GENGEN
Partnership Overview · Season One

[SERIES NAME]

A long-form interview series on synthetic media, attention and cultural power in Asia — twenty-five conversations with the people building the tools and the people responsible for institutions.

Tap any section

Twenty-five episodes, released weekly across a single season. Each conversation runs 40–60 minutes, recorded on camera, published as video and audio, and broken into roughly twenty derivative assets.

The series is deliberately limited. A closed season with a fixed guest list is worth more to a partner than an open-ended show, because the whole body of work can be underwritten rather than a scattering of episodes — and because the guest list is the product.

25Episodes, released weekly
1,000 minOf long-form programming
~500Derivative assets across the season
2.5MProjected impressions, season total
01 The series What it covers, and what a listener leaves with.

Synthetic media has made cultural production almost free. That has consequences for anyone who makes, funds, regulates or preserves culture in this region — and there is currently no serious, sustained conversation about it conducted from Asia.

The series alternates between two kinds of guest: the people building the tools, and the people responsible for institutions, memory and legitimacy. That alternation is the format, and it is what no existing show does.

What a listener leaves with:

  • How cultural institutions are actually deciding what to do about synthetic media — not their public statements, their internal reasoning.
  • How narrative campaigns are built and distributed at scale, from people who have done it.
  • Where authorship, provenance and attribution are heading, from the people who will set those rules.
  • What the economics of cultural production look like when the marginal cost of an image approaches zero.
A closed, limited series is the unit being sold. Twenty-five conversations that will remain the reference point for this subject for the next three to four years.
02 Representation The single most important page. Institutions confirmed to participate.

Partners are not buying an audience that already exists. They are buying proximity to a specific set of people. The credibility of this proposal therefore rests entirely on who has agreed to appear.

Institutions represented among confirmed guests:

  • [Government / statutory board]
  • [Museum or national institution]
  • [Frontier AI or platform company]
  • [Global consultancy]
  • [University or research lab]
  • [Foundation or family office]
  • [Gallery or biennale]
  • [Creator-economy platform]
Before sendingThis section must contain only confirmed names, with written agreement to be listed. A logo wall of confirmed participants is what converts a proposal with no audience history into a fundable one. Aspirational names here will be checked, and one unverified logo discredits the rest.
03 The guests Twenty-five, hand-picked, alternating technology with culture and policy.

The guest list has been built deliberately rather than opportunistically, and it balances across five categories so the season reads as a survey rather than a series of favours.

CategoryEpisodes
Builders — AI, platforms, tooling, studios7
Institutions — museums, curators, archives6
Policy & government — regulation, soft power, diplomacy5
Capital — family offices, foundations, patrons4
Practitioners — artists, creators, designers working natively with the tools3
Total25

Guest headshots and titles are presented as a grid in the accompanying one-pager. Every name is confirmed before publication of this document.

04 Audience Who this is designed for — and why the audience is small, senior and expensive to reach.

This is not a general-interest programme. It is designed for a narrow, senior audience that is otherwise very difficult to reach through paid media.

  • Policy and government — officials working on culture, media, technology and soft power.
  • Institutional art — directors, curators, collection managers, biennale and foundation staff.
  • Technology — founders and operators at AI, platform and creative-tool companies.
  • Capital — family offices, philanthropic arms, cultural funders.
  • Professional services — consultancies advising on culture, brand and communications.
  • Practitioners and students — the constituency that will still be watching in three years.

Geography: Singapore and Southeast Asia primarily; secondary concentrations in Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, and among Asia-focused professionals in London and New York.

A partner is buying a few thousand of the right people, repeatedly, over six months — not a large number of the wrong ones once.
05 Syndication strategy One recording, every format, every channel, and the guest's own network.

One episode is released each week for twenty-five weeks. Every episode ships in video and audio simultaneously, on the principle that the two formats reach the same person in different states of attention.

