(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.)
Well…the pace of news has definitely picked back up. Everyone took a week off for the election, then it took a week for everyone to process it, and then a whole bunch of people and companies got back to making news: settling court cases, spinning off companies, signing deals, and whatnot.
As for me, I never wrote up a proper “Here’s how the election will impact entertainment…” article, because we don’t really know yet. We know who won, but now we need to see what President Trump will do. Beyond one big decision—which I’ll hit quickly down below—it’s up in the air. I’ve already penciled in January for my (tentative) predictions for the next four years.
Now, you may have noticed “I” landed in your inbox a lot last week. Specifically, emails from “The Entertainment Strategy Guy” hit your email multiple days, partially because The Ankler is re-running my ‘Average American” series. I try to limit how many times I send out newsletters—at most three times per week—because I know it can frustrate some customers to get more than that. This week that obviously didn’t happen. But I still need to send out newsletters for my subscribers, so I hit my four newsletters per week limit. In other words, if you’re tempted to unsubscribe due to the deluge, things will get back to normal next week.
Instead of talking politics, let’s talk Comcast making the biggest “death of linear TV” move yet in the streaming wars. That, plus a few big content deals, Trump’s big FCC appointment, Netflix’ most successful sports broadcast, a content arms dealer making a deal, and more!
There’s a lot to get to, so let’s dive right in…
Most Important Story of the Week – Comcast Spins Out Its Cable Channels
The rumors from a few weeks back that Comcast would spin out its cable channels into their own business (which followed recommendations for Warners Bros. Discovery to do the same this summer) turned out to be true. Score one for the rumor mill!
I see two angles to this deal. First, and more importantly, this is a bit of (probably smart) financial engineering. Second, we can ask if this move makes sense strategically, which I have to admit it does, even if it’s an admission that the initial Peacock strategy mostly didn’t work.
Let’s discuss both.
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