They built their careers in network TV. Then they started a production company for the influencer age

Los Angeles Times

4 days ago

Jeff Kmiotek, Michael Zinman and Andrew Watnick have been in unscripted TV production for decades.
Kmiotek became a producer after working in a variety of unscripted formats including game and cooking shows and garnered an Emmy nomination for his work on 'The Masked Singer.' Zinman has a background in visual design and creative producing and also received an Emmy nomination in 2014. Watnick got his start in casting before moving to development and eventually producing on shows like 'The Masked Singer' and 'The Amazing Race.'
But a September 2024 encounter in Las Vegas led the three to take on a different kind of gamble than the city is known for: to break away from their careers in traditional TV and use their cumulative media production knowledge to create their own production company for online content.
The three observed a changing tide in unscripted TV production over the last few years. 'Budgets are getting slashed, costs are getting slashed, and schedules are getting slashed,' Kmiotek said.
Meanwhile, online platforms like YouTube have experienced an accelerated rise in popularity. '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.'
YouTube is experiencing a massive growth in revenue for creators who post videos on the platform. A recent ad revenue forecast by WPP Media found that online creator-driven revenue is up 20% from 2024 and is expected to double next year, while TV revenue is expected to increase by only 1%. YouTube also reached a 44.8% viewership share in May 2025, according to Nielsen, passing the figures for cable and broadcast TV for the first time.
YouTube offers a lucrative benefit not available to those who work in network TV: the ability to own the rights to their own shows and exercise complete creative control. '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 said.
Zinman owned an existing production studio in Downtown L.A., which was designed to do motion capture and virtual production for TV. That established space — dubbed Lulu Studios — became the home of Elixir, the trio's production company. They funded the venture with their own money, and Kmiotek quit his job as a TV producer to run the company full-time. Three weeks after that initial meeting in Vegas, the team was shooting its first shows.
Elixir enters a booming space in the YouTube marketplace: online dating shows. Companies like Jubilee, nectar and Cut have built followings in the tens of millions across social media platforms with their unscripted content. Episodes easily reach view counts in the millions, sometimes surpassing the Nielsen ratings for recent seasons of 'The Bachelor.' And in January, the popular YouTube show 'Pop the Balloon' was even parodied on 'Saturday Night Live.' While scripted shows often require large budgets made possible by major entertainment companies, unscripted content can be filmed with pared-down resources and easily posted online.
The Elixir team saw a gap in this growing market that their expertise in TV production could 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 said.
That aesthetic shift is toward creating eye-catching visuals for their shows, whether that be romantic digital backdrops for their show 'Red Flag, Green Flag' or building a giant table for contestants to stick their heads through for 'Date on a Plate.' The company's goal: leaning into the weird and silly to create attention-grabbing content with a unique visual style to set them apart from competitors.
At the heart of Elixir's goal is making shows that have a unique look. Their marquee series is 'Date on a Plate,' an idea that Watnick says comes from his pitch for a TV show that never made it to air. The visual of a dinner cart being wheeled out with three heads under cloches was transformed into an online dating show where contestants can only see each other's heads and compete in challenges.
Unlike most YouTube shows, 'Date on a Plate' has embraced traditional media alongside online promotion. The trailer for the show premiered on 'Access Hollywood' and the team went on the show and had host Mario Lopez try out the concept.
'Date on a Plate' — and many of Elixir's shows — are also differentiated from most YouTube offerings by having professional hosts. For 'Date on a Plate' they have Nicky Paris, a longtime stand-up comedian and TV host. 'I prefer produced things,' Paris said. '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 team of roughly six people with additional crew members who come in for shoot days when the team films anywhere from two to seven episodes of a show. The company then slowly releases the episodes it films over the course of several months.
'Everybody wants to pivot to digital, but no one knows how to, and we're in [a] sense learning as well,' Zinman said. So the team is relying on feedback from Gen Z colleagues and learning the nuances of growing an audience on YouTube, like the key to a great video title or thumbnail that can make or break a video's success.
'We're at the mercy of YouTube getting us in the algorithm and you never know what can happen on these sites,' Kmiotek said. 'Our shows are developed in a way they can have life outside of social media platforms.'
Another major motivating factor for the creation of Elixir was the current slowdown of film and TV productions in Los Angeles. The topic has been the subject of heavy coverage in the wake of the recent fires that exacerbated the need for the city's production workers to find stable 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 said.
A major source of the decline is in unscripted productions, which are moving to other states and countries with more lucrative tax incentives since California's film and TV tax credit does not currently apply to unscripted TV. To help combat the decline, Television City has started an initiative to partner with online content creators to use the city's soundstages, which are currently experiencing record vacancy rates.
Elixir is also seeking to put more production personnel to work in Los Angeles. The company's team and studio space can be contracted by other online content 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 said. '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 traditional TV production give them a level of legitimacy to start forging relationships with influencers and expanding the company's mission. But they are able to take the lessons forged in network TV and apply it to a more focused group of projects. '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 said.
'We're not necessarily making YouTube videos, we're making shows for YouTube,' is how Kmiotek described the team's approach to the company.
Zinman said that they produce their YouTube videos with the same level of skill and scope that they used to produce network TV. But without network TV production budgets, the team is more resourceful with how they spend their money for the self-funded venture. They're choosing to invest in the physical space, quality props and craftspeople so Elixir's shows have a professional-looking 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 said.
The Elixir team is a part of a major shift in entertainment away from traditional mega corporations and toward a media landscape fueled by individuals and small teams creating their own content. And from conversations with former network TV colleagues, they are not alone in noticing the trends. 'High-ranking executives are calling us to say 'Hey, my contract is up this year, can I come do what you're doing?'' Kmiotek said.
'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.
Elixir has the same goal as any successful media company: to be able to innovate. The team is developing a live version of 'Date on a Plate' that they can tour, at a time when tours led by online content creators and podcasters have sold out major performance venues. They also are expanding beyond just dating shows and hope to create more content centered around comedy and game shows.
Elixir is entering a market that has already proved its value. The start-up took the temperature of the media landscape and saw that online content creation is where audiences and advertisers are moving toward. The pressure is now on traditional TV and media companies to either adapt or face even sharper revenue 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 said. 'It's not going away.'