Explaining the Business of Entertainment
Weekly looks at the biggest news in entertainment.
Last Monday, as I was assembling the flotsam and jetsam of news stories that compiled the week of news that was, I noticed a trio of stories about unions in Hollywood. SAG-AFTRA elected a new president, the Writer’s Guild East had a fight over its future, and then a little
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
The last time I wrote about price increases was last November, when Netflix decided to up their monthly prices by $1. At the time, I thought this was big news because it really signified a change in focus for Netflix. The news that Hulu will raise prices by a similar
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
I hope everyone had a relaxing Labor Day weekend. (Or Monday, if you aren’t in America.) Now that the summer is behind us—with lots of writers/execs taking off for August—maybe some really juicy news stories will drop. In the meantime, I had my eyes on Apple, which made some small,
Sometimes you can immediately recognize certain strategic moves as game changing. The big, obviously huge moves, like AT&T buying Time-Warner. Like NBC announcing Peacock. Like Bob Iger stepping down. You don’t need me to tell you those news stories matter. But if a company is a “collection of decisions”—strategy is
When you go long writing about OnlyFans, some stuff winds up on the cutting room floor. But let’s not leave it there! Let’s pick it up, dust it off, and give you a bonus 1,200 words of my thoughts on the entertainment strategy of last week. (Sign up for my
Folks, this week I’m writing outside of my comfort zone. Because sex is on the agenda. And frankly talking about sex is tough. Folks have moral objections to it from the right, moral objections to it from the left, and moral objections from nearly every other perspective too. (Pretty much only
Last year, the big question after Covid-19 shuttered theaters, stopped productions and generally upended the movie industry was, “What comes next?” Specifically, how long would the around-90-days-of-theatrical exclusivity last? With some recent news stories, I think we have an answer. (Sign up for my newsletter to get all my columns,
– Private equity group Blackstone bought Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine for $500 million in cash at a $900 million valuation. – The best analogy to this deal is Maker Studios, another big payday for a “next generation media company” that failed to deliver on its high payday, leaving