How drag queens invented creator culture

World of Wonder founders explain how drag queens built the creator playbook decades before it had a name.

Oct 09, 2025

Streaming Made Easy is funded by direct subscriptions from readers like you. If you’d like the full experience, consider becoming a Premium member 🫶

“To survive as a drag queen, you need to be a designer, performer, comedian, makeup artist and marketer.”

Long before “creator” was a thing, drag queens were running full-stack media businesses from the back of nightclubs. They didn’t wait for permission. They built personas, marketed themselves and nurtured audiences one show at a time. Drag wasn’t just performance. It was production, branding and distribution rolled into one.

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato built World of Wonder out of the chaos of public-access TV. Their show Manhattan Cable cut together the wildest clips from New York’s underground scene. If you didn’t like one segment, you just waited thirty seconds for the next. It was the scroll before the scroll and UK broadcaster Channel 4 bought into it.

Fast forward to 2009, RuPaul’s Drag Race launched on Logo TV in the States. It didn’t invent drag culture. It finally televised it. The format borrowed the grammar of reality TV (challenges, confessionals, eliminations) and turned it into social commentary.

The format then crossed the ocean with each local edition playing to its own DNA:

🇬🇧 UK (BBC Three) – The model franchise. A hit with critics, adored by fans and proof that public service and pop culture can co-exist.
🇫🇷 France (France Télévisions) – 700,000 viewers tuned in in the middle of August 2025 and The All Stars 2025 finale was staged as a live event at L’Olympia in Paris (on Tour across France as we speak).
🇪🇸 Spain (Atresmedia) – keeps breaking records for the Spanish broadcaster.
🇮🇹 Italy (Paramount+ / WOW Presents Plus) – A streaming-first launch (from season 3 the show moved to P+ with a MTV window) and the show now travels globally via WOW Presents Plus.
🇩🇪 Germany (Paramount+ / WOW Presents Plus) – Paramount+ discontinued the German local original after one season as part of a wider retreat from international originals but the show remains available via WOW Presents Plus showing the advantage of the WOW distribution spine.

What makes World of Wonder unique isn’t just its output, it’s its relationship with fans. They built a community through a newsletter and live events and later with WOW Presents Plus, their streaming service. 96% of subscribers stay. That’s not luck. That’s what happens when you treat fandom as the foundation for your streaming service.

This week on The Media Odyssey Podcast,

Evan Shapiro

and I are lucky to spend an hour with the WoW team as they share how they built Drag Race from a subculture to a global franchise and what that playbook still gets right about producing today.

LISTEN and/or WATCH in full here: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE