
place in Canada, and you know you're left with like
your rifle and UM and you gotta live for a month.
(24:12):
And the guys you know like hunting, you know, crazy stuff.
So it's like a little bit of it's a little
bit of everything. It really is a little bit of everything.
You know. The people that UM are coming to us UM,
you know, I can kind of get a kick out
of that. What usually see is people come in for
one thing and then they start to find the other stuff. Right,
(24:35):
So it was always part of the strategy was to
cross pollinate danger, so you start off with you know,
let's says let's say it's cocaine smuggling. But then you've
got um special Forces trained. So we've got Special Forces
guys from all over the world, right, and they're getting
the crap beat out of them, becoming specially you're like,
oh my god, you know, like I hope that God,
(24:56):
I'd never pick a fight with a Special Forces guy, right,
because you're a dead man, you know. Anok A matter
of words from philand United States, you know wherever. So
it's it's back to the Univision analogy for example. I
mean for me, it's just it's just a much It's
(25:18):
a more compelling form of entertainment than UM then almost anything,
you know. I mean, you know, maybe the NFL matches
it for me. And we're seeing that, we're just seeing
our growth um just continue, especially post COVID. So do
you feel like do you feel like live programming is
(25:41):
going to be a big deal with streaming? Absolutely? So.
I heard about the Running of the Bulls, you know
our Spanish heritage. Can you tell me about that? Well,
we've got we want to do Running with the Bulls, right,
and so we've got a series on the air right
now called the Matador series, and it's like following Mattadors
(26:01):
in Spain and you know, you see guys getting tossed
by bulls and you know, like just crazy stuff. So
we want to go live and we think there's like
a bunch of live um spectacles right that you know
probably isn't that far off from the Roman Colosseum days, right,
(26:23):
like like the running of the bulls in Pamplona is
out of control? Right then you say, what about surfing
Mavericks when it's or Nazare when it's cranking at a
hundred feet right as a surfer? Right, So like that
is badass, right, you know, so we're like, yeah, we
want to do that. Then I'm not sure if you've
ever heard of the uh the Isle of man t T.
(26:47):
The Isle of man t T is a motorcycle race
around the Isle of man It's called the Islament. It's
the time fraile. You go one at a time and
the average speed is you know, anywhere from a hy
miles an hour. Right. Usually a guy dies every year, right,
just goes off the cliff. And you know, so we're
like nobody's covering this stuff, and the thing about danger
(27:10):
is not only did we like the authenticity of the word,
but we felt that, um, we refer to it as
a core emotion, right, and we think core emotions can
resonate anywhere in the world, because every single guy on
the planet knows what dangerous because you're the guy. You're
supposed to be the one that protects. You're the protector,
(27:31):
and it's life and death, right, and you're like, dang,
you know, here comes you know, here comes an elephant
charging at me, or whatever the heck it is that
we're coming, or it's a paramilitary, or it's a paramilitary,
it's a terrorist, you know, or whatever it might be.
And so we like the idea that we think we're
tapping into an emotion that can resonate anywhere in the world.
And we think that's what's gonna drive between the brand
(27:53):
name just being a cool brand name. That we think
tapping that core emotion is what's gonna drive us into
becoming a global brand. And I'm saying global, I don't
think it's gonna think three years will be all over
the world. So do you see original programming in your future? Yeah? Absolutely,
what type of original programming? Obviously, danger an example. Right
(28:14):
now we're doing um, we're developing branded content show. Right,
so the next thing about the brand content show is
that the brand puts up their money. Right. But the
branded content shows title is Survival Home and Gardens, right,
So Survival Homes and Gardens is doomsday prepper. So it's
like you see a bunch of different places all over
(28:36):
the United States where guys are doing wild doomsday prepping
for all sorts of stuff, whether it be tsunamis, whether
it be nuclear disaster, whether it be you know, tornado,
whether it be wildfire, and like how does how do
you make it right? You get caught in a wildfire
in northern California's everything's going down? You know, do you
(28:57):
have a bunker? What does that bunker require? You know
what you know? Weapons? Like how do you defend yourself,
you know, against the animals? How do you defend yourself
against wild animals? You know? Like all that stuff, the
materials of your home. How much food do you have
to stock for? Right? Can you grow it? Right? Like?
