The Entertainment Strategy Guide to 27-Sep-2019
Netflix Subscribers, Food Network Kitchen Skepticism, Pricing Wars and Long Term Contracts
Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy Newsletter! The best source for all my writings of the last week, along with the best reads, listens, socials and more to keep you informed on the business of entertainment.
I spend last week on two relatively data intensive articles, one for my site and one which just went up. Meanwhile, there wasn’t one entertainment news story that took over the airways, but a few different stories competing for our attention.
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The Best of the Entertainment Strategy Guy
“Why I Think Netflix Will End Up with 70 Million US Subscribers: Applying Bass Diffusion To The Streaming Wars” at my website.
Consider this another entry into the “What is the Future of Netflix?” cottage industry. My specific process was about fitting the Bass Diffusion Model to a company that really stands in for all of entertainment. In general, my model aligns with some others you’ll find, including this one published recent at The Hollywood Reporter.
“Most Important Story of the Week: Discovery Enters The Niche Streaming Business” at my website.
I think broad streamers (like Netflix, Amazon, Disney and HBO Max) will struggle in the coming streaming wars, and “niche” streamers may have it even tougher. I lay out that case plus some other strategic concerns for “Food Network Kitchen” along with thoughts on Spider-Man/Kevin Feige, WME cancelling their IPO, Apple going theatrical and more. Plus, this back-of-the-envelope table:
Twitter Threads
Here are my two most popular Twitter thoughts of the week. One on Disney; one on WeWork. One makes a serious point about user experience; one is a flippant observation about the proliferation of money-losing streaming services.
The Best of The Rest
(These are the best reads, listens, newsletters, or social conversations I came across last week.)
Long Read of the Week - “After 'Friends,' 'Seinfeld' and 'Big Bang,' How Sky-High Can Massive TV Deals Fly?” by Lesley Goldberg in THR
Goldberg breaks tons of stories, but I loved this article because this question gets at exactly how fierce the streaming wars will get. If you have articles about price wars on the horizon (see Variety here) and now articles about how content costs are exploding…well streaming video’s margins will be caught in the middle. (And right now those margin’s don’t actually exist.)
Other Long Read - “Why I Think Apple TV+ Will Fail” from TV Answerman
Phillip Swann, a long time TV journalist, makes the case that Apple TV+ will be light on content and will struggle despite its deep pockets. Of particular interest to me is his case that when it comes to the TV experience Apple really hasn’t innovated that much.
Listen of the Week - “The Inherent Failures of Long-Term Contracts—and How to Fix Them” by HBR
The entertainment and media industries are filled with long-term contracts. And a lot of them are, frankly, awful. They aren’t good partnerships. This podcast is about how to do them better.
Newsletter of the Week - Axios Edge by Felix Salmon
This newsletter had a couple of good pieces—including how to price traffic congestion in New York, but really I loved how he tied together “trust” issues in the economy. Fav quote was this:
Twitter Thread of the Week
My favorite thread of the week belonged to Josef Adalian (@TVMoJoe) and this nuanced take on broadcast ratings.
As always, if you enjoyed the newsletter, feel free to forward to anyone—ANYONE!!!—who you think would enjoy the links and my writing on entertainment.
(If this email was forwarded to you, and you’re wondering who I am, The Entertainment Strategy Guy writes under this pseudonym at his eponymous website. A former exec at a streaming company, he prefers writing to sending emails/attending meetings, so he launched his own website. You can follow him on Twitter or Linked-In for regular thoughts and analysis on the business, strategy and economics of the media and entertainment industry.)