Big Tech Continues Their Forays into Sports
We’ve got a lot of interesting/important news stories to get to, but before we get…

Explaining the Business of Entertainment
We’ve got a lot of interesting/important news stories to get to, but before we get…
Planning this week’s streaming ratings report I had a weird thought: Is this really the…
This week had two of the weirder entrants in the “streaming” category. (As a reminder,…
Two weeks ago, I had an almost written “most important” story of the week column…
Having written this report for over a year now, I’ve started to get a feel…
Before we dive into he streaming ratings this week, check out my two articles from last week. – “U.S. Streaming Subscriber Estimates For Q4 Of 2021”. This is my semi-regular take on the number of paid, U.S. subscribers for the major streamers. Here’s the key visual: If you want the gory, “how did I make these” details, click here to read the whole thing. – At the Ankler, I wrote
Well, last week we had pretty big news: the Warner Bros (formerly Warner Media) and Discovery merger officially closed. I had covered this topic in-depth when the deal cleared the final regulatory hurdles in February, if you want my thoughts. But what about the political machinations of last week, like the departure of some key Warner Bros execs? (Jason Kilar and Ann Sarnoff in particular…) That MUST be the story
Since most of my readers are fairly devoted followers of the streaming wars, I bet most of you think this week’s biggest story is the titanic showdown between Turning Red and The Adam Project. And you’d be wrong! The bigger story “content”-wise in my mind—and I love to zig when others zag—is Prime Video airing, er, streaming the 57th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards on Monday 7-March! This is
I know it’s April Fool’s Day today, but as much as I love this holiday, this newsletter is still serious-ish journalism, so I’m not going to make up anything. In my experience, bad statistics just get taken as fact more often than real, often boring truth. (You may have seen that quote “that a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on”, that’s often
Normally, I’d tell you that awards shows don’t matter. The Emmys? The Grammys? The Golden Globe? (May they rest in peace…?) When it comes to business strategy, they don’t really matter Frankly, it’s fun to find out who wins or loses awards, but rarely impacts actual business strategy. But if you’re writing a business strategy column, you’d be hard pressed to find any other stories to write about! So for
The international content wave is coming! Of the 39 streaming shows or films released during the week of 14-March, 16 were non-English language. For the week of 1-April, 10 of the 21 were non-English language. I wish I had been collecting this data for longer, but c’est le vie. I’m putting my data assistant on it. To be clear, this international wave started building momentum well before Squid Game hit
Hmm. So it has been a minute since our last “Most Important” story column. Fine, it’s been a month. (That’s like tens of thousands minutes.) As I mentioned in my Streaming Ratings Report this week, it’s not like there hasn’t been news stories, but nothing blew my socks off. Nothing ground breaking. With a lot of behind the scenes work going on over at EntStrategyGuy headquarters (more soon!), I took
After what felt like a few slow weeks—or months—without huge news, this week had some pretty big developments. MGM and Amazon is happening! Netflix is testing their strongest response to password sharing yet! Disney got Indian Premiere League rights! With all that news, my “most important story of the week” feature will return next week. But for now, it’s time for some streaming ratings. There was a bit of a
Ignore the calendar for a moment, will you? You’re about to read my annual, “The Most Important Question of 2022”. And it’s March. What took so long? I said ignore the calendar! Better late than never. The idea for a “question of the year” struck me two years ago, going into 2020, before a novel coronavirus had swept the globe. As I debated topics for the year—and before I had
As a reminder, each week I mainly cast my gaze back in time four weeks, since that’s when we get Nielsen’s U.S. data. And this report focuses on the U.S. because: 1. It’s still the biggest single market for streaming. 2. It has the most competition. 3. It’s the leading indicator for how the streaming wars will play out globally because of that competition. 4. It has the most data
This week represents a fun squaring off of streamers. Not the usual battle of the titans–Netflix versus Disney+–but Hulu and Prime Video, featuring two releases couldn’t be more different. Let’s dig in. (Reminder: The streaming ratings report compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, TV Time trend data, Netflix datecdotes and hours viewed data, Netflix Top Ten lists, Google Trends and IMDb to determine the most popular content.