What is medicinal plant life that if you get you know, hurt,
(29:19):
So all that kind of stuff is what dudes, they
guys do and women You know and families, you know,
so we want to have right now. They just had
a CNN UM special. Coincidentally, we didn't know about it
until it came out called Bunker Boom Boom, and Bunker
Boom is just about you know, the whole dudes. You
(29:40):
can imagine COVID wildfires, rising sea levels, like there's uh,
I'm not gonna say it's a majority, but there's a
group of people that are like that are expecting, you know,
disaster of biblical proportions, you know, imminently, and they're preparing
for it. So we're like, you know, do I think
(30:01):
that's gonna occur? No, but it doesn't matter. What I
think is what they're doing. And uh, and we're covering that.
So we want to cover that. We got you know,
the stars and all that type of stuff that built
into it. Do you see yourself as a competitor to
(30:24):
mainstream sports. We've seen the politicization of sports recently and
a lot of people tuning out, but that same kind
of desire to watch competitions. Is that something that you're
kind of channeling that energy as what you mentioned as
a core emotion. I don't know, I I hope so
UM I think that'd be wonderful. I think I'll give
(30:45):
you an example of something that I think doubled our views. Right,
And it was during COVID, So COVID hits and all
of a sudden, sports are out, right. So we went
to a couple of the platforms that were carrying us,
like Samsung TV Plus, and we said, you have an
(31:05):
incredible opportunity right now to tap adrenaline, to trap adrenaline
people that are looking for adrenaline and there and right.
And it's always been sports. It always been the NFL
with Paul, and we said, in light of the fact
that all that stuff is closed off college football blah
(31:26):
blah blah, let us be that ADRENALINOK fixed right, So
and they're like, so, what do he want us to do?
And we said, we want you they get the inventory
these platforms like Samsung TV Plus, but if they're getting
it from me, they're getting it from everybody, right, And
they've got like two inter channels. So we said, so
(31:47):
that means you've got remnants space that you don't sell
of the inventory that you get from everybody, including me, right,
run our promo cross channel, right, and that way everybody's
gonna start to realize, dang, what's this danger TV thing? Great,
I can go on on Sunday afternoons. I can get
my wild Animal attack fix or my you know, my
(32:10):
Special Forces training fix or whatever. And it worked, you know,
like you know, all of a sudden, it was like boom,
you know, and the views started to come in and
that many more advertisers and UM. And so it doesn't
it's not an exact answer to your question, but I
think I would say, I think we have elements that
(32:31):
are UM. Lives that are sport like, right, you know,
you know, competition, right, except that the except that what
you're what you're competing for. You know, a lot of
cases in our case, there is your life, right, you know,
not you know, it's not the you know, it's not
the Super Bowl ring you know, etcetera. And I'm a
(32:53):
monster and nfel fan, right. But like so that whole
thing is UM. I think people find and everything that
we're seeing is UM is fascinating, you know, and and
compelling and for advertisers. UM. I think the idea of two.
I think there's two things that that advertisers are realizing
(33:13):
about fast channels like US is You've got two things.
You've got value, right because we're free. You can't get
a better value than that, right. And you're getting adventure.
You're getting value and adventure. And you think, like every
SUV spot is out in some mountains somewhere, you know,
(33:33):
Geico is telling you be prepared because we'll cover you,
you know, and and it's and it's affordable, you know.
So we think we like the idea of the space
that we're in um plane to value and adventure. So
what do you feel about the future of entertainment Because
we have these big conglomerates that basically control the landscape,
(33:57):
and then we have people like you that are trying
to disrupt it. In some cases they're playing nice with
some of the conglomerates, but in a lot of times,
you know, there's a fixed by here. Our population growth
isn't that high anymore in the developed world. So how
do you feel about the future of the legacy entertainment
conglomerates like the one you used to work for. I
(34:17):
think it totally depends on what the commitment to creativity is, right.
So you know, in the case of um somebody like Televisa,
their masters at at Novella's right. Now, last year I
(34:38):
think the biggest show on Netflix was Money Heist, right,
Money highst was a Spanish language out of Madrid show.
It's right, so it was a Spanish word, but it
was it was money hist and it's about these um,
(35:00):
these professional criminals that decide to take the breaking to
the bank of Spain and then they end up pulling
it off, and it's it's crazy, right, unbelievable. I loved it.
Was amazing though is for decades, not years, decades people
would say you can't use a Madrid accent to reach
(35:25):
Hispanics in a broadway. You can't. Why because it's colonial
Spain and we were We used to work for that, right,
so that whole thing would be you needed back. Especially
when I started Univision, it was called or before that
s I Am went of Spanish International Network, it was
called um neutral Spanish Broadcast neutral, like no accent, right,
(35:49):
if you're gonna air to any accent, you'd probably air
to a Mexican one, because of all us Spanish a Mexican. Right,
So so you know, Netflix said, I don't give a day, right,
I don't care if that's the rule, right, we think
this is a great story. We think it's a different story,
(36:10):
and we think it's going to resonate, and they made it,
you know, and then now they've got there's another one
that's kind of bilingual UM that's called It's about an
orphanage in Um in Mexico and they go out and
a fishing they need the orphanage they're gonna close down,
and then they go out into the fishing torny and
(36:33):
they win the fishing torny with the kids as the fisher.
