Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Entertainment topics simple and complex explored in-depth.
– Disney and Netflix are in the “top tier” of US streaming subscribers, with 69.1 million and 66.8 million respectively. Disney just passed Netflix for top streaming subscriber in the US. – HBO, Prime Video, and Showtime/Paramount+ make up the next tier of streamers. The latest issue of the
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
Ever have a sense of deja vu? That’s one of my takes following the “massive month of M&A”. Because weren’t we just here? If I can take you back three years, to the summer of 2018. In the age before Covid, in June, a single judge in D.C. approved the
For the second week, we have another “first”! This time, the first Hulu Original to earn a spot on the Nielsen top ten “originals” list. At some point, we’ll run out of firsts, but for now setting new records is fun! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report compiles data from Nielsen’s
One of the traditions of Oscar coverage—in addition to crazy awards campaigns and a season which lasts 9 months—is the habitual article pointing out how little box office the top films earn. Have I been guilty of writing this feature? Absolutely. Do Popular Oscar Films Make for Larger Oscar Telecast
Let’s start by what question I’m NOT answering today: Should Disney keep releasing films to “premiere access”? Ultimately, yeah, I want to answer that question. It’s really important. (For those who don’t know, Premier Access is the movies released at the same time as theaters that cost $30. I’ll call
Week to week, other stories may be the “most important”, but that doesn’t mean that Covid-19 isn’t still the biggest story. As I wrote in a very long article on February 19th, we’re moving away from “lockdowns” as the story to “the reopening of society”. However, that article was limited
A character in The Sun Also Rises described going into bankruptcy as happening “gradually and then all at once.” This apt description has been applied to everything from debt insolvency to failed democracies. The US recovery from Covid-19 will likely feel the same way. Right now, most of the coverage
This year marks a pretty significant upgrade in the amount of data we have available about streamers. At the start of the year, we had to rely on Netflix to tell us during the quarterly earnings (or selectively on Twitter) how well their content is doing. Since then we’ve added
(This is the last article in a three part series estimating how many US paid streaming subscribers there are in the US. Read the numbers here, and the first half of the explanation here.) If you’re wondering, yes, I deliberately wrote three (almost) contradictory headlines for the last two days. In