Explaining the Business of Entertainment
The last time I wrote about price increases was last November, when Netflix decided to up their monthly prices by $1. At the time, I thought this was big news because it really signified a change in focus for Netflix. The news that Hulu will raise prices by a similar
I hope everyone had a relaxing Labor Day weekend. (Or Monday, if you aren’t in America.) Now that the summer is behind us—with lots of writers/execs taking off for August—maybe some really juicy news stories will drop. In the meantime, I had my eyes on Apple, which made some small,
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
With all the earnings news last week–including reports from Amazon, Google, Apple, Comcast, Discovery and more–you’d think we’d have gotten really juicy news. But I didn’t see it. Lots of “interesting” stuff, but nothing truly groundbreaking. However, two separate product announcements drew my attention. And I’ll be honest, I think
Last week got away from me. Fine, I got away from it by diving down a data hole. Specifically, a Covid-19 data problem. For all the forecasting being done, few people are answering the query, “Hey, when will all this end?” I’ve seen answers ranging from “Never” to “2022” to
The goal this week? Keep this column under 2,000 words and not split into two parts. Can we do it? Sure. Even better? We can do it with a story most folks missed! The only challenge will be restraining myself on Covid-19 thoughts. Let’s get to it. (Sign up for
Well, give 2021 credit for trying to catch up with 2020 in terms of monumental new stories. This is absolutely one of the craziest weeks in my lifetime and I assume many of the folks who read. (Though, for historical hindsight, we tend to forget how absolutely chaotic the 1960s
Whenever a big tech company sneezes, the entire techno-entertainment industrial complex catches a case of “they’re taking over the world”. Such is my read of the latest announcement that Apple is launching a multimedia bundle called Apple One. For months, CWSMF (Celebrity Wall Street Media Futurists) had speculated and salivated
The first thing to know about the streaming wars is that it is really multiple wars simultaneously. One war is between the streamers. They compete fiercely against each other, with Netflix in the lead. (This is by far the most covered battleground.) If those are the established powers, the upstarts
The biggest story of the last two week’s is “Apple v Fortnite”. Yet, for the second week it hasn’t made this list. Like the AT&T-Warner Bros. merger or the Disney-Fox merger, this is a seismic event we can tell will change things in the moment. However, that “moment” will last