Last Updated on October 18, 2025 by Daily News Staff

The automotive industry is shifting gears—and this time, it’s not just about horsepower. On November 20, 2025, AutoMobility LA will host the inaugural RACER Creator Awards, presented by Dunlop, marking a pivotal moment where traditional automotive excellence meets the digital-first generation reshaping how we experience cars and motorsports.

Where Red Carpets Meet Racing Culture

The Los Angeles Auto Show and RACER Media & Marketing are partnering to spotlight the filmmakers, photographers, podcasters, and digital storytellers who’ve become the new ambassadors of automotive culture. This isn’t your grandfather’s auto show—it’s a recognition that the future of the industry lives as much on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram as it does on dealer lots and racetracks.

“AutoMobility LA continues to evolve as a stage for innovation,” said Terri Toennies, president of LA Auto Show. “Hosting the RACER Creator Awards highlights the intersection of creativity, technology, and mobility, uniting the traditional industry with the next generation of automotive storytellers.”

What’s Being Celebrated

The awards recognize excellence across multiple categories:

• Content Creation – Honoring those who craft compelling automotive narratives
• Platform Excellence – Celebrating creators who’ve mastered their chosen medium
• Community Leadership – Recognizing those building engaged, passionate audiences
• Special Recognition – Highlighting unique contributions to automotive culture

Winners will be determined through a combination of expert jury evaluation and fan voting—a fitting approach for an awards program that bridges industry expertise with grassroots enthusiasm.

The Sponsors Driving the Vision

Dunlop steps in as presenting sponsor, reinforcing its deep motorsports roots while embracing the creative culture surrounding performance driving. Meanwhile, KYB brings something special to the arrival experience: the KYB Red Carpet Car Show, open to the public and promising to turn the event’s entrance into a celebration of automotive artistry.

How to Get Involved

Submissions are open now at awards.racer.com, with finalists set to take the stage at AutoMobility LA on November 20. Whether you’re a creator with a growing channel, a photographer capturing track-side moments, or a podcaster breaking down the latest automotive tech, this is your moment.

Why This Matters

Since 1907, the Los Angeles Auto Show has been a bellwether for the industry’s direction. By launching the RACER Creator Awards, the show acknowledges a fundamental truth: the people shaping automotive culture today aren’t just engineers and designers—they’re storytellers with cameras, microphones, and editing software.

The event takes place during AutoMobility LA’s press and industry day, which features vehicle debuts, brand announcements, and thought leadership programming. The public show runs November 21-30 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, including Thanksgiving Day.

For an industry built on motion, this feels like the right next move—celebrating the voices accelerating automotive culture into its next era.

Stay Updated:
Follow the LA Auto Show on Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or visit laautoshow.com and automobilityla.com for the latest news and updates.

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Submit Your Work:
Visit awards.racer.com to enter the RACER Creator Awards.

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David Arditi, University of Texas at Arlington

When members of a reality TV show’s cast sign a contract to participate in a show, they typically do so more for the exposure than the pay – and in many cases they do not earn a dime.

Employers get away with what may appear to be a violation of basic labor laws because those contestants are classified as independent contractors, not employees. In the eyes of the law, they do not have the same protections most workers get with just about any other kind of job, such as the freedom to join unions.

It also means that the National Labor Relations Board does not have jurisdiction over them. This may soon change after the government agency filed a complaint against Delirium TV and Kinetic Content, the producers of “Love Is Blind.”

The NLRB complaint states that reality TV contestants are employees and therefore have the right to join a union. Former “Love Is Blind” contestants Renee Poche and Nicholas Thompson had filed a petition requesting this action. In addition to not being able to join a union, they couldn’t even discuss the terms of their contracts due to nondisclosure agreements.

As a sociologist who studies popular culture and labor, I have argued for years that reality TV stars and musicians should be classified as employees.

Reality TV participants, including many of the stars of those shows, are essentially the unpaid interns of the entertainment industry, even though it’s their stories, personalities and talent that attract and hook viewers.

Offering contestants paltry pay

Today’s economy is saturated with precarious employment practices where many corporations classify workers as independent contractors. From musicians to influencers, people work gig jobs where there is no guarantee of pay or employment.

