Jeff Kmiotek, Michael Zinman and Andrew Watnick have been in unscripted TV manufacturing for many years.
Kmiotek turned a producer after working in a wide range of unscripted codecs together with recreation and cooking exhibits and garnered an Emmy nomination for his work on “The Masked Singer.” Zinman has a background in visible design and inventive producing and in addition obtained an Emmy nomination in 2014. Watnick bought his begin in casting earlier than shifting to growth and ultimately producing on exhibits like “The Masked Singer” and “The Amazing Race.”
However a September 2024 encounter in Las Vegas led the three to tackle a special type of gamble than town is understood for: to interrupt away from their careers in conventional TV and use their cumulative media manufacturing data to create their very own manufacturing firm for on-line content material.
The three noticed a altering tide in unscripted TV manufacturing over the previous couple of years. “Budgets are getting slashed, costs are getting slashed, and schedules are getting slashed,” Kmiotek mentioned.
In the meantime, on-line platforms like YouTube have skilled an accelerated rise in reputation. “I’d watch YouTube and there’s such amazing content,” Kmiotek added. “They don’t have to go through the process that we had to go through on network TV with all the different cooks in the kitchen and executives and notes.”
Andrew Watnick, left, Jeff Kmiotek and Michael Zinman labored in conventional TV earlier than founding Elixir.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
YouTube is experiencing an enormous progress in income for creators who put up movies on the platform. A latest advert income forecast by WPP Media discovered that on-line creator-driven income is up 20% from 2024 and is anticipated to double subsequent 12 months, whereas TV income is anticipated to extend by just one%. YouTube additionally reached a 44.8% viewership share in Might 2025, in response to Nielsen, passing the figures for cable and broadcast TV for the primary time.
YouTube gives a profitable profit not out there to those that work in community TV: the power to personal the rights to their very own exhibits and train full inventive management. “Working a hundred hours a week for a television show … you could be up at 3 in the morning and you’re doing this for someone else. But when you’re doing it for yourself, there’s no bitterness,” Kmiotek mentioned.
Zinman owned an current manufacturing studio in Downtown L.A., which was designed to do movement seize and digital manufacturing for TV. That established house — dubbed Lulu Studios — turned the house of Elixir, the trio’s manufacturing firm. They funded the enterprise with their very own cash, and Kmiotek give up his job as a TV producer to run the corporate full-time. Three weeks after that preliminary assembly in Vegas, the staff was capturing its first exhibits.
Elixir enters a booming house within the YouTube market: on-line relationship exhibits. Firms like Jubilee, nectar and Reduce have constructed followings within the tens of thousands and thousands throughout social media platforms with their unscripted content material. Episodes simply attain view counts within the thousands and thousands, typically surpassing the Nielsen scores for latest seasons of “The Bachelor.” And in January, the favored YouTube present “Pop the Balloon” was even parodied on “Saturday Night Live.” Whereas scripted exhibits usually require massive budgets made potential by main leisure corporations, unscripted content material may be filmed with pared-down sources and simply posted on-line.
The Elixir staff noticed a niche on this rising market that their experience in TV manufacturing might fill. “Most of those shows are [filmed against] white stark backgrounds… But as a way to differentiate we said OK, what if we do those fun simple concepts… But we’re giving it a better aesthetic,” Kmiotek mentioned.
Lulu Studios in Los Angeles is photographed on Wednesday, July 16, 2025.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
That aesthetic shift is towards creating eye-catching visuals for his or her exhibits, whether or not that be romantic digital backdrops for his or her present “Red Flag, Green Flag” or constructing a large desk for contestants to stay their heads by for “Date on a Plate.” The corporate’s purpose: leaning into the bizarre and foolish to create attention-grabbing content material with a novel visible type to set them aside from rivals.
On the coronary heart of Elixir’s purpose is making exhibits which have a novel look. Their marquee sequence is “Date on a Plate,” an concept that Watnick says comes from his pitch for a TV present that by no means made it to air. The visible of a dinner cart being wheeled out with three heads beneath cloches was reworked into a web based relationship present the place contestants can solely see one another’s heads and compete in challenges.
In contrast to most YouTube exhibits, “Date on a Plate” has embraced conventional media alongside on-line promotion. The trailer for the present premiered on “Access Hollywood” and the staff went on the present and had host Mario Lopez check out the idea.
Comic Nicky Paris is the host of Elixr’s flagship present “Date on a Plate”
(Andrew Max Levy)
“Date on a Plate” — and lots of of Elixir’s exhibits — are additionally differentiated from most YouTube choices by having skilled hosts. For “Date on a Plate” they’ve Nicky Paris, a longtime humorist and TV host. “I prefer produced things,” Paris mentioned. “Anyone could hold a phone and [film], but in some ways I still enjoy the fantasy of when things are packaged and polished.”
