When I spoke to Ben Gleib, he was in the middle of post-production on that week’s episode of Good Night With Ben Gleib . An editor was working behind him, others were spread across different rooms and Gleib was preparing to return to the edit as soon as our interview ended.

This is his new life. Gleib has spent years working as a comedian and television host. Now he is also the head writer, booker, executive producer and CEO of a late-night show filmed inside his Los Angeles home and released every Thursday on YouTube.

The programme has all the familiar furniture of late night: a desk, house band, opening monologue, celebrity guests and live audience. Gleib wears the tie. There’s even a neon sign.

Then the cameras leave the studio and follow him into the rest of the house, where conversations with guests become longer and considerably less structured.

I’ve spent close to 15 years working with YouTube creators and the thinking behind the show caught my attention. Gleib has taken the familiar architecture of late night and rebuilt the production, audience relationship and business around the creator economy.

Viewers can pay to join a virtual audience, appear on video walls and potentially ask questions. Interviews can run for half an hour. Patreon members get the complete after-show. One recording can produce a full programme, individual interviews, short clips and members-only material.

The show is still finding its feet. That makes it a useful test of what happens when an old television format is handed to someone who owns the company, speaks directly to the audience and doesn’t need to finish in time for the commercial break.

YouTube now competes for television viewing

“YouTube, when you’re doing a proper budgeted production, is for sure the new TV” Gleib told me.

There’s evidence behind the bravado. YouTube says television has overtaken mobile as the main device for watching its content in the US, measured by watch time. More than 1 billion hours of YouTube are watched on television screens each day.

Long-form creator shows are finding their way into the living room too. YouTube reported that viewers watched more than 700 million hours of podcasts on living-room devices in October 2025, up from 400 million a year earlier.

So Gleib can make something that belongs on a large screen while keeping the freedom of YouTube. An interview can run for 8 minutes or 40. A studio segment can sit beside an unproduced conversation elsewhere in his home. The full episode can reach one audience while dozens of clips find others.

Even the writing process has changed. Gleib described how showrunner Stewart Bailey suggested a new audience segment on the morning of a recording. Bailey, Gleib and writer Caroline Choi developed it during gaps in the day, printed the material on cards and performed it that evening.

“It came to life within hours, which I think is a very unique thing,” Gleib said. Traditional television development can take months. This took an afternoon.

Gleib’s team also monitors click-through rates, average watch time and the percentage of each video watched. He thinks about getting to the meat of a question faster so the opening seconds work as a clip. Editors make live notes during interviews, marking the moments that might travel.

He is wary of letting the numbers take over. “I will never make a compromise for analytics that I don't agree with,” he said.

That tension will be familiar to any established creator. You need to listen to the audience without allowing a retention graph to become the head of programming.

The audience has a seat at the table

Traditional late night talks to its viewers. Good Night has built them into the programme.

Virtual audience members can buy tickets, appear behind Gleib on video walls and potentially speak to guests. Patreon members get the full “Nightcap” after-show.

The after-show is deliberately looser. The cameras leave the set and follow Gleib and his guests into other parts of the house, allowing conversations to continue after the formal programme has ended. Members can watch the complete version, while the wider audience receives a shorter edit. “We can create our own business model,” Gleib told me on my podcast.

That model could include YouTube advertising, sponsorships, product integrations, memberships, virtual tickets, merchandise and touring. Gleib also has ambitions for additional shows and, eventually, consumer products.

Kendall Breitman, Riverside’s Head of Community, sees the same pattern among the creators she works with. “More people need to focus on how they can build a space for their audience beyond their YouTube channel or podcast,” she said.

Good Night’s virtual audience and Patreon membership are early attempts to build that space. They give viewers a closer relationship with the programme and give the company income that doesn’t depend entirely on advertising or YouTube recommendations.

Several of Gleib’s proposed revenue lines remain plans. Producing a weekly entertainment show is also considerably more expensive than recording a podcast with 2 microphones and a rented sofa.

Gleib says the team includes 33 people, many working part time. He still books some of the guests himself. He reviews edits late into the night. He is learning the part of the creator economy that receives rather less attention on stage at VidCon: running the company.

“This is a show first and foremost,” he said. “It is a company as a close second.”

There is a third piece to the plan.

“The plan is to create the Good Night Network and give shows to others who are breakouts from our show, other people I believe in, and create a whole network of shows that entertain people, for decades to come,” Gleib said.

We’ve seen versions of that progression across the creator economy. A creator builds one reliable format, develops a team around it and starts using the same production and distribution machine to make other things.

Getting the first show right remains the hard part.

Ownership changes the job

Gleib previously hosted 210 episodes of the Game Show Network series Idiotest . He says he didn’t receive any further financial benefit when the programme later appeared on Netflix and Pluto TV.

With Good Night , Gleib is trying to build an asset that he and his investors own. He said “it has the potential to be this enormous thing that I own and my investors own and get to profit from.”

He also knows how the other version ends. “And it also has the potential to have been the most amazing amount of work that goes away after a year,” he said.

Creator ownership often gets presented as pure freedom. In practice, you get the upside because you’ve agreed to carry the risk, payroll and 6am editing session.

“I don’t want to look for a job again,” Gleib said.

Hot Ones shows what can happen when a creator-led interview format grows into an asset with a life beyond each episode. The series expanded into hot sauces, retail products, licensing and international versions.

Evans explained the durability of the show to me “we have like a classic foundation, but then like a new build on the house above it.”

That’s a useful way to understand Good Night . The desk, tie, band and celebrity interviews tell you where you are. The new build changes how the audience watches, participates and pays.

Late night needs cheaper plumbing

The financial pressure on network late night has been building for years. Advertising revenue across broadcast late-night shows fell from an estimated $439 million in 2018 to $220 million in 2024, according to Guideline figures .

Nielsen found that YouTube accounted for a record 13.8% of US television viewing in May 2026, maintaining the largest share of any media distributor for the third consecutive month.

You can see the problem. Viewers are spending more time with YouTube, but the cost base of network television was built for a very different advertising market.

Gleib’s answer is a home studio, a smaller team and income from several sources. The production has more energy than an on-camera podcast and far less overhead than a network show.

The sums still have to work. Paid memberships and virtual tickets require viewers who care about the programme itself, rather than people who click because they recognise that week’s celebrity. Sponsors need to see premium entertainment. And YouTube remains a mysterious boss, even if it never sends notes.

“The buck stops with me in every department,” Gleib said.

The first season is planned to run for 42 episodes. Those returning viewers matter because celebrity interviews can easily become a collection of disconnected hits. The business becomes much stronger when people choose an episode because they trust the host, regardless of who happens to be sitting across the desk.

“People come back to you because they like your questions and the way that you think about things,” Kendall Breitman said.

Those numbers will tell us whether Gleib is building a show people enjoy or a show they organise part of their week around.

Sean Evans grew up obsessed with David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Howard Stern. Like Gleib, he has wondered where the top of the mountain sits now.

Evans said he feels “this responsibility to try to continue the tradition of aspirational talk shows in some way.”

Gleib has arrived at a similar answer from the other direction. Keep the desk. Keep the band. Put on the tie. Then own the company behind them.

This article is based on an interview with Ben Gleib on my podcast The Business of Creators .