Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Last week, I used Nielsen’s top ten list to track their total viewership in April 2020 to April of this year. The question I raised, but couldn’t answer, was whether the decline in total top ten viewership applied to the rest of Netflix’s catalogue. Enter Nielsen’s The Gauge! (Which I
A few years back, working at a major streamer, I tried to make the case that at some point Nielsen (and others) would tell the world how many folks were watching our shows. As a company, we were focused on preventing that; the currency of viewership would be a highly
Spielberg. The Supreme Court and NCAA. Conan ending his TV show. This week in entertainment didn’t want for big names. But were any of them truly the “most important” story of the week? No. For that, let’s pull back and look at a slightly longer view. (Sign up for my
One of the craziest parts of the streaming wars is actually how forward-thinking the traditional media companies were. Way back in 2007, they teamed up and created a joint venture that became Hulu, a streamer featuring TV episodes the day after they aired on broadcast. (But only, inexplicably, five episodes
We’ve hit an exciting point in the “streaming ratings era”: We can now compare 2020 to 2021. Meaning we have better “context” than ever before. In 2020, we had to speculate if year-over-year viewership was up or down. Now, we know. Visual of the Week – Streaming Was Down 40%
Someone sent me the headline about the flurry of House antitrust bills last Friday and said, “Story of the week?” That’s close. It was a big, important move, but it finished just shy from being “actual” news since it hasn’t passed the Senate yet. (And most bills go to die
Not since the film 2010: The Year We Make Contact—a 1982 sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey for those not versed in obscure 1980s science fiction—has something Jupiter-related caused this much consternation. On the one hand, Netflix is touting Jupiter’s Legacy as a success that will birth an entire universe
I’ll admit that, for as much as I hate mergers, I have a case of the M&A musings. Certain stories are so big, that one article or even two “most important stories” of the week won’t do them justice. The mash ups of Discovery, Warner Bros, AT&T, Amazon and MGM—not
Sometimes, a statistic is just crazy enough to make it the story of the week. This month that’s this: At various times in June of 2021, AMC Theaters was more highly valued than half of the S&P 500. That’s crazy enough to be… Most Important Story of the Week –
I want to assure you, good readers, that this report is not becoming “bi-weekly”. And “bi-weekly” in the sense that it comes out every other week. (If folks keep subscribing—and want it—I could see a world where we publish twice a week. Man “bi-weekly” is a confusing term.) If you