ABSTRACT

This article examines Barack and Michelle Obama's entertainment company, Higher Ground Productions. Founded in 2018, Higher Ground has produced and distributed several films, television programs, and podcasts for its exclusive streaming partners, Netflix, Spotify, and Audible. Drawing on media-industry analysis, scholarship on representation and politics in streaming media, and cultural studies of mass culture and entertainment, I argue that these streaming companies leverage the Obamas' reputation as popular tastemakers and the pair's diverse coalition of supporters as part of the broader project of building a mass audience. This coalitional audience is based on drawing different demographic groups toward the platform, smoothing over political and identity differences by curating explicitly diverse yet agreeably centristliberal (and thus not partisan or radical) programming, and offering up the Obamas as moguls and curators who enable their host platforms to present themselves as services open to all viewing and listening constituencies. Although the Obamas are sui generis figures in American life, Higher Ground's partnerships tell us much about how contemporary streamers attempt to produce massness in part by positioning themselves as lightly politicized, but not overly controversial, purveyors of sophisticated infotainment.

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