Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Listening to a recent podcast, I heard a common refrain: we have no idea what is doing well in streaming! Frankly, this is soooooo 2018. (Just like “soooooo” is so 2000s.) We’re in the “streaming ratings era” now (™ EntStrategyGuy) and have been since March of 2020. Between Nielsen, Google Trends,
Last week, I used Nielsen’s top ten list to track their total viewership in April 2020 to April of this year. The question I raised, but couldn’t answer, was whether the decline in total top ten viewership applied to the rest of Netflix’s catalogue. Enter Nielsen’s The Gauge! (Which I
I want to assure you, good readers, that this report is not becoming “bi-weekly”. And “bi-weekly” in the sense that it comes out every other week. (If folks keep subscribing—and want it—I could see a world where we publish twice a week. Man “bi-weekly” is a confusing term.) If you
May was truly “media merger madness month”. On May 17th, Discovery announced they were merging with Warner Media. (I was on vacation.) On May 26th, Amazon announced they were buying MGM. (Then it was Memorial Day weekend.) Then last week I had a consulting gig I couldn’t say no to.
I leave for one week of vacation and come back to not one, but two big merger announcements. If all the merger news of the last two weeks shows us anything, it’s the value of top tier content. And what’s the easiest way—allegedly—to do that? By mining “IP” to make
This week, Them, from Prime Video made it up to second place on the “Originals” top ten list from Nielsen. Which left me wondering: Is Amazon’s Prime Video having their best stretch ever? Let’s find out. That plus Thunder Force’s “good” debut, The Handmaid’s Tale having an (allegedly) strong debut,
Folks, we’re on the cusp of a big moment for our data analysis. For the first time, I’ll be able to compare the latest week’s Nielsen’s rankings to the previous year’s trends. Combined with the fact that we have more than years worth of Netflix Top Ten data too—I use
For the second week, we have another “first”! This time, the first Hulu Original to earn a spot on the Nielsen top ten “originals” list. At some point, we’ll run out of firsts, but for now setting new records is fun! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report compiles data from Nielsen’s
I may be cheating a pinch this week. I’m not sure this is the most important story, but it’s the one I think needs the most explaining. In a lot of ways, Amazon paying nearly half a billion dollars (to start) to make the most expensive TV series in history
One of the traditions of Oscar coverage—in addition to crazy awards campaigns and a season which lasts 9 months—is the habitual article pointing out how little box office the top films earn. Have I been guilty of writing this feature? Absolutely. Do Popular Oscar Films Make for Larger Oscar Telecast