  • Long-form video — YouTube, as the primary discoverable archive.
  • Long-form audio — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all standard feeds, for the lean-back listener.
  • Vertical clips — ten highly produced cuts per episode for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts and LinkedIn. This is where the volume of reach is generated.
  • Written — full transcript for search, plus an edited written recap for the newsletter.
  • Guest amplification — every guest receives a ready-made asset pack, which materially raises the probability that they post. Their networks are the distribution.

A defined portion of partnership proceeds is allocated to paid amplification on YouTube and Meta, targeted at the audience categories above rather than at scale.

Why this matters commerciallyThe archive keeps working. Long-form video accrues search value for years, which is why the season is positioned as an asset with a three-to-four-year useful life rather than a six-month campaign.
06 The repurposing engine How one evening becomes twenty assets, and one season becomes five hundred.

Every episode moves through a fixed six-stage lifecycle. The stages are scheduled in advance so production never depends on inspiration.

  • T minus 14 daysAnnounceGuest announcement card, question solicitation from the audience, email to the list. Builds anticipation and grows the list before anything is spent on production.
  • T minus 4 daysTeaseSixty-second trailer cut from the recording, released to YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn. Guest reshares. Second email.
  • RecordCaptureLong-form conversation on camera, plus stills, behind-the-scenes vertical footage, and studio portraits. One session, multiple raw formats.
  • Release dayPublishLong-form video and audio, full transcript, email campaign, guest network push, press and newsletter outreach.
  • T plus 1 to 21 daysRepurposeTen vertical clips, a single-question answer cut, quote cards, written recap. Paid amplification begins once organic performance identifies the strongest clip.
  • Quarterly and end of seasonRecompileThematic supercuts across episodes, a chapter of the annual publication, and programming for the annual convening. The season becomes source material rather than back catalogue.
Assets per episodeCount
Long-form video and audio2
Vertical clips10
Trailer and answer cut2
Quote cards4
Transcript and written recap2
Per episode · across 25 episodes20 · 500
The paid spend follows organic signal rather than preceding it. Nothing is boosted until the audience has indicated which clip works.
07 Reach model 100,000 impressions per episode, built from six surfaces rather than asserted.

Reach here is a function of guest signal and format multiplication, not of an existing audience. The projection is therefore built from the bottom up, surface by surface, for a single episode.

SurfaceImpressions
Vertical clips (10 per episode)40,000
Paid amplification25,000
Guest network reshare20,000
Owned channels and newsletter6,500
Long-form video6,000
Audio downloads2,500
Per episode100,000
Season total (× 25)2,500,000

Two structural reasons to expect a long tail beyond these figures. Because the same conversation exists in six formats, a meaningful share of the audience encounters it more than once and on more than one platform. And because the content is instructional rather than topical, it continues to be discovered and shared well after release.

Stated honestlyThese are projections for a first season with no publishing history, not measured results. The variable with the greatest effect on the outcome is guest reshare behaviour, which is why the asset pack supplied to each guest is treated as production work rather than an afterthought. Reporting against these figures will be provided to partners monthly.
08 Cost breakdown $6,000 per episode. $200,000 for the season, fully loaded.
Per episodeCost
Production — crew, studio, logistics$2,400
Post — long-form edit$1,800
Post — ten vertical clips$1,000
Post — graphics, captions, thumbnails$500
Transcript and written recap$300
Per episode$6,000
SeasonCost
Production (25 × $2,400)$60,000
Post-production (25 × $3,600)$90,000
Paid amplification (25 × $1,000)$25,000
Identity, site, launch$15,000
Contingency$10,000
Total season cost$200,000
Note on structurePost-production is deliberately the largest line. The clips are not a by-product of the episode; they are the distribution mechanism, and they are where the reach in section 07 is actually generated.
09 Partner opportunity Why backing the season beats sponsoring episodes, and who the right partner is.

Twenty-five guests have been secured over months of work. Each will spend 40–60 minutes on substantive, specific material — the kind of conversation that gets referenced rather than consumed. The season amounts to a thousand minutes of programming, roughly the length of a substantial audiobook, on a subject with no incumbent authority.

