The Future Of Award Shows? How Airrack & The Streamy Awards Rewrote The Rules

In 1929, the first-ever Oscars took place at The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel as 270 of the generation’s top filmmakers, directors, and storytellers gathered to honor one another. Nearly a century later, and less than six miles down the road, a new kind of award show is being born: The Streamy Awards. Now in its 12th year, the 2022 YouTube Streamy Awards was held at The Beverly Hilton and hosted by Eric “Airrack” Decker to celebrate a new generation of storytellers. I spoke with Airrack, the event team, and many of this year’s winners to understand just how far the creator economy has come — and whether The Streamys may be reversing Hollywood’s trend of declining award show viewership as they revamp what award shows look like altogether.

In an era where views for events like The Academy Awards dropped 81.2% from 1998 to 2021, this year’s Streamy Awards was the second highest trending video on YouTube, doubled its average view duration from last year, and currently has 2.3 million views and counting.

While The Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and Emmys still remain ahead with 15.4 million, 5.4 million, and 5.9 million views respectively in 2022, The Streamy Awards is gaining momentum though only being around for a fraction of the time.

So what’s the secret? It’s only fitting that The Streamy Award co-founders Drew Baldwin and Joshua Cohen and their partners Dick Clark Productions adopted an approach that many top creators use with their videos: experiment, learn, and adapt. This year may have been their biggest experiment yet as it marked the first time it was live-streamed exclusively on a creator’s channel.

As Baldwin put it, they kept the three key elements of an award show while re-thinking the rest. “We think about it almost like a wedding where there are three major components: the spouses, the hardware (the ring), and the vows,” he explained. “Those are the three sacred things we have to do at The Streamy Awards too: we have to make sure they get their hardware, which are their trophies. They get an opportunity to do their vows, which is their speech. And we have to make sure we’re bringing them here and together.”

Beyond that, nearly everything has been up for experimentation since they started The Streamy Awards in 2009. That approach gave life to new segments like Creator Honors where past winners choose which peers to honor and this year, it’s meant giving even more creative control to Airrack than previous hosts.

“The goal for this year was to do The Streamys differently,” Airrack said. “It’s not hosted on The Streamys [channel] this year. It’s actually hosted on my channel since I’m hosting the award show. I think that’s how it’ll be in the future and I’m excited to start a trend in that direction.”

“They’ve given me a lot of creative control,” he continued. “Our entire team stopped uploading videos for a minute because we just got so invested in The Streamys and making it great.”

That team consists of manager Zack Honarvar, lead editor Mack Hopkins, producer Hayden Trowbridge, Creative Director Maxwell Behm, and creator Tyler Blanchard. Honarvar summed it up well: “Creators really are modern day production companies that are able to be more versatile than people imagined in the past. The Airrack team had the opportunity to really come in and flex their creative muscles to showcase just how engaging they could make an award show.”

It’s no surprise that Airrack’s team put the same level of research into The Streamy Awards as they do their own widely-watched videos.

“Our creative team went through every single Streamys video from the past and just looked at what worked and what didn’t work,” producer Hayden Trowbridge explained. “Like the world record attempts were something that the audience can interact with and not only enjoy, but then cheer them on.”

Throwbridge, who at only 20 years old may be one of the creator economy’s youngest and brightest producers, was referring to Michelle Khare and Tyler Blanchard’s Guinness World Record attempts. While neither broke the record on stage, the idea to create standalone segments with high retention — like many of the popular world record videos on YouTube — is something we’ll likely see as part of future Streamy Awards.

The work Airrack and his team put behind-the-scenes actually mirrors a greater trend with this year’s nominees. From Michelle Khare to Rhett & Link to Jesser, nearly all nominees were also “modern day production companies.” Khare commented on how much she’s invested to produce Challenge Accepted, the Streamy Award winner for Unscripted Series, with some videos requiring “tens of thousands of dollars and lots of people working on each episode.” Along those lines, Jesser spoke about investing nearly $80,000 in his most expensive video and growing his team to 12 people as they crossed 10 million subscribers and won the Streamy for Sports Creator of the Year.

Other nominees like TikTok star Michael Le spoke about how he’s expanding to “scale [his] content globally and learn from creators like Airrack and MrBeast” while building his new gaming company Joystick, while Anthony Padilla mentioned how “there’s so many more elements that go into making successful content on the internet today because there’s more platforms you need to put your content on.”

Other top creators like Jay Shetty spoke about how they’re using their platform to expand to include his new podcast the Dhar & Jay Show and his new book 8 Rules of Love, while Lifestyle Streamy Award winner Charli D’Amelio spoke about how “everyday she’s surprised about the things she’s able to do because of social media.” D’Amelio continues to see success in traditional media, with the renewal for season 3 of The D’Amelio Show on Hulu, and winning season 31 of Dancing With the Stars.

That all said, perhaps the evening’s most symbolic moment went to Rhett & Link. Upon winning The Streamy Award for Show of the Year for Good Mythical Morning, they didn’t just go up and accept it by themselves as most creators would’ve done in past years. They invited eight of their staff up and thanked the rest of their team by name. During our conversation on the red carpet, Link noted just how big their company has become: “We have over 130 full time employees working out of our studio.”

It’s a sign that the creator economy is much more than just creators. It’s also about the producers, editors, writers, and creatives who power it. In the coming years, that will likely open more opportunities for creatives of all kinds — and one day, maybe even win their own Streamy Award.

“There are people who tune into the Streamy Awards, and then a few years later they’re up on stage winning,” Baldwin said. “If you can tap into your own creativity, then you can be a part of this community. I think that’s the most exciting thing about this. The creators here used to be fans at one point, and now they’re some of the biggest creators in the world.”

In fact, Airrack is living proof of that. From making his first YouTube paycheck in 2020 to hosting The Streamy Awards this year, he’s inspiring the industry to see creators not just as the talented individuals they are, but the powerhouse production studios they’ve become.