Thoughts on the Wildfires, Local News, TikTok, Oscar Nominations, and a Whole Lot More
The Most Important Story of January-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.)
In the past few weeks, I’ve read some pretty dour, pessimistic (mostly online) takes on the future of Los Angeles after the wildfires, which extended to grim takes on the future of the entertainment industry in this town.
This doesn’t match my experience in the offline world.
Just walking two blocks down the street, I passed two (two!) local businesses that have turned into donation centers. When LAUSD closed, some friends set up a mini-school at their house so parents (especially salaried employees who can’t miss work) could drop their kids off for the day. Many more people I know have volunteered their time and resources to help other Los Angelenos.
It feels like we’re all pulling together.
It’s been a moment since I’ve written a true “most important story of the week column”—don’t look it up!—so we’ve got a lot of topics stored up. The big story of January was the whipsaw in the fate of Venu and live sports rights in general. I’ll cover that next issue. It’s hard, though, to not want to look at the wildfires that hit Los Angeles as the story of January. So that’s what I’m covering today, along with…
An update on the Oscars noms and if the Academy took my advice…
Initial thoughts on the Trump administration…
Thoughts on the TikTok ban and the main point that people aren’t making…
But we’ll start with the wildfires, what we don’t know (especially about deregulations), and local news.