EP23 CJ Yu - Inside Amazon Studios, TMZ, and Mark Burnett

CJ Yu has spent his career inside the rooms where shows get made - Mark Burnett Productions, E! News, Endemol, TMZ, and seven years at Amazon Studios running unscripted development around the world. He got there by interning everywhere from his first quarter at UCLA, choosing unscripted partly because he didn’t want to read any more bad scripts, and learning how to sell a twenty-million-dollar show in a ten-minute meeting. At some point he decided his own name was going to cost him the first phone call, and he did something about it... here on the Drink of Choice. Drink of Choice is a long-form interview podcast hosted by restaurateur Sid Kim and entertainment lawyer Han Kim. Every guest arrives with a drink that means something to them, and that drink becomes the doorway into a much larger conversation. Built around Asian and Asian-American voices that don't always get a seat at the table, Drink of Choice is intimate, unhurried, and long overdue. 0:00 Welcome 0:43 Drink of Choice: Young Thai Coconut 4:08 Sacramento, Camcorders, and a Fake Real World 5:56 The Freshman Who Interned Everywhere 10:24 Don’t Look for the Perfect Job 11:48 Why He Left Scripted 13:35 A $20 Million Show in a 10-Minute Pitch 22:45 Architect vs. Builder 28:46 The Streaming Bubble and the Math That Stopped Working 33:16 Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is 38:26 Inside TMZ 44:13 Why He Legally Changed His Name 50:44 How a Show Actually Gets Sold 1:02:22 The Future of Reality 1:09:00 Best and Worst Decisions