Every month, I’ll share a kids’ media roundup of all the articles, announcements, and new reviews—when they happen—while I work on the more in-depth articles. If you want to know more about any piece of YouTube news below or other news you’ve heard, please tell us in the comments below!

MrBeast Can’t Tame the Beast Games on Amazon

Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, made a huge leap to Amazon Prime this month with his Beast Games, a YouTube-ified version of The Squid Games. But with great budgets – and liabilities – comes greater scrutiny, and the word from Beast Games participants is that conditions were unsafe. According to these reports, poor food and medication were controlled by the crew, and elements of the production allegedly felt unfair.

Donaldson’s team blamed the CrowdStrike failures and a number of other issues, and future productions show no signs of slowing down.

Dialogues: The Editor is the Final Writer

If your child likes MrBeast, or feels disappointed to think he could film that way, remind them how editing tells the story. We spoke to a professional film editor and television producer to help explain how a “reality show” is anything but.

Chil Kong, a producer at Nickelodeon, told OutThink, “From the script to filming, every creative decision is set up for the moment we go into the editing room and tell the story you’ve been creating, building for the last year. Editing is taking all of those elements and finishing the story. It is often where stories go to find its truth. (emphasis mine)”

Read more —>

August News

Michael Bay now has the rights to produce a movie based on…..The Skibidi Toilet? That’s odd but not surprising. Any rumors of Bay’s production company Invisible Narratives issuing a take-down notice to the very animators responsible for Skibidi’s success are taken care of, however, and were likely a misunderstanding that arose out of an earlier DMCA notice.

Rhett & Link say screw it to any more pursuit of “traditional media” contracts and will premiere their own series “Wonderhole” on YouTube. This announcement comes on the heels of the Mythical Creators participating in a campaign by YouTube to be considered for the Daytime Emmys.

Logan Paul’s PRIME brand sued by the Olympics, continues to embroil himself with his own words in his other lawsuits. Here is a primer to teach kids how Influencer Marketing affects their brains.

Online Safety

The No Fakes Act was introduced to the Senate last Wednesday. It aims to make you the sole owner of your likeless and your voice, essentially banning the creation of an AI image of anyone without their consent. This is a strong follow-up to The SHIELD Act, which makes the online distribution of nude photos of minors illegal.

Video game voice actors officially call a strike, with the main issue being AI protections. Read more about the role of AI in last summer’s strike here.

More news as it happens in August will be updated here.