I mean, crazy, but it's like it's so you need
that level of creativity, You need that just complete And
then so then you're like, so, who's the guy in
charge of that creativity? Right? And if you've got a
great creative head or a great CEO or some combination
(36:54):
of that, I think you'll be in good chap. Right.
If you don't have that, I think you can have
a lot of problems because I don't think you're gonna
be able to rely on life as it used to be.
I think it's I think it is innovate, innovate, innovate, innovate, creativity, creativity, creativity, creativity.
(37:15):
So the predominant theory is that people are under forty
don't have an attention span, but long form content is booming.
So how can you explain that to us, because you know,
young people can't sit still for thirty seconds, but they'll
binge watch something for three hours. Yeah. I can't really,
I can't really explain to you except that all I
would say is that the stuff that that they're binging
(37:37):
on for three hours, whether whether it be ted Lasso
or whether it be you know Alone you know on Netflix,
which is a wild survival series, or whether it is
UK border Force on Danger TV, is that they're compelling,
you know, and it's hard to get that level of
compelling nous in you know, a you know, a four
(38:00):
minute chapter on on Snap right, Like that's hard, right,
Like you can get that doughe and say dang, you know,
like I flew out of the plane or look at
that shark attack or whatever, but that whole story, the
richness of it for a great story, is very difficult
to capture. And I think that's what it is, is
that you just can't capture it on short form and
(38:21):
you can capture it on you know, on long and
by the way, with kids on Long, like you're like
Pat they're watching long form. I remember we had this
show UM, which will remain nameless, and I thought it.
I thought it was horrible, right, I just like this
a piece of jump. And so then I was talking
to my son one day and I go, hey, you
if you watch any Danger TV late? He goes, yeah,
(38:43):
I saw the show, and I go, really, I got
to show the piece of jump, right, like, how did
you like? How did you sit there and go and
we don't even show a weapon because it was all
about weapons until like fifteen minutes into the show, and
he goes, I fast forwarded, And I was like, that's
(39:04):
the difference. Like for a kid, a long form show
might be five minutes of fast forwarding to the action parts. Right,
So then all of a sudden they decide what long
form is and which fork form is. It might be
long form in how I described my content, but to
the kid, he might have seen the entire show in
five minutes. So that's UM. And I've experienced that firstand
(39:28):
I fascinated, you know. I was just like, oh my god,
I never thought about that. You know, we do fast forward.
I can attest to that. So do you think, well,
do you think we'll see more fast TV channels and
niche specific platforms like here's like Danger TV. You know,
that's a tough question because I don't think there's a
ton of court emotion elements, you know, and I do
(39:50):
think to become a significant business that you do have
to become a global player with fast right. Um. I
think there's another thing is like if you try to
get into Sandsung TV plus now it's tough, right, So
you can't be if everybody's not going with a Roku
example where you've got ten thousand channels at Roku and
(40:11):
you've got to sit through it and hope that search
finds it. You know, blah blah blah. Um, you've got
two channels. You know. We recently went to Visio and
Dizzio told us we're putting a pause on adding new channels,
and we're like, you've got to have Danger TV on there.
You've gotta be kidding me, right, And they're like, no,
(40:32):
we're not kidding you. We're putting a pause. You know.
You know what I'm gonna This is interesting, Haper, and
this is an interesting part of the conversation. In the past,
hardware specifically your television never determined what channels you could
have access to, and not a lot of people think
about that. The television that you buy might ultimately determine
(40:53):
what you're watching, There's no question, especially if you want
if you don't want to pay for cable and you
don't want to pay for neh like the television that's
gonna tell you where you're gonna watch, right, and the number,
you know, I mean it could change, you could change tomorrow.
I'm not at that O E M. Original equipment manufacturer, right,
so it could go, you know, could go they go
to a thousand maybe, but I haven't heard of anybody
(41:15):
going to a thousand, you know. And I don't hear
the phone companies going to a thousand. I hear there,
you know, the number that seems to be around two channels.
