Chris and Kevin Balfe’s Red Seat Ventures is one of those media companies that everyone knows, but whose business is still a bit hazy. Acquired by Lachlan Murdoch in 2025 as part of Tubi’s push into the creator space, Red Seat is ostensibly a multichannel network (MCN) for a new era of independent talent. Podcast hosts like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, and Piers Morgan were some of their early, attention-grabbing clients, but Red Seat Ventures works with other creators and brands, including the New York Post and Colin Cowherd, to grow their own businesses through advertising deals, live events, and any other avenue you can think of to make a modern media business work.

Red Seat’s success with mostly conservative voices raises the obvious question: Could their business model be replicated on the left? Peter Rothpletz aims to find out. He’s a writer and producer who previously worked for Don Lemon (he was in Minnesota for the protest coverage that led to the ex-CNN host’s controversial arrest), created newsletters for Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, and was a journalist at legacy institutions including CBS News and MSNBC. Last week, Rothpletz launched Verbatim Media, a consulting-meets-brand-development company that will work with creators, journalists, and other emerging talent to strengthen or develop new voices on the left and figure out how to monetize them. Rothpletz’s initial talent partners include Akilah Hughes, who developed an audience through her time with Crooked Media, and Michael Fanone, a former Metropolitan Police officer who was attacked during the January 6 riots.

It’s an ambitious project. For years, the left has tried, and mostly failed, to find some kind of answer to Joe Rogan. But if ever there was a time for a project like Rothpletz’s to break through, it’s now. Rothpletz and I had a lengthy conversation about his ambitions, his concerns about the media’s future, and the current state of the creator economy. As usual, the following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Julia Alexander: What do people get wrong in comparing Verbatim Media with Red Seat?

Peter Rothpletz: I like the “blue answer to Red Seat Ventures” framing insofar as it’s quite straightforward and cuts to what we’re trying to do. But I also think it slightly skews the mission of our company. Ultimately, we want to try and re-create the newsroom. My fear is that as legacy media continues to die, and whatever we want to call this thing that’s taking its place—whether it be a creator economy, or the vertical-video star ecosystem—I feel a duty to try and make sure that we still have accountability, and we still have real trust in our information systems. My great fear is the death of truth, and no longer being able to cut through the cacophony of all these different personalities and voices and petty grievances to get a sense of what is actually happening in the world.

The left already has a sizable and growing creator space. Why do you think it doesn’t have the same impact that right-wing or right-wing-adjacent culture podcasters, video creators, and writers seem to have?

Diamonds are formed under pressure. The left has experienced such an advantage in legacy media for so long; the right was forced to adapt and find these new avenues. Now they’ve had a decade-plus advantage and actual runway of figuring out how to make these operations work. The left is now experiencing a type of crisis that may feel existential, and they’re working and adapting, and they’re trying to evolve in a way they should have 20 years ago.

You’ve worked with two of the biggest, and perhaps most prominent, legacy–turned–new-media creators: Don Lemon and Mehdi Hasan. Were there any lessons you took away from working with them that you’re bringing to this new batch of creators?

One difficult lesson that [Don and I] had to learn together—as I’m also a product of legacy media—is the old adage that a rising tide raises all boats. If you think back to that hard media of yesteryear, it was verboten to speak of your competitors who aired in your same time block. If you uttered the letters “CNN,” for example, you would immediately risk losing eyeballs to a counterpart. You kind of pretended they didn’t exist, so your focus was insular and on your program. What Don and I, and then Mehdi and I, learned is that’s not the case now.

I’ve seen the YouTube and Substack statistics: There are certain creators I represent who have audiences that are, perhaps not overwhelmingly, but significantly female heavy, for example. Some audiences are overwhelmingly between the ages of 50 to 70. Then I have other clients who have audiences that are surprisingly majority male, and their average ages trend between, say, 30 to 50. The more collaboration you can have to connect audiences that come for one personality, but are now being introduced to another personality through that channel, the more it helps everybody.

We have to try and break folks out of the legacy media mindset of, It’s a dog-eat-dog world, or pretend the opposition doesn’t exist. That’s not how this works. That’s why Tucker regularly goes on with Megyn Kelly. Now they have beef, but normally, Ben Shapiro would cross-pollinate on their platforms all the time. The left needs to adapt and learn that this is just the way that things work now.

How are you actually monetizing right now? Is it a percentage of ad sales? Is it ownership in I.P.? Is it on a retainer basis?

It’s a mixed bag. There are some clients who may pay monthly in a six-month contract. I have other clients who are particularly confident based on their previous interactions with me and have committed to longer. I have one client who signed for 12 months. Then I have other folks who understandably don’t necessarily have the same means, and so they have offered a 7.5 percent or a 10 percent stake, for example, in new shows that we produce for them, new projects that we produce for them.

When you’re thinking about the world in which your venture can do the most good for what you’re trying to accomplish, is it as an independent company that works with your clients, or is it potentially in-house somewhere with the backing of a larger infrastructure? If Versant’s Mark Lazarus calls you up, do you take that call?

My earnest answer is that I don’t think so, but I’m also not going to close the door on anything in the future. We don’t have investors right now because we don’t think we need them, but if investors were to come, that would be great. If in three or four years’ time, someone does look to acquire us, I’m not going to immediately say no. But it’s not something that I am currently entertaining. But also, how could I? We launched the company two days ago.