Elixir has a core staff of roughly six individuals with extra crew members who are available for shoot days when the staff movies wherever from two to seven episodes of a present. The corporate then slowly releases the episodes it movies over the course of a number of months.
“Everybody wants to pivot to digital, but no one knows how to, and we’re in [a] sense learning as well,” Zinman mentioned. So the staff is counting on suggestions from Gen Z colleagues and studying the nuances of rising an viewers on YouTube, like the important thing to an excellent video title or thumbnail that may make or break a video’s success.
Jeff Kmiotek, founding member of the Elixir channel, is photographed at Lulu Studios in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 16, 2025.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
“We’re at the mercy of YouTube getting us in the algorithm and you never know what can happen on these sites,” Kmiotek mentioned. “Our shows are developed in a way they can have life outside of social media platforms.”
One other main motivating issue for the creation of Elixir was the present slowdown of movie and TV productions in Los Angeles. The subject has been the topic of heavy protection within the wake of the latest fires that exacerbated the necessity for town’s manufacturing staff to search out steady jobs. “In Los Angeles right now, the past three [or] four years, the landscape has certainly changed in television if you’re anybody from a carpenter that’s on a stage versus a showrunner. Work is leaving,” Zinman mentioned.
A significant supply of the decline is in unscripted productions, that are shifting to different states and nations with extra profitable tax incentives since California’s movie and TV tax credit score doesn’t presently apply to unscripted TV. To assist fight the decline, Tv Metropolis has began an initiative to accomplice with on-line content material creators to make use of town’s soundstages, that are presently experiencing document emptiness charges.
Elixir can also be searching for to place extra manufacturing personnel to work in Los Angeles. The corporate’s staff and studio house may be contracted by different on-line content material creators. “If someone with a platform or with the following wants to do a show and they don’t have a studio, come do it [here,]” Kmiotek mentioned. “Show up and we’ll make your show and then we can work together to get it out there… [I can] make a bespoke show about you that looks really high-end with a professional crew.”
The trio’s backgrounds in conventional TV manufacturing give them a stage of legitimacy to begin forging relationships with influencers and increasing the corporate’s mission. However they’re able to take the teachings solid in community TV and apply it to a extra targeted group of tasks. “There being a company like Elixir, [creators’ ideas] could really become the sole focus and become a priority to get it off the ground at the beginning, which is kind of exciting [to be] building something from the ground up,” Paris mentioned.
Michael Zinman, founding member of the Elixir channel, is photographed at Lulu Studios in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 16, 2025.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
“We’re not necessarily making YouTube videos, we’re making shows for YouTube,” is how Kmiotek described the staff’s method to the corporate.
Zinman mentioned that they produce their YouTube movies with the identical stage of ability and scope that they used to supply community TV. However with out community TV manufacturing budgets, the staff is extra resourceful with how they spend their cash for the self-funded enterprise. They’re selecting to spend money on the bodily house, high quality props and craftspeople so Elixir’s exhibits have a professional-looking high quality.
“Part of our TV background helps because we were able to literally get the prop team from ‘The Masked Singer’ to build the table [for ‘Date on a Plate’] for us,” Kmiotek mentioned.
The Elixir staff is part of a serious shift in leisure away from conventional mega firms and towards a media panorama fueled by people and small groups creating their very own content material. And from conversations with former community TV colleagues, they don’t seem to be alone in noticing the developments. “High-ranking executives are calling us to say ‘Hey, my contract is up this year, can I come do what you’re doing?’” Kmiotek mentioned.
“There were network executives leaving the network eight years ago to go to YouTube and you’d be like ‘Huh?’ Now you’re like, these are the smartest people in the world,” Zinman added.
Andrew Watnick, founding member of the Elixir channel, is photographed at Lulu Studios in Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 16, 2025.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Occasions)
Elixir has the identical purpose as any profitable media firm: to have the ability to innovate. The staff is growing a stay model of “Date on a Plate” that they will tour, at a time when excursions led by on-line content material creators and podcasters have offered out main efficiency venues. Additionally they are increasing past simply relationship exhibits and hope to create extra content material centered round comedy and recreation exhibits.
Elixir is coming into a market that has already proved its worth. The beginning-up took the temperature of the media panorama and noticed that on-line content material creation is the place audiences and advertisers are shifting towards. The strain is now on conventional TV and media corporations to both adapt or face even sharper income and viewership losses.
“There’s still a lot of network executives that probably think YouTube’s a fad … the numbers are coming out and the data is showing that it’s not true, so they’re gonna have to catch up,” Kmiotek mentioned. “It’s not going away.”
