Fox chairman Rob Wade makes long-term commitment to studio creators: 'We're not here to flip a house'

EXCLUSIVE: Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade has long been committed to his company's studio, telling Deadline: "We're not here to flip a house." Fox Creator Studios (FCS), a "digital-first division," was unveiled earlier this year with partnerships including Gordon Ramsay-led Food List, but the idea was to […]

Wade, Parks and Fraser have big plans, the first of which is to "create a path to creating IP on the Internet."

In this regard, FCS is doing things a little differently than its competitors in what is becoming a more crowded space both in the US and internationally, and content creators are a hot topic at this year's MIPCOM, a traditional TV sales market.

"We don't put their ideas through a long, traditional development process," he added. "Instead, we're available for notes and feedback in a fair way, without approaching the relationship as a studio-to-creative top-down model."

That way, Parks said, creators "who are trying to do something outside of their comfort zone" can be backed by the capital and perspective of IP sharing.

Parks was recently at the VidSummit Maker Economy Market, where he said the heads of CAA, UTA and WME were all in attendance, along with leaders from platforms like Netflix and Tubi. "Everybody's thinking about the different types of deals that are available to creators, whether it's investment, production or intellectual property," he added.

It all started with "Dancing with the Stars".

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

Wade says FCS got its start more than 15 years ago when he was a producer on Dancing with the Stars and booked the show's first YouTuber, Bethany Mota.

"He did very well, but we learned a few things," he added. "I was expecting a huge YouTube hit, and I assumed his ratings would be massively younger, but there was no sudden YouTube hit or massive hit. Our knowledge of the internet back then was very different."

"We thought to ourselves, 'We're not a library, we're a studio,'" Wade added. "What a studio does is put creators behind and bet on them. That's what we know how to do."

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