CES 2024: Variety’s ‘Strictly Business’ Podcast Gazes into the Future with Top Executives, Innovators and TikTok Creator Leenda Dong

Cynthia Littleton
·2 min read

Attending the Consumer Electronics Show is an eye-opening experience that offers intriguing glimpses into the future and an overwhelming amount of information about how the media, entertainment and tech industries are evolving in the present day.

For the past decade, Variety has partnered with the Consumer Technology Association to help Hollywood players navigate a fast-changing marketplace with an entertainment business-focused track of programming at the big show.

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On this special edition of Variety podcast “Strictly Business,” our editorial team goes deep on the trends, innovations and industry rumors that swirled around Sin City as the tech, media and business worlds converged on Las Vegas this week. The daylong Variety Entertaiment Summit on Jan. 10 served up a powerhouse slate of executives, entrepreneurs, movers and shakers and even a TikTok star in comedian Leenda Dong.

As ever, Team Variety‘s mission is to track trends and new developments in content production and monetization, streaming distributon, brand-building and the seemingly never-ending cycle of speculation about mergers and acquisitions in media. The episode features a post-summit group chat between “Strictly Business” hosts Cynthia Littleton, co-editor in chief of Variety, and Andrew Wallenstein, president and chief media analyst of Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP), along with Todd Spangler, Variety‘s longtime digital editor, and Audrey Schomer, VIP’s media analyst and research editor.

Among the highlights of the summit was a panel on the future of content monetization with advertising sales chiefs for Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal. After three rough quarters in 2023 for domestic TV advertising, my first question for the ad chiefs was: Where’s the money? That clip and other panel highlights from the summit are woven into this episode.

Dong, who boasts nearly 18 million followers on TikTok alone, charmed the CES crowd during her one-on-one with Spangler. How do social media creators make money? In a word: sponsors, sponsors, sponsors. To wit, even Dong’s link in her bio includes a plug for Domino’s Pizza. Dong noted she has had a strong management team for years that helps her turn videos into cash.

“With any business or brands, [potential sponsors] come to them and they facilitate the whole branding and whatnot” while she focuses on the business of being funny, Dong explains.

“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.

(Pictured: TikTok creator Leenda Dong at the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES 2024 in Las Vegas)

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