“Cupcake Wars,” “Love Is Blind” and other reality TV shows thrive thanks to a simple business model: They are cheap to produce. One reason for that is most participants are independent contractors who work for free or earn paltry pay under the guise of chasing their dreams or gaining exposure.

This arrangement might change after the new NLRB complaint. The NLRB was created during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal as an independent government agency tasked with protecting and regulating workers’ rights.

One of its key responsibilities is regulating unions and determining workers’ right to strike. It determines who can join a union and whether a strike is legal.

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Providing a gold mine for networks

To conduct research for my book “Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society,” I interviewed contestants on “The Voice.”

Former contestants repeatedly told me that the television exposure did little to help their careers.

Prior to joining the show, many of the musicians were trying to scratch out a living through touring or performing. They put their developing careers on pause to chase their dreams.

However, the show’s contracts have stipulated that contestants cannot perform, sell their name, image and likeness, or record new music while on “The Voice.”

Furthermore, viewers might not realize just how profitable these reality shows are.

Take “House Hunters.” The show follows a prospective homebuyer as they tour three homes. Homebuyers featured on the show have noted that they earn only US$500 for their work, and the episodes take three to five days and about 30 hours to film.

The show’s producers don’t pay the real estate agents to be on it.

The low pay for people on reality TV shows matches the low budget for these shows. A former participant wrote that episodes of “House Hunters” cost about $50,000 to shoot. Prime-time sitcoms, by comparison, have a budget of up to $3 million per episode.

Organizing unions within reality TV

That massive budget gap between reality TV and sitcoms is not simply due to an absence of star actors.

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Many scripted television shows are based in Los Angeles, where camera crews, stunt doubles, costume artisans, makeup artists and hair stylists are unionized. But shows like “House Hunters,” which are filmed across the country, recruit crews from right-to-work states.

Employees in those places cannot be compelled to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment. For these reasons, unions have far less power in these states than they do in places traditionally associated with show business, such as California and New York.

I think reality TV might become the next show business labor battle. If the NLRB forces “Love Is Blind” to treat its stars and other on-screen participants as employees, it could cascade.

Reality TV production companies could someday be required to pay all contestants wages and limit the hours they work. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union known as SAG-AFTRA, could begin to recruit those workers as dues-paying members.

But it’s not certain that any of this will happen. There are many hearings, court cases and appeals in store before it becomes enforceable. And since President-elect Donald Trump will take office before the hearing is scheduled to occur, his appointees could change course.

Still, I think the NLRB’s action demonstrates that reality TV contestants are finally becoming recognized as workers who deserve to be treated better by their employers.

Some portions of this article first appeared in an article published on Sept. 21, 2023.

David Arditi, Professor of Sociology, University of Texas at Arlington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Last Updated on August 7, 2024 by Daily News Staff

WASHINGTON /PRNewswire/ — NASA, the Houston Cinema Arts Society, and Space Center Houston will host a Saturday, Jan. 28, screening of films by finalists and winners of the 2022 CineSpace international short film competition. Admission is free, and tickets are available on-line.

With 169 films initially submitted from 38 different countries, the screening of selected films will be at Space Center Houston, the official visitor center for NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Two new special categories were added for 2022: best educational film that inspires the next generation to join the STEM workforce, and film that best depicts unity and inclusion. The competition winners for the 2022 season were announced in November.

CineSpace offers filmmakers, editors, and animators around the world a chance to share their works inspired by, and using, actual NASA imagery.  Over the past eight years, CineSpace has offered worldwide creators a shot to develop and bring forward hundreds of space-based films with a minimum of 10% of the film using NASA imagery.

This year’s finalists were chosen from almost 200 submissions from 45 countries. Winning films are selected by a panel of reviewers, including Academy Award-nominated director Richard Linklater, of “School of Rock,” “Boyhood,” “Apollo 10 ½,” and other films. 

Learn more about CineSpace and view the 2022 CineSpace finalist films, as well as past winners and finalists, at:

https://www.cinespace.org/

Learn more about the Houston Cinema Arts Society at:

Find out more about Space Center Houston at:

http://www.spacecenter.org 

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SOURCE NASA

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and let your entertainment journey begin!