Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Weekly looks at the biggest news in entertainment.
Some weeks, you barely have any news to cover. Then, other weeks the deluge comes. Buzzy stories. Executive movement stories. Sneaky scoops. And then Barstool drama. To help settle the issue, I polled the audience. Everyone wants to talk about Joe Rogan at Spotify. But that’s a $100 million dollar
This week’s column started out as an extended essay on the future of TV and Film production in the age of coronavirus. It went long, so expect it early next week. (Next week’s article already written? Check!) Before we get to the news, a quick set of housekeeping. On Twitter,
Welcome back to my weekly column! Each week I try to suss out the most important story in entertainment. Since I have several weeks worth of news stories to cull through, this week I’ll have to take care of some house cleaning to start. First,I’ll cover my thoughts on the
The common wisdom of the Coronavirus may have calmed down slightly. The hyperbolic take that “Everything has changed”–see Politico here. Or Deal Book this week. Or countless others–has given way to the narrative that, “Recessions/pandemics accelerate trends that were already occurring.” At first, I bought into this little bit of
You can tell we’ve hit peak coronavirus coverage when you see the headline “Did Disney predict the virus?” Because the film Tangled features a “quarantined” character in a town called “Corona”. Yep. In more serious coverage, the predictions that coronavirus is “no big deal” have shifted to “we’ll be in
The most important thing in this time of crisis is to focus on staying healthy and being good citizens. So don’t hoard food, avoid public gatherings, and try to donate blood. Still, the economic consequences will quickly become as real as the pandemic ones. This is really what we pay
In times of crisis, it’s important to thread the line between adequately explaining a crisis and avoiding exacerbating the worry about that crisis. Enter the “coronavirus” (or Covid-19), the global pandemic–even if it hasn’t been called that yet–that is impacting economies from China to America, and whose full impact won’t
Sometimes, you really don’t need to overthink your weekly column. Thank you, Disney, and really Bob Iger, for making this easy. Most Important Story of the Week – Bob Iger Steps Down Bob Iger stepped down from his role as CEO of Disney on Tuesday, but will remain as the
As I stared at the list of stories I wanted to put in my weekly column last week, I couldn’t help but notice that they all connected back to some previous article I’ve written before. So here’s an “All Update” column, starting with a distribution story that hits on the
When CBS finally merged with Viacom after a “will they/won’t they” that rivaled Ross and Rachel (and previously Sam and Diane, I’m told…). The big question was, “What is their strategy?” Will they be a content Arms Dealer, as Rich Greenfield suggested? Will they lean into the declining bundle, as