Tom Segura and Fox Creator Studios: Inside Hollywood's New Business Model

**Samir** (0:01)
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What's up, everyone? Welcome back to The Colin and Samir Show. On today's episode, we're bringing you a live conversation with comedian Tom Segura, the president of his content studios, Ryan Hall, and the newly appointed head of Fox Creator Studios, Billy Parks. Now, this conversation took place at our event, Press Publish LA, which is an event that Colin and I put together because we wanted to talk about the intersection of creators and Hollywood and how these two worlds are actually working together. So Fox Creator Studios struck a deal with Tom and his production company to produce three projects together. And it's a really different model.
But I think it gives us insight into how these two worlds are actually going to work together.
So Tom built this big podcast, which maybe some of you know or listen to, and used that audience to then sell out big arena tours. And during the pandemic, actually turned to his audience to sell content directly to them. So rather than going to a streamer, just releasing his specials and his content direct to consumer. It went extremely well and Tom now has his own distribution outlets. He himself is a studio. So this partnership between Fox Creator Studios and Tom is truly more like a partnership than anything else I've seen in Hollywood. They're actually coming together to produce IP and figuring out where that lives and monetizing it through Tom's platforms. Anyway, you'll hear a bunch about how this deal came together and how Tom thinks about his content.
And I think it's a very good conversation that gives us all a look into how this story is building between creators and Hollywood. So here's our conversation with Tom Segura, Ryan Hall and Billy Parks from Press Publish LA.

**Colin** (3:12)
All right, so, Tom, we want to start with you. First off, I know you were at the comedy store last night.

**Tom Segura** (3:16)
Yes.

**Colin** (3:17)
Thank you for being here.

**Samir** (3:18)
So tell us a joke, Tom.

**Colin** (3:19)
You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that.

**Tom Segura** (3:21)
No, it didn't go very well. I skipped that, yeah.

**Colin** (3:25)
So a lot of us here who are creators in the audience, we start with media, it's at the core of what we do, and then we start to launch different businesses and projects off of it. I mean, even for us, this event is one of those, our newsletter is one of those. For you, I know you have shows on Netflix, you're touring, you have a bakery, I saw you had a 5K run, there is a whole world of Tom Segura. Can you map it out for us considering it started with comedy?

**Tom Segura** (3:52)
Sure. Well, it definitely started with stand-up. I started doing stand-up in 2002, and that led to obviously you build your stand-up career that way by doing open mics and then being a middle act and then a headliner.
Joe Rogan, who has a podcast, I don't know if you are familiar, he started that in 2009, and he was like, you should do a podcast. I was like, I have absolutely zero interest in doing a podcast. He kept on me, and then in 2010, I started doing a podcast called Your Mom's House with my wife, Christina, and we started that in 2010, and I didn't know that anyone was listening until I did an episode where I encouraged the audience to harass a college roommate of mine.