Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Entertainment topics simple and complex explored in-depth.
On a recent The Weeds podcast, Matt Yglesias talked with Binyamin Applebaum about “how economists took over the world”, based on Applebaum’s recent book. Midway through, Applebaum told a fascinating story about how business leaders often get their forecasts about government regulations/interventions wrong. During the Great Depression, as part of
Today, I published a guest article for Athletic Director U looking at the value of sports media rights deals across professional, amateur and college athletics have grown over time. Take a read! Moreover, for the first time, I’m sharing my work. I had so many links that I couldn’t fit
(Before we start, I launched a newsletter! It’s weekly and it’s short, and I explained my logic here. Sign up here.) My goal is to try, as best I can, to explain the complicated parts of the entertainment biz, trying to walk readers through what I’m doing and how I’m doing
(Before we start, I launched a newsletter! It’s weekly and it’s short, and I explain my logic here. In today’s social media age, it can be hard to keep up with independent writers like myself so my newsletter will link to all my writings at every outlet and the best stories I
As soon as you start learning about the business of entertainment, you learn this aphorism. “Content is King”. I yell this from the rooftops too. I learned it so early that I can’t even credit one specific class or book or article with it. Searching my articles, I found that
One of the goals of my website is to try to hold myself to a process. A process means I let the data guide my opinions, not fit new data or anecdotes into preconceived narratives. A good example of this comes from last weekend’s D23 Expo. This picture circulated widely
If the streaming wars were a medieval war, original content are the mounted knights. Especially the pricey TV series. Like knights of the medieval ages, these extremely expensive weapons will likely win the war for one side or the other. This would make the siege engines the tech stack and
Let’s get right into Part II of my a quest to find SuperCBS’ competitive advantage. (Reminder: SuperCBS is my nickname for ViacomCBS.) Competitive Advantage: Become a Content Arm’s Dealer Why? I’ll be honest, I didn’t come up with this on my own. I first read it on Twitter by Rich
Most of the time, when Hollywood kills off one of its TV shows, we know why. The ratings had been sinking or the talent asked for too much money. (Or recently, it was produced by a rival TV network/conglomerate.) And yet, HBO killed off Game of Thrones, a TV series
This sub-bullet in CNBC’s “prepare you for the earnings report” article caught my attention: On the surface, it’s clearly true. One bad earnings report won’t power Disney+ or HBO Max to 150 million subscribers. But as I reflected on it, the key variable is “when is soon?” By the end