Brandon Studios’ Brandon Stewart Talks Gamified Reality TV at Streaming Media 2025
Brandon Studios founder and CEO Brandon Stewart discusses the evolution of Brandon Studios from a talent agency to a studio with a viral brand and a focus on interactive, gamified reality TV and agile, audience-responsive content in this conversation with Future Frames producer Doug Daulton at Streaming Media 2025. Stewart and Daulton also discuss the role of AI in Stewart’s work, emphasizing ethical use that respects talent and enhances efficiency without replacing human roles.
What Brandon Studios Is Working On
Daulton introduces Stewart and invites him to talk about Brandon Studios.
“So where do you want me to start?” Stewart asks. “From the beginning?”
“Yeah, what was the inception?” Daulton clarifies.
“I was born in 1995,” Stewart jokes, and Daulton laughs. Stewart shares, “Brandon Studios was originated in 2023. Prior to that, we were an agency. We serviced talent, we were focused on social media.” He mentions that his experience at Awesomeness TV helped him gain experience in building a brand. “So now we’ve got 120 million active users across all of our 63 channels. One of those channels is a paywall of $5.99 that we call Brandon TV, and we just bought, as of 10 months ago, a 30,000-square-foot studio with two sound stages that we call Brandon Studios, which is kind of like our home.”
“So you’re living the dream,” Daulton says.
Stewart chuckles. “Sort of. It’s a little stressful. I’m not going to lie.”
“Well, nobody said dreams aren’t stressful,” Daulton notes. “You’ve got to do some work and put some skin in the game if you’re going to be successful.”
Stewart agrees, and Daulton wonders what Brandon Studios is currently working on. Stewart says its focus is on reality TV. “So the whole world of Love Island and all of the things that are becoming very popular, we’re actually taking some of the legacy stars from back in the day from shows like Dance Moms and Bring It! and Little Women, and we’re bringing them back into the forefront. We’re kind of giving them a second swing at a career on television. And so we’re taking their captive audiences that they’ve already built, we’re marrying [them] with the audiences that we have, and we’re creating content that’s very interactive. It’s very gamified, and it kind of allows the fans at home to be involved in the story-making process.”
Interactivity as the Key to Gaining Viewer Loyalty
“What techniques are you using to engage people and bring them in?” Daulton wonders.
Stewart asserts that the biggest technique is interactivity, and the streaming industry isn’t harnessing it to its full potential. “I think what makes us so successful is the fact that we’re able to have an idea on Monday, produce it by Tuesday, Wednesday, and it’s out by Thursday, Friday. The fans obviously love that. It’s easier when we’ve got talent that’s in our backyard, but we also produce in Atlanta, Georgia; we produce in Houston, Texas. We produce in Jackson, Mississippi, [and] Los Angeles, of course,” he explains. Stewart believes Brandon Studios is unique “because we’re actually listening to the audience and we are curating content around what they want to see.”
Daulton prompts Stewart to talk more about interactivity. He says scraping the online comments is important—they can be negative, and it’s possible to listen to them too much, but it’s important to harness them in a positive way, Stewart believes. If a commenter wants to see more of a particular star or storyline, the company will try to make it happen. “We also have a very active social media vertical on our streaming app as well. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of users that are active,” Stewart adds. “We actually just last month—I have not released this yet—but we just hit 2.2 million active subscribers last month on our streaming app.”
Daulton congratulates him. Stewart notes that giving viewers the ability to influence decisions empowers them to get more involved, and Daulton agrees.
The Inevitable Use of AI—Keep It Ethical
Daulton asks if AI is part of Brandon Studios’ process.
“We’re testing a lot of different verticals within AI,” Stewart says. “We’re also trying to be conscientious of being fair to talent as well, because we don’t want to overexpose [ourselves] to too much AI and lean on AI. That’s not really fair for whether it be talent or whether it be editors, for example, or other key players in our organization. But AI is not going away. And so we’re trying to find ways that we can utilize it to create more efficiency, but also, again, be fair to the market.”
