For 15 years, Simple Alien operated much like a traditional production company, creating graphics and producing shows for cable networks, streamers and brands. But as the traditional entertainment business shrunk and advertisers shifted toward creator-led programming and direct-to-audience distribution, the company is betting on a different model.
The digital production company officially launched its studio last year, beginning with a YouTube reboot of Food Network star Michael Symon’s food series alongside co-hosts Carla Hall and Clinton Kelly. After seven seasons on traditional television, Symon’s show was not picked up for an eighth. Rather than wait for another network opportunity, Simple Alien co-founder Nick Panagopulos suggested taking the series to YouTube.
At first Symon was hesitant to move his show online, but Panagopulos said the timing lined up a couple months later and worked for their fanbases.
For co-founder Marissa Ronca, the creator business has been empowering because she has full ownership over the projects she creates and does not have to ask permission from network gatekeepers.
“It’s like Taylor Swift owning her masters for the first time,” she told TheWrap’s Office With a View. “We have never had this, any of us, so it feels special.”
The studio is also scaling its programming slate. After starting with one series, Simple Alien is growing to five, “Chewed Up,” “Michael Symon and Clinton Kelly,” “Simply Symons,” “Why’d They Wear That” hosted by Clinton Kelly and Stacy London and “Ask Amanda: Chef on the Line.”
Maintaining that output requires consistent production workflows and a steady publishing cadence, which was a shift from the traditional entertainment landscape. However, the Simple Alien team does not rely on virality to fuel viewership. In the crowded influencer market, the digital production studio relies on established personalities whose audiences already trust them and are willing to spend more than 30 minutes watching their content.
TheWrap: You started this digital expansion with “Chewed Up.” How did you intentionally expand the company outside of your first show?
Nick Panagopolus: When we started with “Chewed Up” just about a year ago, we quickly realized that even if this is not the way forward, it’s a way forward. We’ve both been in the business kind of on opposite ends. Marissa was on the network side, and I’ve always been on the production company side.
We were at the start of when the unscripted reality cable world had a whole wave coming, and we rode that wave. The last 15-20 years it’s been kind of doing the same thing, and this past year has been so exciting, and it feels like we’re building again the way we were in the very beginning.
Marissa Ronca: We love the build, the creativity of building something. I think most people that caught that cable boom when we did, who built talent that are household names. But the game has changed a lot since then. So to be back here doing this is exciting.
How has that been for you to have an idea and be able to act on it without asking for permission?
Ronca: Exhilarating.
You have to embrace imperfection because you have to embrace speed to market. When you have spent years crafting things for networks, it’s so noted, noted, noted, and it’s so perfected before it goes out there. We don’t have that luxury here, but also the audience doesn’t expect that from people.
Some of our early episodes that would put us on the map, things went very wrong. All the ingredients were frozen one day, and then the heat wasn’t working. One time we had a THC sponsor, and one of the hosts drank one to do a mid roll, and then they were high, and it was just like shambles.
But it was also like we don’t we can’t do second takes. This is going to go out like this, and everybody just loved that.
You have to retrain your brain a little bit to embrace the imperfections.
Coming with the traditional mindset, did anything shift when you decided to make content with a creator pace or a creator audience in mind?
Panagopolus: This past year has been a massive learning curve for us. The way we had to do production, we came up with a much more efficient production model. The shows aren’t just shows. They are experiences. We do live shows. We have virtually live shows. We have cookbooks. We have memberships. We have merchandise.
Ronca: It’s pretty straightforward in a way. In that I spent 20 years at the network, and Nick spent 20 years outside the network running a production company. If there’s one thing networks know how to do with IP that they own, it’s to make money on it every possible way they can, so we’re taking that approach.
Nick really developed our high efficiency model, which allows us to shoot 18 episodes in three days, and then be able to turn them around within a week’s time on some timeframes.
The pivot was based on timing, but also a merging of both of our skills and expertise to create something that’s really taken off.
How do you see AI increasing efficiency for y’all, and and where is it most valuable in your workflow?
Panagopolus: Chronicle was an was an early partner, and now we basically have built our own custom backends that we use for all of our production processes.
I vibe coded on Claude a hub we call it, and it’s the Simple Alien Hub, and you can see all of our verticals and all of our shows, and everyone is connected through it from our production to post production to social media to our brand sponsors. It’s such a key part of keeping the communication and everyone efficient.
Most of your talent roster are legacy talent that bring their own audiences, and that sounds like that was always intentional. Do you anticipate that being the trend for future shows?
Panagopolus: I feel now the Food Network, the HGTVs, all these unscripted places, they aren’t. They’re starting to do other things like competition shows. They’re not going to their core audiences that they were built on, and those audiences have nowhere to go except for online to these other digital platforms. So if we can bring those hosts, those familiar faces to them there, we feel like that’s where we’re we have the winning formula.
Ronca: We don’t see it in competition with the networks. Our friends at the networks are squeezed. Budgets are getting smaller and smaller. We see this not just as putting together our own network or model, but this is a library of content already a couple hundred episodes deep that can help fill that time in a really valuable way.
You’ll see in 2027 some great announcements of shows that are formats which we we don’t have yet, still though in the same vein of a known person who has equity and who has that community around them.
How long did it take you to find that core audience, those diehards fans?
Ronca: You got to imagine we started at zero. We’re over 100,000 subscribers now, but even though they have big followings, it’s incredibly hard to get people to move platforms.
Panagopolus: If the talent have big followings on Facebook or Instagram, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to have those same people go to YouTube … that was a big education point for us, too, is that we have fans that are stuck in these different digital ecosystems, and they won’t jump.
Ronca: I knew this from the network side because I did “Billy on the Street,” and it was a mega super duper hit on the internet, and when it premiered on True TV, it got like a zero rating. And yet, we were nominated for an Emmy. The audience doesn’t convert, so you have to be really strategic.
Talk to me about the FAST channel. When was that something that you wanted to do?
Ronca: We had a library of over 50 episodes when we started talking to LG. Because of the speed and volume and the quality of our shows, unlike many FAST channels, which are just old libraries that’s stacked there. Our channel is updated multiple times a week, so the refresh rate is like almost like a regular network.
Within six months, it became their No. 1 culinary and lifestyle destination, and that is because of how frequently it’s refreshed, how their partnership in letting their fans know about that, and also again the talent that’s on that network.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
