It seems like there are countless streamers these days – there's Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Max, Peacock, Roku, just to name a few.
Still, success and profit remain elusive to even some of the biggest in the biz. However, there is one smaller company that seems to have found a path to prosperity: Dropout.
"Rather than trying to compete with Netflix or Amazon or Hulu or anyone out there making really high quality, premium, scripted programming, we should instead try to be good at our own thing," says Dropout CEO Sam Reich.
Dropout started as a streaming service under online comedy brand CollegeHumor — but CollegeHumor is now gone, and Dropout remains. With subscribers numbering in the mid hundreds of thousands, Dropout is small compared to the millions that other streamers have. But they've found it profitable to double down on their niche: unscripted comedy.
Their platform hosts Dimension 20 – a big name in the tabletop roleplaying game scene – but they also have a lot of game shows. These include Dirty Laundry, a dishy game where groups of friends have to guess each other's dirty little secrets; Make Some Noise, an improv game where players act out bizarre prompts; and Game Changer, which is hosted by Reich and premieres its new season on February 12th.
"Game Changer is my weird, avant-garde take on a '70's game show," says Reich. "The game changes every episode, the players don't know the game when they start playing, so the fun of Game Changer is they have to figure out the game as they're playing it."
But more than sticking to the unscripted route, they're also doing things differently when it comes to business. For example, they just did their first round of profit-sharing with anyone who made even a dollar with Dropout last year – and they're also vowing to keep price increases from affecting existing subscribers.
Host Brittany Luse sat down with Reich to find out how they're revamping the game show format – and how they forged their own path to success as a small streamer in a saturated market.
These highlights have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
On making game shows lower stakes - and lower stress
Brittany Luse: So many game shows have these big pots of money as a prize, but your game shows have fairly low stakes, like [winning] a cocktail set. How do those low key stakes change our experience of watching these game centered shows?
Sam Reich: When you're tossed into something cold, high financial stakes are a way to grab you, and a way to make you connect to talent if you don't already have a connection to them. But of course, we're not going for drama with Dropout, we're going for comedy. And you still want to win board game night with your friends, even though the stakes are relatively low. It's all in the spirit of good fun, right? And I think that that's contagious: watching a group of people having fun and having vicarious fun.
Luse: It makes me think about the UK, which still has panel shows, which are more low stakes. So many American game shows are like, we're running cockfights to see who's going to win $100,000 for their medical bills.
Reich: Sorry to go here, but if we had a thriving middle class, then everybody competing for $100,000 doesn't feel quite as panicked. But when you have people who are suffering from medical debt, that's a whole different context. Thinking about some of the content that I grew up with, whether we're talking about game shows or sitcoms or movies or whatever, a lot more of it fell under the heading of "life-affirming" than our content these days. And what I mean by life-affirming - and value-affirming - is, does this make me feel good about my fellow man? Does it make me feel good about being alive? And so much high-octane game show content falls into the negative in all of those categories.
Brittany Luse: That's really true, and that's not what you are trying to do with Dropout, obviously.
Sam Reich: We are making a study of what feel good content means. Our platform is about content that makes you feel good for a variety of reasons.
The strategy behind Dropout's business - and how they develop their shows
Brittany Luse: You recently just did your first round of profit sharing with people who made any kind of money with Dropout in 2023... You also lock subscribers in at the same price they signed up for, as long as they stay subscribed. It's very different than what everybody else is doing. Are there other business deviations that you've considered, or others that you're doing but that you don't really talk about as much?
Sam Reich: I mean, I think we're a very nontraditional company in a lot of ways, and some of those ways have been what has allowed us to, for instance, tip profitable. We are a very small full-time team for the size of company we are. We're 20 people now. We were only 15 last year. We'll probably be 25 by the end of this year. Our development process is super non-traditional. Almost all of our shows to date have been conceived of by a very, very small group of in-house people. Traditionally, how this works in the rest of Hollywood, talent will come to you and pitch you a show.
Brittany Luse: [For example,] an independent creator is going to come and be like, hey, make my thing.
Sam Reich: Exactly. We know a show is going to be successful on our platform because it checks these five boxes, which we consider to be our criteria of a popular piece of content on our platform.
Brittany Luse: What are the five boxes?
Sam Reich: Number one, does it sit at the intersection of scripted and unscripted? A lot of writing goes into those shows, so to call them unscripted is only to say that they aren't traditional scripted programming, but in reality, they sit more at the intersection of scripted and unscripted. [Two], do we think it will do well on social media? Social media is, right now, how we're marketing all of our shows. We spend very, very, very little as compared to our competitors. [Three], can it feature a murders row of our own talent? Is there an opportunity for everyone's favorite familiar faces to come through the show? [Four], is it affordable enough that if it is successful, we can do a lot of it? And number five: is the show worth nerding out about? If you're a fan of the show, can you go deep on this show in some way? So right now, that's how we think about our programming.
Brittany Luse: That's such good criteria. That's juicy.
Sam on the meaning behind the name "Dropout" - and why going indie makes sense
Brittany Luse: I have to admit, it actually took me until yesterday to understand the name Dropout was a play on CollegeHumor. But that new name actually means something more to you than just a play on the idea of CollegeHumor.
Sam Reich: It does! I like it for a few reasons. I think it connects to our story as a company, you know, dropping out of corporate America. But it also connects to me personally, because I dropped out of high school. Now, my version of that was meaningfully more privileged than most, coming from the family that I come from... But the notion of dropping out, or doing things a little differently than everyone else, is something that I take really personally. I love the idea of not being backed up in traffic on the highway, but instead finding the sort of roundabout path that allows for you to skirt around gatekeepers. Someone a lot wiser than me once said - about what the [entertainment] industry is right now - said that the traditional path is no longer the traditional path. It is really, really, really hard to do what we want to do for a living. I don't really believe you can get there via traditional means unless you win the lottery. Wanting better odds means coming up with really creative solutions for getting there. I think that more folks can do the kind of thing we're doing - and by the kind of thing we're doing, I mean finding ways to go direct to their audience without the industry giving them permission. [Finding] ways to do it at cost, that's not outrageously expensive. [Finding] ways to do it that are really pro-talent and pro-human, that really support and appreciate and celebrate the people who are making the stuff... I think we're going to have our own really happy corner of this world to play in.
Sam on what's to come for this season of Game Changer - and beyond
Brittany Luse: Is there anything that you could tease to us about the new season of Game Changer? A little example of what's to come?
Sam Reich: We did a third installment of a game that I've played in previous seasons called Sam Says, which is my take on Simon Says. And one example is, I said, "Sam says, don't look now, but here's a pig in a little hat." And I brought out a 100-pound boar named Henry, who was fantastic, the happiest pig I've ever met, in a little cowboy hat. And they weren't allowed to look at him.
Brittany Luse: Oh, that's unfair.
Sam Reich: I know. It's terrible. That same episode, it ends with me having rented a party bus for our three players and filled it with their friends. So they actually go off in the party bus at the end of the episode.
Brittany Luse: That's actually a really good prize.
Sam Reich: It's a really good prize. What they don't realize, though, is that we're still recording them and the rules are still in effect, which makes them really upset when they come back.
Brittany Luse: Can you give us any hints about what we can expect from your new shows, Smarty Pants or Thousandaires? Keywords, anything?
Sam Reich: Smarty Pants - think intellectual society. Thousandaires - think show and tell.
This episode was produced by Liam McBain with additional support from Barton Girdwood, Alexis Williams, and Corey Antonio Rose. It was edited by Jessica Placzek. Our executive producer is Veralyn Williams. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sangweni.