Ben Silverman has written many Hollywood chapters. A William Morris agent turned production company chief who struck big with the U.S. version of The Office, he went on to a rocky studio executive tenure leading NBC’s television efforts before reteaming with his former agency assistant Howard T. Owens to launch production-management firm Propagate Content ten years ago.
After securing backing from the likes of A+E Networks and other investors, Propagate has mostly sat out the private equity frenzy that has fueled Hollywood’s mega agencies in the consolidating talent representation landscape over the past decade. (Its last public outside investment came from merchant bank Raine Group in Jan. 2018.) Instead Propagate has grown a branded silo portfolio that includes Peter Principato’s management and production firm Artists First and Authentic Talent & Literary Management as well as producers Electus (which has rights to Running Wild with Bear Grylls and Jane the Virgin) and Notional (the Chopped franchise).
Propagate and Artists First also upped its stake in Lisa Filipelli and Scott Fisher’s creator-focused company Select Management and now fully owns the firm. It was in working with Select’s leaders and seeing its growth in managing careers in the creator economy, Silverman says, that led Propagate to decide to grow its footprint in digital.
“There’s no question eyeballs are migrating at speed and growing in the social universe faster than they’re growing in the traditional universe. So therefore we want to be across both,” the Propagate chairman tells The Hollywood Reporter.
That led to an eight-figure deal to buy Lindsay Nead’s Parker Management, a firm launched in 2017 with an initial focus on the wellness space that has since grown into a full-service lifestyle representation company with a roster of 85 clients. Parker Management, which has 23 employees with many operating remotely in Portland, will join the Propagate roster as a standalone firm.
Its clients include lifestyle influencers with large social followings like Alyssa Fluellen, Alia and Radwa Elkaffas (aka the Food Dolls), Angela Rose and Kylie Katich as well as recent signings Madison Ruff May and Kayzie Weedman. And Parker’s influencers have already worked with a list of blue-chip companies like Disney, Amazon, Nike, Walmart and more. The firm says that about one in five of its creators is a million-dollar-plus earner.
“What she has accomplished with her team in building out Parker really appealed to us based on what we learned with the great partnership we have with Select,” Silverman adds of Nead, noting: “I think as people’s consumption of content shifts and generationally shifts we are trying to go ahead of that path and build some beachfront real estate on the digital side because we’re watching such a large audience migration.”
Propagate co-CEO Owens adds in a statement, “Through the acquisition, we’re accelerating our strategy to be at the forefront of the evolving creator economy.”
The decision to remain operationally independent with the Parker name instead of just being absorbed by a larger firm factored in to Nead’s thinking to go with Propagate’s offer, she said, stating: “After a long process of exploring some potential partnerships with some of the biggest players in our industry, it became abundantly clear that Propagate best matched our desire to fill a large gap in our industry.”
Propagate, based in Los Angeles, now has 225 employees across all of its management and production brands and has significant bets on its content offerings including upcoming golf comedy Stick with Owen Wilson at Apple TV+, sports anthology series Untold at Netflix as well as the untitled Office spinoff at Peacock. (As for the private equity question, Silverman quips that the company has “been approached by every initial you can imagine in the private equity space — every initial and Greek god you can think of.”)
“We’ve also been strategic: We haven’t been hiring 1,000 development executives or funding our own scripted production where you could end up being really wiped out with the wrong choice,” Silverman notes. “We’ve been very measured in what we choose to put our capital behind.”
The Propagate chairman adds, “We have consciously and luckily been able to sustain our own growth on the balance sheet, which is a miracle in the modern entertainment world.”
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