Numlock News: May 12, 2026 • Beast, Blackpink, BTS

May 12, 2026

By Palmer Haasch

Walt is on vacation, today’s edition comes from Palmer Haasch, my former Business Insider colleague who now works in comics at WEBTOON.

Mr. Beast

Beast Industries is hosting a ritzy breakfast in New York City to court brand and ad executives, hosted by none other than the Beast himself (Jimmy Donaldson) and Jeffrey Housenbold, the CEO of Beast Industries. Notably, this is TV upfronts week, where TV companies and streamers pitch advertisers on spending commitments for the upcoming season. Beast Industries’ efforts are indicative of a larger shift. Creators have long been siphoning viewers from Hollywood, and these days, advertisers are working to match that transition: U.S. ad spending on creator-driven programming is expected to hit $44 billion in 2026, up from $37 billion in 2025.

Lucia Moses, Business Insider

BTS Diplomacy

An estimated 50,000 fans filled the Zócalo, Mexico City’s central square, on five hours’ notice to catch a glimpse of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum with the seven members of K-pop group BTS. Sheinbaum invited the group to visit the National Palace while in town for their ongoing “Arirang” world tour, which saw over one million fans vying for tickets to three shows in Mexico and led to the president issuing a plea to the South Korean government for more concert dates. This is not the first time the group has been treated like diplomats (or at least, diplomat-pop stars); in 2021, then-South Korean president Moon Jae-in’s administration appointed BTS as a “Special Presidential Envoy” to attend and speak at the 76th U.N. General Assembly. Meanwhile, back on the pop star side, BTS is digging out some of their deep cuts at each concert, and the early tour stops have been treated to a devastating (for fans with later tickets) number of classic BTS bangers.

Kate Linthicum, The Los Angeles Times

Prelude

Korean entertainment company HYBE and American record label Geffen Records are looking to replicate the magic of their global girl group KATSEYE (boba tea, gnarly, etc.). Today (May 12), the companies are announcing the final member of their next K-pop influenced idol project, referred to as “Prelude: The Final Piece.” Over 14,000 applicants submitted auditions to compete for the last spot in the group, and a select cohort of trainees did so on a reality competition series that aired on the Japanese streaming platform Abema. These kinds of “survival shows” are relatively commonplace in the world of K-pop: groups like KATSEYE and TWICE were formed via reality programs where members competed for a spot in the group. Now, two Japanese trainees are competing to join the “Prelude” lineup, which already features three locked members who were part of the KATSEYE training and selection process.

Lee Jung-joo, The Korea Herald

Blackpink

Two members of the K-pop girl group Blackpink have now notched solo top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Jennie just earned her first top 10 hit with Tame Impala’s “Dracula,” which hit No. 10 on this week’s chart after Jennie added a now-viral verse to the track in February. Group member Rosé earned her top 10 hit with “APT.” featuring Bruno Mars, which hit No. 3 on the chart in February 2025. Blackpink’s Hot 100 peak was No. 13 with the 2020 single “Ice Cream.” However, Jennie and Rosé’s chart placements make Blackpink the fourth all-women band with at least two members that have reached the top 10 — the others are Destiny’s Child, Fifth Harmony and the Go-Go’s.

Gary Trust, Billboard

Nebraska

16 passengers from the cruise ship associated with the high-profile hantavirus outbreak are, at least temporarily, finding safe harbor in Omaha, Nebraska. Of those, one passenger who tested “mildly” positive for hantavirus is being treated at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s biocontainment unit. The others are isolating in UNMC’s National Quarantine Unit, where they’ll each occupy one of the center’s 20 single-occupancy rooms equipped with negative air pressure systems. As a born-and-raised Nebraskan who spent a good chunk of her childhood obsessed with infectious diseases (everyone loved this, trust me), allow me to answer the “why Nebraska?” question: Nebraska’s quarantine unit is the only federally funded site of its kind in the U.S., and the Nebraska Biocontainment is a Level 1 Special Pathogen Treatment Center that treated Ebola patients in 2014 as well as some of the earliest COVID-19 patients in 2020, per Nebraska Medicine.

Sonia A. Rao, Jacey Fortin, and Jin Yu Young, The New York Times

Sports Manga

MLB Players, Inc., OneTeam Partners, manga publisher Viz Media and manga artist Acky Bright are teaming up to launch a sci-fi manga series featuring the likenesses of at least 10 currently active MLB players, including Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr. of the New York Yankees, Juan Soto of the New York Mets and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The manga, “GalaXic Baseball League” debuting on the Viz Manga app on July 2, will take those players into a spacefaring future where baseball is a “high-stakes interplanetary competition.” It’s neither here nor there, but the live-service video game Honkai Star Rail also coincidentally has an ongoing bit where its protagonist refers to themself as a “Galactic Baseballer” (because they whack enemies with a baseball bat).

Bravo Microdrama

Peacock is getting into the microdrama game, announcing that it plans to launch two unscripted Bravo microdramas that will stream in the Peacock app. As Business Insider reported last year, microdrama apps like DramaBox and ReelShort have challenged streamers like Peacock in terms of mobile engagement. They’ve also attracted consumer dollars: per the intelligence firm Appfigures, ReelShort drew approximately $1.2 billion and DramaBox drew $276 million in gross consumer spending in 2025. Peacock’s microdramas feature tie-ins to other Bravo programming like “Southern Charm” and “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” certainly hoping to pull those fandoms into a vertically oriented, 60 to 90 second viewing experience.

Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch

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