Explaining the Business of Entertainment
A few months ago I briefly tried to explain the distinction between “customers” and “views” to help explain why Twitch is often over-hyped. Since I’ve spent a lot of the last two weeks banging my head against the Twitter wall insisting that we stop letting Netflix use misleading data, it
Here are some fun stats. What do they tell us? – Netflix over the summer had 80 million customer accounts watch one of their Netflix Original Romantic Comedies. – Netflix had 20 million streams for The Christmas Chronicles over the last weekend. – Amazon Prime/Video/Studios had 14.7 million total customers
(This is Part III for a multi-part series on “Logarithmic Distribution of Returns”. Read Part I HERE and Part II HERE.) I come across the flaw of averages in reporting quite a bit. Take my article on MoviePass. The CEO said in an interview with The Indicator that the “average
Think about your team right now. Either the people reporting to you or your peers. The people sitting around you in your cubicle or open office desk farm. The ones who should be working, but are probably reading the internet, like you are right now. How many of them could
Do sports provide good examples or case studies for the oft discussed topic of “leadership”? If we want to excel at leadership, should we study coaches? On the surface, it would seem so. We cite coaches in particular for leadership all the time in the press. Having gone to UCLA,
My dad didn’t like the ending of Empire Strikes Back. His felt that it didn’t finish the story, it left off with a, “See you next movie!” conclusion. That irritated him. He hasn’t seen Avengers: Infinity War yet, so you know he won’t like that. My article yesterday probably did
You want to know a secret? The underlying secret to all media and entertainment? The peak behind the curtain that explains all you see in film, TV, music and more? Here it is. “Logarithmically distributed returns.” Once you learn it you can’t forget it. Like how to do a magic
When I wrote “Theme 2: It’s Not Value Capture, It’s Value Creation” last week, I made things seem really simple. Probably too simple.That said, I hold to my core point: most businesses could benefit by pulling out that chart and answering three simple questions, “What price do we charge customers?”
To put it simply—why not just answer the question in the title early for once?—customers love (some) subscriptions because the consumer surplus is tremendous! Yesterday’s post really captured why customer hate some companies, so let’s explain the few times when customers love subscriptions. Let’s be clear: in the digital age,
Here’s a list of companies. Think about how you feel about them: Netflix. Spotify. Dollar Shave Club. Here’s another list of companies. Think about how you feel about them: Comcast. Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable). Verizon. AT&T. Sprint. My guess is you love the first set of companies; you hate