Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Last week felt like the “winter finales” of the fall TV business season as we resolved two long simmering dramas in the land of TV. CAA settled with the WGA, bringing one of the last two major agencies into alignment with the WGA’s demands for agents. And HBO and Roku
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 initial draft of this weekly column went very long in the “data of the week” section. So long it’s going to be its own article next week. (It isn’t that time sensitive.) Meanwhile, the biggest story is one of omission… Most Important Story of the Week – The Incredible
Between a host of streaming TV news–Peacocks, Portals and Seinfelds oh my–and old fashioned business news–AT&T!!!–this week felt like we had a lot of options for the biggest story of the week. But let’s avoid the big conglomerates to talk about the behind-the-scenes heroes, the writers. (Programming note: between a
It’s tough to stand out in the crowd of reporting this week on the Viacom-CBS merger. I was primed to pass strategic judgement on the merger, but don’t feel quite ready to do that (yet). Instead, let’s try the good ol fashioned Entertainment Strategy Guy slightly different take. The Most
Here’s a fun factoid about the news: JJ Abrams hasn’t actually closed his deal with Warner Media for $500 million. By the news coverage I read, I assumed he had. And by coverage, of course, I mean Twitter and Linked-In headlines. It’s only when you read Lesley Goldberg’s actual story
Here’s the most important narrative question of the entertainment industry: Are we overusing war metaphors in our articles on streaming? Just off the top of my head: Will Netflix kill the studios? Is Disney Plus the death of Netflix? Is the bundle is dying? The #StreamingWars. War, death, murder. Clearly
Ever feel like not taking your own advice? I regularly admonish my readers to avoid overhyping single data points. I repeat this piece of guidance when things flop—Solo, The Lego Movie 2, NFL Ratings last season—or when they go skyhigh—most Disney movies, Netflix datecdotes. And now a single data point—the
I’ve been distracted from one part of the entertainment world (the filmed part) because of my deep dive into another (the sports part). But we had BIG news this week. Big enougth to deserve my use of the caps lock key. That’s right, the writers (specifically, the WGA, the Writer’s
My goal when I started this week’s column was to avoid having another monster long column. We’ll see how I do this week, but I’m not optimistic. There was enough news for two weeks last week, and next week heralds much, much more. Before our most important story, let’s look