Daulton is intrigued, noting that “ethical AI that respects the creator is kind of a passion project for me.” He applauds Stewart: “You’re trying to respect your talent, trying to make sure that you’re using AI in a way that respects the talent, [and] maybe is a bit of a force multiplier for them.”
“You nailed it, yeah,” Stewart replies.
Daulton adds, “And while at the same time, using it to make your bottom line more efficient.”
Stewart speaks more about his strategy: “One thing that we made sure that we did when we brought the talent from their respective networks prior is we actually gave them residuals. So now these unscripted stars who’ve never had residuals before, if they had the same residuals that Jennifer Aniston did on Friends, people like an Abby Lee Miller from Dance Moms would never have to work again.” He emphasizes that he’s saying this with respect for Miller. “And so that’s why I think it’s really important to protect the talent—not only the talent, the producers and the team behind the camera too, so that when AI does come, there’s still ways for them to be monetizing the content that they made years ago.”
The Future of AI and Jobs
Daulton brings up his LA friends who were part of the recent Writers Guild of America strike, and he and Stewart go off on a brief tangent about where Daulton is from. He notes that his screenwriter friends were “rightly” worried about AI, but “my position then was, AI’s coming. It’s going to be great long-term for the industry, but absolutely the guilds need to be standing up for the talent, whether it’s the writers or the actors, and making sure those terms and deals get locked down now, because otherwise it takes one bad actor to set the stage.”
Stewart nods along. “And by the way, it’s not just our industry as you all know. I mean, how many times have we gone to ChatGPT and asked them a legal question, right?” He says using it is normal now. “And I think we just have to be conscientious as we’re harnessing it, understanding that there’s still human beings out there that need to be employed.”
Daulton chimes in, “Well, and it’s not just employing human beings for employment’s sake, having that human in the middle or having the human behind the AI or the AI supporting the human.”
“Great point,” Stewart agrees.
Daulton cites director James Cameron’s assertion that AI won’t cost people their jobs; it will make them more efficient. AI will take care of the “grunt work.”
“That’s the hope, right?” Stewart says.
AI and Learning
“Now, there’s an honest conversation to be had about whether or not replacing that grunt work impacts the pipeline of talent coming up,” Daulton cautions.
“Well, could you imagine if we had AI in school when we were solving math equations?” Stewart looks at the camera. “I would be dumb as a box of rocks.”
Daulton talks about how his teenage children use AI. He is strict about the family ChatGPT account, and he teaches them to use it ethically. “They want to use it in a very targeted way because they want to establish their own skillset,” he notes. “And so they’re using it to research, but not necessarily to write.”
Stewart wonders, “But do you trust our whole society to do that?”
Daulton says yes, with a caveat: “I think we have to incentivize it.”
“Correct,” Stewart agrees.
Mo Gawdat, former chief business officer of Google X, speaks on this topic, Daulton shares. Gawdat insists that AI is here to say, but, Daulton says, “There are definite risks with bad actors, and we just have to set the tone to make sure that the good actors win.”
Daulton and Stewart both stress how important this outcome is to them. “I feel like I’m kind of a part of the younger Hollywood generation that’s coming in, and it’s helping shepherd the new era. And like I said, AI is not going away, and it’s time to start embracing the new age instead of pushing it out,” Stewart says. This is why unions and parents are important, he notes.
Social Media as the Second-Most-Important Issue
Daulton suggests wrapping up the conversation with the question, “What’s one major trend you think everybody in the industry should be thinking about over the next 18 months?”
Stewart tries to think of another topic besides AI, because that’s the obvious answer. He settles on social media. He addresses viewers, “I would say if you guys out there are not creating on social media, even if you’re just someone who owns a boutique shop or someone who has their own product and is working out of their living room or a content creator, there’s a lot of ways to get out in front of people and to teach people about your product, about your content, and to get them involved in what you’re doing.”
He mentions that he competed on American Idol in season 12, and he’s seen the music industry change “significantly” in this regard. He advises, “Continue to push and to utilize the social media kind of world as a conduit to what you want to do. Don’t be scared of it. Lean into it and allow yourself and your voice to be heard.”
Join us December 9-11 and tune in for more great conversations at Streaming Media Connect! Registration is free and open now!
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