So if you can't get in there, like we've already
had people come to us and say, can you take
my channel and integrated into Danger TV? Right, so that
(41:36):
we start to become a platform, right, And they're like,
because we can't get in there, so we'd rather get
of the revenue and split it with you, which actually
ends up being a quarter because you also have to
split it with a platform. Right, That makes nothing at all, right,
So I mean we look at that as a positive
development for us because we're in most of the places
(41:57):
that we want to be in there, even though we're
not in all of them. And by the way, everything
that we're doing in the United States, then you have
to do it in Latin America, then you have to
do it in Europe, then you have to do it
in China, Southeast Asia, Africa are a lot of the
fast TV channels right now American that are being consumed abroad.
I don't know. The thing about about it goes back
(42:18):
to core motion, right, So I think that's the thing
that everybody liked about what we do right there, Like
they get that, you know, they get the core motion
concept and um, and they know that that's going to
resonate around the world. So you're like, you know, and
by the way, there's a lot of these platforms that
are that are emerging, and you know, they're like your
(42:39):
core motion. You're like, we want you right, like we
want you right. So like for us, I think it
will be a lot easier than for other people just
because of what I'm experience, just because I'm getting calls
for people asking me to take their channels on under
my wing, and you know in certain cases, I'm sure
we're going to consider in certain cases depending on the
(43:00):
quality of the content. Like for us, really there's three
parts to our formula. Right is to always look for
better content, right. Second is to create wild promos, like
great promos because Danger offers that, right, because it's Danger, right.
And then the third thing is to get launched on
everything that we can make money on. We can't make
(43:23):
money on it, we're not interesting, but it's just that thing.
Better content, better promo and promos, more launches. So these
days it might sound ridiculous because the whole world is
seemingly tooled for males, that there might be a market
opportunity viewing males as an underserved demographic. Is that the
way you saw Danger TV? Yeah? I did, but it
(43:46):
really wasn't so much about males. Or let's just say
it wasn't just a being male, It was mail being underserved,
not only as male, but as a v o D product. Right,
So one thing is to say, hey, I got you know,
I got mails. But if you're like but in a
world that's moving to v o D where you watch
(44:07):
whenever the hell you want, to watch and you can
want and you can binge on entire series that I
didn't see it, and I was looking for it, right.
I was consciously that started with this show that I
mentioned earlier called Human Prey, because when I was coming
up with the idea, what I always do was I
bounced it. I test drive it with my kids. Right.
I was like, this is the typeest show. Can you
imagine a show like this? So we see this thing
(44:28):
at Chimpanzee jumps oute of like some safari you know,
cage or whatever, and uh and goes wild. Right, And
so we see it, and my kids are like, dang,
that was so good, right, And they were all saying
that they don't watch cable anymore. They're like, we don't
watch it. That's like an old person thing. But that's
like for your age, you know, it's like and so
(44:50):
I was like, I was like, but what about that?
What about another show like the Chimp There like, yeah,
well for that show, we'd kill for another show like
the Chimp Show. And so I'm like, okay, let me
go back in. I go back in and there's no
v O D available for that series. So then I thought, dang,
they like they'd like to see more male stuff at
least as a pur taste, animal attack forever or whatever
(45:13):
that says about my kids, you know. And then two
V O D right, So both were underserved, and I
think that's where we saw the opportunity, not just the
male thing, it was a male thing needs bodta cool. Well,
thank you so much for taking the time to talk
to us today, Javier. Where do we find out more
about you besides Danger TV LinkedIn? So change in the
(45:44):
television landscape is all about guaranteed at this point, and
people are hiding and relying on formulas that work. But
as our guests showed us, none of those formulas that
worked in the past are going to work in the future.
We're watching as television is completely altered by our consumption
and habits, and it's like every other industry right now,
disruption is the name of the game. We can't make
(46:05):
up what's gonna happen next, but we can figure out
that what we already have doesn't work, and a lot
of the things that will grow in the future don't
exist yet. And that's why it's a really exciting time.
Startups and smaller companies like Danger TV and like Bold TV,
and like a million other places in the corner of
every place in America and beyond, are growing what will
(46:29):
be our media ecosystem in the future. It's scary and
it's exciting right because stability and business is something that
is greatly appreciated. But there is no stability anymore. Everything
is being disrupted and ripped apart and reinvented. And my
friends were living through that right now. And television is
just one example of every business on earth right now
(46:51):
that's being disrupted and forced to change before our very eyes.
I'm David Grosso for followed the Prophet. Thank you for
joining me today. If you enjoyed the podcast, give us
a five star review. Follow the Profit is available on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
get your podcasts. And of course i'd like to thank
my hard working staff as always for every episode. Until
(47:13):
next time. I'm David Grosso for Following the Profit part
of the Gingwich three network.
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