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Field report: we caught ourselves narrating a boring errand in cliffhangers, freezing on a dramatic close-up before we opened the fridge. Turns out once the format gets into your head, it does not leave. We have made peace with this.
Comcast's new vertical show pays a creator six figures
Comcast's Xfinity just launched "Best in Class," a seven-episode vertical reality competition made exclusively for Instagram and TikTok, in which six college creators compete for a six-figure brand partnership. It is produced by NBCUniversal's Rock Studios, the in-house shop behind branded work for "Love Island USA" and "The Traitors," and it is Rock Studios' first original social series since the unit launched in June. Host duties go to Katie Feeney, a creator and sports personality named to the 2026 TIME100 Creators list.
New episodes drop weekly on Wednesdays starting today. The winner earns the title of Xfinity's first "Creator Valedictorian," the six-figure deal, and a year of free internet and mobile. A phone company producing a scripted-adjacent vertical franchise is its own kind of milestone. Developed with agency Carmichael Lynch, the series reflects, in NBCUniversal ad chief Karen Kovacs' words, marketers asking partners to "build content that pulls in the culture."
Why this matters for you: The buyers for vertical work are no longer just streamers and drama apps. A telecom is now commissioning original vertical intellectual property (IP) and putting six figures behind a creator. If you make vertical, widen your pitch list to brands and their studios, because they are writing checks and handing out titles now, not someday.
Sources: Net Influencer · Variety · Comcast
🇺🇸 United States
1. An artificial intelligence studio now spits out a full microdrama from a single prompt. Palo Alto's Xelta, from MatchBest Group, launched an artificial intelligence (AI) creative platform that ties together more than 90 models, and its Microdrama Creator claims to generate a multi-episode series with consistent scenes and characters, up to an hour long, from one seed input. Impressive and a little unnerving in the same breath. → Big News Network · Startuppedia
2. An "Emily in Paris" name is stepping into a ReelShort vertical drama. Lucien Laviscount is set to star in ReelShort's upcoming series "The French Heir," another mainstream face choosing to headline a phone-first show rather than wait for a traditional one. The stigma around vertical acting keeps quietly dissolving. → MicroDrama Radar
3. The vertical production map is spreading past Los Angeles, and Atlanta is filling in fast. Dedicated shops like Vertical Studios ATL are turning out 9:16 series for ReelShort, DramaBox and Vigloo, and Georgia crews are booking vertical shoots through August. Where the format goes, the paychecks follow, and they are landing in more zip codes. → Vertical Studios ATL
Here's what else is new:
Nearly half of brands admit they mispriced a creator deal. New research from Billion Dollar Boy, surveying 1,000 marketing and procurement pros, found 45% of brands paid above or below fair value for creator work, split fairly evenly between overpaying and underpaying. → Net Influencer
Another read says rate cards are broken. A fresh creator-pricing study introduces a cost-per-engagement yardstick that tries to price what a collaboration is actually worth, rather than leaning on a headline follower count. → GlobeNewswire
🌐 Worldwide
1. India's One Life Studios just shipped 60 homegrown microdramas into Southeast Asia. The Mumbai company, marking ten years, licensed 60 titles from its library of more than 500 Indian microdramas to three regional streaming platforms, and teased two premium historical-fantasy series hunting co-production partners. A real export lane for Indian vertical work, not just a talking point. → Television Asia Plus · C21Media
2. A public AI-content company's books show the "cheap" story is more complicated. Beijing's Nasdaq-listed Global Mofy grew revenue about 49% to roughly USD 40 million for the six months to March 31, but cost of revenue jumped about 110% to USD 31 million, gross profit fell about 28% to USD 8.5 million, research and development (R&D) nearly tripled to about USD 14 million, and cash on hand thinned to roughly USD 3 million, even as it keeps co-producing short dramas with China Literature. Scaling AI content is not the free lunch the pitch decks promise. → Manila Times · StockTitan
3. A UK grocer is turning the microdrama trend into a checkout campaign. Co-op, working with Carat UK and Platform Media, brought vertical serialized storytelling to grocery retail with its new "Pop to Co-op" push, another brand treating microdrama as an ad format rather than a curiosity. The shelf and the screen keep converging. → Retail Tech Innovation Hub
Here's what else is new:
The platform where you seed a microdrama changes the math. A 2026 creator-pricing report found TikTok creators delivered engagement at roughly five to ten times lower cost than comparable Instagram creators, a useful data point if free discovery is part of your distribution plan. → GlobeNewswire
Most creators now lean on brand deals to pay the bills. A new survey found 81% of creators count brand partnerships as their primary income, a reminder that the brand-funded microdrama, from Xfinity to Co-op, is fast becoming a core revenue line rather than a side gig. → Net Influencer
Today's Pick
Media analysts Evan Shapiro and Marion Ranchet sit down with the founders of RoseBerry to talk through where "premium vertical television" is heading, across true crime, soap, game shows and reality, a good listen if you want the big-picture argument on the format's next tier. → Listen on Apple Podcasts
A phone company just put six figures on the table for people who make things vertically. Whatever you are building, someone new is bidding for it.
Until tomorrow. Stay Vertical.
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