Because the series is limited and the guest list is high-signal, a partner gets disproportionately more from backing the entire season than from appearing in one or two episodes. Association with the whole body of work is the product. For that reason a small number of partner positions are offered rather than rolling per-episode inventory.

The right partner:

  • Needs credible distribution into Asian cultural, creative and institutional markets, and currently has none.
  • Sells a product or service the audience can actually use, so the association is legible rather than decorative.
  • Is willing to amplify the content through its own channels — this materially changes the reach outcome.
  • Is comfortable with full editorial independence over guests and questions.
  • Wants a named position in a field before it has an established authority, rather than after.
The partner is not buying advertising inventory. They are buying the record of who convened this conversation first.
10 Partner tiers Three positions, $225,000 total. Effective cost per thousand stated openly.

Every position runs across all twenty-five episodes. Placements sit within a 40–60 minute episode as follows: pre-roll at 0:00, first mid-roll at approximately 15:00, second mid-roll at approximately 30:00.

Founding Partner

$135,000 · one position
  • 15-second pre-roll and 60-second first mid-roll, all 25 episodes
  • Named in the series billing and in every episode description
  • Logo on the series site and mention in all show notes
  • Two seats at each off-record dinner across the season
  • Named position in the end-of-season publication
  • Right of first refusal on season two

Season Partner

$65,000 · one position
  • 60-second second mid-roll, all 25 episodes
  • Logo on the series site and mention in all show notes
  • One seat at each off-record dinner across the season

Chapter Partner

$25,000 · one position
  • Named sponsor of one thematic block of five episodes
  • Logo on the series site and mention in show notes for that block
  • Named sponsor of the corresponding chapter of the annual publication
PositionEffective CPM
Founding Partner — $135,000 against 2.5M impressions$54
Season Partner — $65,000 against 2.5M impressions$26
Chapter Partner — $25,000 against 500K impressions$50
Total raise against a $200,000 season cost$225,000

A single partner may take all three positions. Rates are held for the full season and are not re-priced if reach exceeds projection.

On the premiumThese rates sit above general-market video CPMs, and deliberately so. The audience is senior, narrow, and effectively unreachable through programmatic buying — and the off-record access included at the top two tiers has no equivalent in a media package.
11 What is included beyond media The private tier — the part a podcast package cannot replicate.

The series sits alongside an existing programme of private, off-record dinners convening government, institutional art, technology and capital. Partners at the top two tiers are seated at those dinners.

  • The dinners are never filmed. Off the record, Chatham House Rule, without exception. This is what protects their value.
  • The series is a separate on-record format — frequently the same people, a different setting.
  • Partners are seated as participants, not sponsors. There is no branding, no presentation, and no pitch in the room.
Two tiers, one network. The private tier retains its value precisely because the public tier exists to make it legible.
12 Methodology and assumptions What is measured, what is projected, and what a partner should discount.

This document contains no measured audience data, because the series has not yet published. Everything in section 07 is a projection, and the assumptions behind it are set out here so they can be argued with.

  • Clip performance assumes an average of 4,000 views across ten verticals per episode, consistent with accounts of similar size in adjacent professional categories.
  • Paid amplification assumes $1,000 per episode delivering approximately 25,000 qualified impressions, at rates consistent with narrow professional targeting rather than broad reach buying.
  • Guest reshare assumes a single post from each guest reaching a fraction of their following. This is the single largest variable and the least controllable.
  • Long-form video and audio figures assume no pre-existing subscriber base and are deliberately conservative.
  • Costs assume an existing venue at no rental cost, a two-camera setup, and freelance rather than agency post-production.
What a partner should askWhich guests are contractually confirmed as opposed to verbally agreed; what happens to the partnership if fewer than twenty episodes ship; and how reporting is verified. All three have answers, and they should be asked.
Background reading On Activating Cultural and Social Capital, and Making It Legible The strategic argument this proposal rests on: why cultural and social capital stay illiquid until they are documented, and what the Colin & Samir, Lenny Rachitsky and Lex Fridman precedents establish about interview series as an instrument. Read the strategy report →