Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy Newsletter! My favorite reads, listens, socials and more to keep you informed on the business of entertainment, with the links to my recent writing on my website and elsewhere.
Well, I hope everyone had as enjoyable of a holiday break as they could, given the global pandemic. Since I took a bit of a hiatus, I’m going to give you two newsletters over the next week. This newsletter will have links to my writing in December, and early next week I’ll link to my writings in January so far. And then we’ll be back to every two weeks.
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The Best of the Entertainment Strategy Guy
“How Christmas Movies Explain Hollywood History” at Decider
This could be my favorite article I penned in 2020. As Marshall MacLuhan famously opined, “the medium is the message”. You could shift that slightly to, “The message is the business model”. I retell Hollywood history through its Christmas films. How did DVDs drive a boom in Christmas films? How did TV drive a boom in animation? And what will streaming lead to? Read to find out those answers and more.
“Visual of the Week: You Won’t Believe How Many DVDs Frozen II Sold Last Year – Physical Disc Sales in the US in 2019/2020” at my website.
I stumbled on home entertainment sales at The-Numbers a few months back, and I’ve been trying to figure out the best story to tell. It turned out, the story in the data that surprised me was how well Christmas films do in selling DVDs and Blu-Rays. Read this one to learn about the decay of physical disc sales in the US (though they’re higher than you’d guess!), what types of films still sell discs, and what this tells us about forecasting performance.
“Most Important Story of the Week: CAA Settles with the WGA…Who Won?” at my website.
In a week of big news—the same week that HBO Max and Roku settled their lock out—I turned to the latest twist in the WGA’s battle against the agencies. I called out some winners and losers between the WGA and CAA, and decided to keep going and call out the winners and losers of the HBO Max and Roku settlement too. Read about those two stories plus Mind Geek dropping lots of its (pornographic) content, SEC/ESPN deal and more.
“Most Important Story of the Week: How the Antitrust Case Against Facebook Could Upend the Streaming Wars” at my website.
In another zig while others zag selection, the most under-hyped story of December was the antitrust case against Facebook (coming on the heels of a similar suit against Google). These two behemoths are fairly clearly oligopolists in digital marketing and the events of the last two months portend much tougher antitrust enforcement across the U.S. What could this mean for entertainment? I speculate on that plus try to talk folks down from overhyping Disney’s Investor Day in this issue.
Twitter Threads
The last weekend of the year is becoming increasingly important in the streaming wars, and discussed that in this good thread.
The Best Content of the Last Two Weeks
(These are the best reads, listens, newsletters, or social conversations I came across last week.)
Long Read of the Week - “Why No One Is Watching VENN” by The Next Level
This article demonstrates some of the downsides of throwing money after a gold rush, which is what I think is happening with esports. (Lots of folks want in, so prices are way higher than actual value right now.) Read this piece for a good review of the landscape by showing what VENN has down wrong. Plus, TNL abhors peak/unique viewer counts as much as I do!
Other Long Read - “Warner Bros. Under Siege: ‘No One Is Angry at the Streamers — It’s These Guys’” By Kim Masters at THR
The big story in December was Warner Bros. decision to unilaterally move its entire film catalogue to day-and-date release with HBO Max. This story was so big, last issue I featured four great reads on it. This story came out after those and is also worth a read. Masters is one of the best. The key to this story, in my mind, is that Warner Bros was previously known as the best in the biz at managing talent. In business strategy terms, that means they’ve damaged their competitive advantage.
That’s bad! Read Masters for the details.
Other Quick Read - “Let’s do the numbers on Hallmark’s Christmas movie empire” by Jana Kasperkevic in Marketplace
This article unpacks the economics of the Hallmark/Lifetime Christmas movie boom as well as I’ve seen it done. And pairs nicely with my take above.
Two Non-Entertainment Reads on Amazon - “Being an Amazon Seller in 2020; Year in Review” by Molson Hart and “Inside the Whale: An Interview with an Anonymous Amazonian” at Logic Magazine
Amazon is a huge company and huge force shaping our society. So getting looks inside of it are key to understanding it. In many cases these looks are even better than reading their press releases or even industry analysts, who can both be biased. In particular, the Logic Mag article on AWS has one of the best quotes on Prime Video you will find. (Hat tip to Richard Rushfield for that one.)
Twitter Threads
I wanted to celebrate a few year end Twitter threads from two outlets I’ve contributed to in 2020. First, Kasey Moore celebrated his big year running Whats-On-Netflix:
And Mark Graham celebrated a big year at Decider:
Finally, JohnWallStreet—a great follow for the biz of sports—added me to his list of top 50 Twitter follows and I’m honored.
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(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.)