Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Entertainment topics simple and complex explored in-depth.
Often, when I write a long article, I have extra thoughts. MoviePass—and its demise—may be my “story of the decade”, when judging off the “hype-to-cash flow” metric. (Remember when I used it to explain subscriptions? Or logarithmic distribution of returns?) Recently, I wrote about the lessons of MoviePass’s demise at
I’ve been a little light in non-Weekly Update articles this month because I’ve been writing some new pieces for other entertainment outlets. My first has gone up at TV-Rev so check it out and share. It’s on MoviePass, who I’ve been writing/thinking about for a while. As a company, MoviePass’s rise
Often in my weekly column (the “most important story of the week”, click here!), I’ve called out the narratives behind one-off events. Take the Super Bowl. Were ratings down because we’re sick of the Patriots? The death of broadcast? Or because football isn’t popular anymore? Last year, a lot of
If other writers are like me, when you write a lot on something, well a lot of great little tidbits and nuggets just don’t fit in. The thoughts are interesting, but will ultimately disrupt the flow of the article or series of articles. The joy of having my own site
(This is Part XI of a multi-part series answering the question: “How Much Money Did Disney Make on the Lucasfilm deal?” Previous sections are here: Part I: Introduction & “The Time Value of Money Explained” Appendix: Feature Film Finances Explained! Part II: Star Wars Movie Revenue So Far Part III:
Disney-Lucasfilm Deal Part X: You’ve Been Terminated: “Terminal Values Explained” and The Last Piece of the Model (This is Part X of a multi-part series answering the question: “How Much Money Did Disney Make on the Lucasfilm deal?” Previous sections are here: Part I: Introduction & “The Time Value of
(This is Part IX of a multi-part series answering the question: “How Much Money Did Disney Make on the Lucasfilm deal?” Previous sections are here: Part I: Introduction & “The Time Value of Money Explained” Appendix: Feature Film Finances Explained! Part II: Star Wars Movie Revenue So Far Part III:
Records have nearly been smashed! After decades in the doldrums, in this year’s Oscar’s telecast—for achievement in the year 2018—popular movies made a comeback. Here’s Todd VanDerWerff explaining for Vox: For the first time since 2012, the total domestic box office of the eight films nominated for Best Picture topped
Netflix moves the PR needle. Even I jumped into the Twitter maelstrom to generate clicks based on their two announcements last week, especially the decision to increase prices on US customers. The problem, for me, is that Twitter, as a medium, is really bad at digging into numbers. It isn’t
(To read my vision of a super-mega-conglomerated future—where six companies control all media, entertainment, technology and communications, click here.) Maybe I spent too much time on Wednesday’s essay. While I haven’t been working on it non-stop, I’ve been dabbling with it since December. Planning the next 12 years of mergers