Fox Boss Rob Wade Commits Long Term To Creator Studios: “We’re Not Here To Flip A House”

EXCLUSIVE: Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade has committed long into the future to his company’s creator studio, telling Deadline: “We’re not here to flip a house.”

Fox Creator Studios (FCS), a “digital-first division,” was unveiled at the start of this year with partnerships including a food roster headed by Gordon Ramsay, but the idea had been percolating in Wade’s mind for more than a decade.

Wade feels that plenty of big companies are investing in the creator, AI and tech space simply in order to “sell for hundreds of millions and get out,” but Fox won’t be following suit. “The game is built around that, which is not a recipe for long-term success,” said Wade. “But we’re in it for the long term. We’re not here to flip a house. If I want to invest in something, my bosses and board will say that if it’s successful they want to build on it. We will never sell [Fox Creator Studios].”

Wade was speaking to Deadline in the days leading up to MIPCOM, where he has just been joined on a Deadline-hosted panel by FCS boss Billy Parks, Prentiss Fraser, who runs distributor Fox Entertainment Global (FEG), and Fox-backed creators Josh Richards and Chris Sawtelle.

Wade, Parks and Fraser have grand plans, with the former positioning the main goal as “creating a path to IP creation on the internet.”

In this vein, FCS is doing things a bit differently to its rivals in what is becoming an increasingly crowded space both in the U.S. and internationally, with content creators one of the big topics at this year’s MIPCOM, a traditional TV sales market.

FCS is seeking to tie with content creators across a whole range of genres but won’t necessarily air their work solely on Fox or Fox-owned platforms like Tubi. Instead, it will leverage resources and advertising infrastructure to create content spanning different platforms and territories. Content creators can then diversify revenue streams, while FEG boss Fraser and her team shop their wares around the world. The studio has so far struck deals with long-time Fox collaborator Ramsay, comedian Tom Segura and creators like Richards, who makes YouTube sketch comedy Read the Room.

This approach sets Fox apart from its competitors in two key ways, Wade believes, “going direct and investing in original content by creating finance for new shows,” and providing “very significant advertising infrastructure” via an ad sales division that has the likes of the NFL and World Cup in its portfolio.

Parks, who joined Fox from The Chernin Group, said the studio offers hands-off support to creators who are “being pulled in many different directions.”

“We’re not greenlighting their ideas through a long, traditional development process,” he added. “Instead, we’re available for notes and feedback in an equitable way, without approaching the relationship as a top-down studio-to-creative model.”

In this way, Parks said creators “who are trying to do something outside their comfort zone” can be supported with capital and an IP-sharing vision.

“Many platforms that work with creators option their libraries or make shows with them to drive audiences to their own platforms,” he added. “That’s how companies such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu are structured to work. That isn’t necessarily better or worse. Every creator will make different choices at different points in their career. But those platforms are primarily built to acquire subscribers, and that’s what they do with creators.”

Parks was recently at creator economy market VidSummit, where he said bosses at CAA, UTA and WME were all present along with leaders from platforms like Netflix and Tubi. “Everyone is thinking about the different types of deals available to creators, whether that involves investment, production or intellectual property,” he added.

All started with ‘Dancing With The Stars’

But while creators may be the talk of today, Wade and Parks have been thinking about this for a long while.

Wade says FCS’ inception harks back more than 15 years to when he was a producer on Dancing with the Stars and booked the show’s first ever YouTuber, Bethany Mota.

“She did very well but we learned a few things,” he added. “I was expecting an avalanche of YouTube views and imagined the votes for her would heavily skew young but there was no sudden mass of views or a sudden mass on YouTube. Our knowledge of the internet back then was very different.”

He realized that YouTube success does not always translate to traditional TV in obvious ways and figured out over the years that a studio’s infrastructure could be used in smart ways in this space. Things solidified with the success of Prime Video and A24’s Hazbin Hotel, which was produced by Fox-owned Bento Box and started life on YouTube via its creator Vivienne Medrano.

“We thought to ourselves, ‘We’re not a library, we’re a studio’,” added Wade. “What a studio does is back creators and put bets on them. That is something we know how to do.”