Recapping 2025's Big Franchise and IP Developments
The Most Important Story of the Week for 16-May-2025
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.)
I won’t lie to you, reader. I’ve been waiting to write about “the content battlefields” of the streaming wars for a while now.
Too long, in fact!
Consider…
Amazon bought creative control of James Bond! (And TV shows based on Pacific Rim and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon!)
Netflix will send Narnia to theaters! (And bought a Dungeons & Dragons show!)
Hasbro and Legendary announced a partnership on Magic: The Gathering.
Sesame Street left Max and still doesn’t have a TV home!
Disney+ is pulling back on big animated projects.
Scanning those headlines for the last four months or so, well, the genre side of the streaming wars seems as competitive as ever. So that’s my story of the week, which is really an excuse to cover two big stories I haven’t covered yet in 2025. All that, plus a bunch more football coming to broadcast and streaming, a fun podcast on how to price eggs, Netflix’s UX change, and more.
But let’s start with the two biggest stories of the last few weeks, which I covered elsewhere…
Regulation/M&A/Lots of News with No News - Trump 2.0 Continues
Let’s call this “Trump Tariffs and Trade War” corner, shall we?
Well, not quite. As I wrote in the last Streaming Ratings Report, the goal, as always, is to focus on what actually gets passed into law (or regulation, if it’s via executive order) and not what gets announced but never happens. So, despite a lot of discussion over potential film tariffs, nothing happened yet, did it?
Much more consequential was the news on the “antitrust/concentration/mergers & acquisitions” space, especially the news that Apple must open up their app store to off-platform payments. But I covered that in The Ankler here and here, and don’t want to repeat myself. (To sum: this could really help streamers’ bottom lines)
I’ll add, I also have my eye on the FCC, which seems dramatically more interventionist than under the Biden Administration. I’m not sure I know what new regulations the FCC actually changed during the Biden Administration besides un-rescinding Net Neutrality rules, which have since been reinstated.
Not so nowadays. We’ve gotten stories that FCC Chief Brendan Carr has threatened one satellite owner’s satellite/5G licenses (ostensibly for their failure to build a 5G network, but also possibly to give them to SpaceX X/Starlink instead), and he’s also aggressively threatened investigations into broadcast licenses. More consequentially, Carr threatened national broadcast networks and wants to let station owners buy more local stations. The latter move is somewhat odd, given that broadcast is a shrinking market, but this is probably a giveaway to private equity, so they can roll up the declining market and extract the last available profits.
I also don’t know what to say about the state of public media, specifically NPR and PBS. Again, as of this writing, I don’t think the Trump administration has actually done anything—meaning pass a bill or regulation—but I’d expect public media’s funding to get cut going forward. (The latest news was that the Trump administration planned to submit a requestto cut funding.) That doesn’t mean those stations/networks would die, but a lot of rural channels and stations would suffer, since that’s where the bulk of federal funds go.
Most Important Story of the Week - Who’s Winning the Genre Content Wars?
This year, there’s been lots of movement in the “genre IP content” space. If I had to summarize it, I’d call most of the moves “risky”. Why? Namely:
If the IP is super valuable, either someone already owns it...
…or they want to rent/sell it to you for big bucks.
If the IP is available for cheap, it isn’t that valuable.
That doesn’t mean the IP is worthless by any means! It means that you pay for what you get.
And that partly explains the content1 moves I’ve seen. The folks with the most money to spend—Netflix and Amazon—have bought the most, while the folks operating in a more cash-constrained model—the traditional studios turned streamers—have relied on their classic IP, with smaller buys.
Let’s start with the “NuStreamers”, or the Big Tech players, who have dropped the biggest bucks on genre IP. I’m not going to cover every IP story, mind you, just the ones that caught my eye.