Before we start, let’s admit it: our minds aren’t really on streaming ratings right now, are they? The tragic news in Ukraine will likely draw your focus away from entertainment news. I don’t blame you. I’m there too. Still, I’m going to write this week’s report, because the streaming world isn’t slowing down. Yes, there are more important topics, but sometimes distractions like this are worth it. I also published
Want a little secret? I have a ton of fun writing these weekly ratings reports. More fun than I should. Each week, I have little mysteries to solve and unpack. Eternals had a big number this week, but is it doing better than Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? Did How I Met Your Father do well even if it missed the charts? What do we make of
Yay. Mergers. My favorite topic. Not. Yeah, I just dropped a “not”. (What is this 1998?) Still, despite my dislike of this topic, even I can’t ignore the big news of the last few weeks. The Most Important Story of the Week – Discovery/AT&T Merger Will Go Through The story of the week—really say the first two weeks of February, since this article has moved to roughly bi-weekly—was that the Department
Instead of the usual weekly report, last week we gave you something much better: a run down of the winners and losers of 2021. In case you missed, I published a few pieces last week, including: – The Winners of 2021: TV – The Winners and Losers of 2021: Film – ESG: Whoa! Oscar Movies’ Sudden Plot Twist (at The Ankler, behind their paywall) It made sense, timing-wise, since the streamers
Looking back on 2021, it probably ended up “weirder” than 2020. In 2020, theaters shuttered due to the pandemic, so nothing happened after March, outside of Disney and Warner Bros. trying to release Tenet and Mulan. Last year, in contrast, Warner Bros tried to release all their films day-and-date on streaming. Disney had some films go straight-to-streaming, while others went to theaters, and others had a day-and-date PVOD (premium video-on-demand)
What a difference a year makes. In 2020, when trying to write who “won the year”, I had to parse multiple data sources, plus Covid-19’s lockdowns made everything tougher to judge what truly did well and what folks happened to stream for a few weeks in March. In 2021, with Nielsen releasing thirty data points per week, Netflix’s global viewership data (going back half a year), along with TV Time
We continue with the “sweeps week” theme in this edition of the streaming ratings. As I mentioned last time, streaming was up the last week of the year. Wayyyy up. As such, so are all the ratings. Today we continue our streaming ratings report for the week starting 27-Dec-2022, this time with TV. (Reminder: The streaming ratings report compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Netflix datecdotes, Top
The last week of the calendar year—the week after Christmas Day to be precise—is the “new sweeps” for TV. Why? Because lots of folks get new devices, be they iPads, iPhones, smart TVs or connectable updates for old TVs and turn them on. When they do, they download new apps, like Netflix, Disney+ or HBO Max. Then customers start watching. Toss in the fact that many/most folks are off work
It’s been a minute since I’ve written a pure strategy column. Between adding new databases for my streaming ratings report, writing columns for the Ankler, and preparing some other stuff, I’ve been busy. And my weekly call out of the most important story in entertainment fell by the wayside. Frankly, I don’t think we missed much last month. The dirty secret of December is that no one in Hollywood does
@SriduttN I think you're two cents are right on here. My gut is their raise is similar to NFL, or maybe NHL. But not that much higher. Read More
@MasaSonCap Not at all, and even with the extra inventory, they aren't the NFL. But good to take control of the narrative! Read More
Yes, this headline is about the NBA. And Live Sports. Does it have implications for the streaming wars? You bet. Essentially, right as Live Sports are propping up linear bundles, the new OTT sports services need to buy sports rights. So it's boom town. Read More
RT @Denisgreen10: The NBA Final’s Ratings Were Down. Does It Even Matter? by @EntStrategyGuy #NBA #Finals Read More
RT @TimCushing: My employer, @techdirt, brings you great takes on Section 239, the First Amendment, and all sorts of govt malfeasance. And… Read More