Larry Namer | The E! Founder Who Saw Vertical Coming 8 Years Ago: The Vertical Buzz S3E7

What if the future of vertical entertainment looks a lot like the past of cable television? 📱📺

Larry Namer has seen this movie before.

As the co-founder of E! Entertainment Television, Larry helped build one of the world's most recognizable entertainment networks from the ground up. But his story goes far beyond E!. From starting out underground splicing cable in New York, to moving to Los Angeles, creating E!, expanding media operations into Russia and China, and experimenting with digital media before the technology was ready, Larry has spent more than five decades identifying where entertainment is headed next.

And when it comes to vertical entertainment, Larry isn't looking at it from the outside.

He has been producing vertical content in China for years. After discovering that 73% of the audience for one of his shows was watching on cellphones, he asked a simple question: Why are we still shooting horizontally? 📱

In this fascinating conversation, Larry explains why he believes vertical will become the dominant way people consume video, why simplicity is one of the format's biggest strengths, and why Hollywood may be misunderstanding what vertical audiences actually want. He also breaks down the economics behind China's vertical model, including how a $150,000 movie could potentially generate a $35 "ticket price" through episodic paywalls. 💰

We also get into Larry's incredible history: founding E! after more than 100 rejections, the early days of Talk Soup, putting cameras in Howard Stern's radio studio, international media ventures, his wild stories from Russia, and his work helping develop China's media industry. 🌎

Plus, Larry talks about the future of vertical genres, why horror and sci-fi could be next, AI's impact on entertainment, consumer robotics, and the lessons he's learned from more than 50 years in media.

And yes, there's Rapid Fire. ⚡

In this episode, you will learn:

📱 Why Larry believes vertical could dominate video consumption by 2030

🇨🇳 What China understood about vertical entertainment years before the U.S.