WME Built Joy Reid's YouTube Channel. Now It's Selling That as a Service.

Joy Reid lost a cable news show and gained a YouTube channel. The part most people missed is who actually ran it.

The team behind the 2025 launch of the former MSNBC host's channel — now past half a million subscribers — advised on content and publishing strategy and handled channel operations, video editing, packaging design, livestream support, community management and monetization setup. The channel pulled 40M+ views over the past year.

That team now has a name and a business model. On October 1, WME unveiled Creator Labs, an in-house digital operations unit inside its Digital Division, built to help clients turn YouTube and other platforms into media businesses they own — covering channel management, content syndication and related operations. Alongside it, the agency took a stake in video strategy and operations company Astra Media, which has powered projects for Khloé Kardashian and Kevin Hart, and expanded its creator sales team under Doreen Dinour to chase brand sponsorships.

Read the job list again. Strategy, editing, thumbnails, livestreams, community, monetization, sponsor sales. That is the exact pile of freelancers every solo expert with a course and a channel has been stitching together on Upwork for five years. Hollywood just made it a department.

The agent's job description is changing

Jad Dayeh, co-head of the digital group, framed the move as a response to how YouTube restructured the entertainment business, saying the platform has "deconstructed all the different pieces" of what used to be a network and handed them to the creator.

His counterpart was blunter about what that does to the business he's in. Ben Davis, co-head of WME's digital group, told The Hollywood Reporter the agency had been quietly building and testing this for a couple of years: "Our clients now own their distribution, so how does the role of an agent change."

The answer WME landed on: stop brokering access to someone else's distribution and start operating the client's own.

Creator Labs general manager Joanne Lee — who joined WME in 2024 after leadership roles at Meta, YouTube and Sony Pictures — says building an audience at scale "takes strategy, programming, production, analytics, platform expertise, and consistent execution" and that the unit exists to bring those capabilities together in a high-touch model shaped around each client.

They're hiring into it while the rest of the agency shrinks

Lee says WME hired 11 in-house staff across Creator Labs and the new Creator Sales team, with "immediate plans" for eight more. Astra adds roughly 50 full-time employees and contractors to the effort.

The timing is the tell. WME laid off 30 staffers in March to reduce layers and remove bureaucracy — then hired 11 people for Creator Labs and Creator Sales. Money moved from the old function to the new one.

Early clients include Erling Haaland, who worked with the team to launch his YouTube channel and secure sponsorships, and Julian Shapiro-Barnum of "Recess Therapy," who used WME's services to land sponsors for his new YouTube late-night show. Haaland's channel has grown to around 4.5 million subscribers.

Why this matters if you sell knowledge

WME is not alone in reading the room. UTA rebranded its digital arm to UTA Creators in 2024, helping launch businesses like Chamberlain Coffee; earlier this year CAA started a $250M creator venture holding company. The difference is what's being sold. CAA is buying into creator businesses. WME is renting out the machinery that runs one.

For a course creator, the operational question is identical to Haaland's, minus a few zeroes on the audience. Who cuts the YouTube video that feeds the funnel. Who designs the thumbnail that decides whether anyone sees it. Who runs the livestream that sells the cohort. Who handles comments. Who sets up monetization.

Independent experts have been answering that with a rotating cast of contractors and a lot of 6am edits. The agency version is that same role, staffed, named and priced — for clients with 4.5 million subscribers.

The interesting part is what happens when somebody decides to sell it to everyone else.