Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Weekly looks at the biggest news in entertainment.
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
This week, The Starters (an NBA talk show and wildly popular podcast) was cancelled by…well we don’t know who. The Washington Post identified a few potential suspects. It could have been Turner or NBA TV–for the usual ratings reasons–or it could have been their corporate overlord, AT&T, mandating cuts across
This week felt important for the news. Sure, we didn’t have any official announcements of new streaming services or any giant mergers, but between censorship, antitrust and trade wars, the world of politics is smashing (back) into the garden of media/tech. And the biggest government intervention was far away from
I really wanted to figure out a way to make FX turning 25 my biggest story of the week. Fox launched a cable channel that helped define the prestige TV era as much as any other twenty-five years ago tomorrow. (Decider had a good roll up of the top 25
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
Distracted by a new birth in my (extended) family, and a big article that will launch next week, I didn’t get to write a lot for this website this week. But I’ll be back in a big way next week. In the meantime, I had lots of stories to choose
Let’s get this update out on a Friday like it is intended. Most Important Story of the Week – Mergers and Acquisitions in 2018 Update (Finally!) For some reason, PwC never released their 2018 update for Media and Telecommunications merger & acquisitions update. Or if they did, I never saw
Since I took off two Fridays ago, I had a lot of content to sift through for this week’s update. If you have to know, I took off to see Avengers: Endgame (loved it), then, my wife and I threw a baby shower (she threw it; I cleaned), and then
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
The best lingering question from the Disney presentation has nothing to do with Disney: How long until we get these type of details from Comcast-NBCU, AT&T-Warners or Apple? The wild enthusiasm that accompanied Disney’s parade of content is what Apple was going for two weeks ago. But Disney actually did