Explaining the Business of Entertainment
[Hey, you may be thinking, this isn’t a Streaming Ratings Report! True. I spent almost all of this week (and some of last week) updating my “U.S. Subscriber Estimates for Q1 of 2021.” Given that I just published a sneak peek at the Ankler yesterday, I wanted to put up
Any big news stories this week? Let me check: Oh dear, that will inspire lots of noise and coverage. (Want my thoughts? I don’t value executive shifts as much as some, which I’ve explained before and in this Twitter thread today.) How can I tie this to the streaming ratings? Some
What a difference a year makes. In 2020, when trying to write who “won the year”, I had to parse multiple data sources, plus Covid-19’s lockdowns made everything tougher to judge what truly did well and what folks happened to stream for a few weeks in March. In 2021, with
Yesterday, Netflix released their earnings report for 2021. Often, a Netflix earnings report isn’t good or bad, just more of the same. (I’ve written that article a few times.) Yesterday was different; it was a blood bath. Already down to $500 per share from its peak of $650 in November,
Entertainment is a hit-driven business, and that seems to be the question for the week: how many hits are the streamers launching? In film, it seems like a bunch. It TV? Not so much. We’re still catching up on all the ratings and data for the start of December. I’ll
It’s the end of the year, and I’m feeling charitable. When you write on ratings and strategy, you toss out a lot barbs, snark and sarcastic comments. Today, I want to make amends and issue some (half-hearted and heavily-caveated) apologies. Before that, I just had an article published on Whats-On-Netflix
As I got ready to write this week’s column, my brother asked me what the story of the week was. And I had to reply that…I didn’t know? I’d kept up on all my newsletters and checking the trade websites last week, but no story stuck out as truly important.
Jerry Seinfeld had a terrific joke about the news: somehow there was always enough for the daily newspaper. Never more, never less. Well, the internet blew that up by magnitudes. It turns out we–as a society/community–can crank out tons of words on anything. But is it all “news”? Maybe? Probably
Let me level with you: if Netflix took over the entire rankings list for another week—like they did the last two weeks—I probably would have quit. That level of dominance ceases to be impressive and just starts to be boring. (Fine, I wouldn’t have actually quit. But I would have
Hollywood can have a short memory. All it takes is one good weekend, and suddenly Hollywood is back! Since we went long on Wednesday writing about Apple, app stores and distribution fees, here’s all the other stories that caught my eye in the realm of entertainment business strategy. (Apologies for