Business Features
Streaming Profits Are Tough to Find. Niche Movie and TV Platforms See a Way Forward
By now everyone in Hollywood seems to accept that streaming is a cutthroat business. It may not be zero sum (most studies suggest that consumers will pay for about four streaming services at a time), but it is mighty close to it. And with Netflix holding a secure lock on one of those subscriptions for […]
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Shari Redstone Goes for Broke: Can Paramount Pick Up the Pieces?
Six months ago, a deal to sell Paramount Global (or at least control of the company via Shari Redstone’s National Amusements) seemed all but certain. Deep conversations were happening with a consortium led by David Ellison’s Skydance and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird; a partnership between Sony Pictures and Apollo emerged as a possible spoiler; even Warner […]
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Behind Netflix’s Real-Life Legal Dramas
In the first episode of When They See Us, Ava DuVernay’s bleak drama about the Central Park Five, Linda Fairstein, then head of the sex crimes unit investigating the case, gives an order to dispatch an army of officers to Harlem. “Every young Black male who was in the park last night is a suspect […]
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Streamflation Alert: Why Subscription Prices Are Suddenly Spiking (Again)
If 2023 was the year of “streamflation,” to use a term coined by the consulting firm KPMG, 2024 is shaping up to be a fast sequel — Streamflation Part 2: They’ll Keep Paying. Streaming services across video and music are raising prices again, or are poised to do so, marking the second such price hikes […]
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The Summer Box Office Crisis: Is the Sky Really Falling This Time?
Within minutes of the actors strike ending on Nov. 9, Ryan Reynolds was making plans to get back to London and the set of Deadpool & Wolverine, one of the many movies shut down in mid-July when the walkout commenced. He and director Shawn Levy were determined to make their July 26 release date, which they were […]
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Why FAST Services Are No Longer the Bargain Bin of Streaming
At the Fox upfront on May 13, the network’s free ad-supported streaming service, Tubi, got just as much stage time as its traditional broadcast channels. Those so-called FAST platforms are becoming a bigger part of the entertainment conversation, and rising in popularity among users, as many paid streaming services are now bundling with one another in […]
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TV Viewers Are Aging. These Shows Bring In the Oldest Audiences
For decades, TV shows lived and died by their ratings among adults 18-49, the demographic sweet spot for advertisers to reach a wide swath of potential customers with money to spend but without the lifelong habits about how to spend it. That’s not really the case anymore as an emphasis on engagement and reach in […]
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Memo to Hollywood: AI Is a Threat — And an Opportunity
Lately, it seems as if there are new headlines every day about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence — everything from the technology ruthlessly taking our jobs to it perilously increasing our carbon footprint to fuel the necessary computing power. The headlines are concerning, and some even predict doomsday-like scenarios in the near future. Just […]
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Why Reality TV Is On Life Support
Veteran unscripted producer Wendy Miller was attending a gathering for women over 40 in unscripted television who are unemployed when she had the idea. Though the get-together could easily have turned maudlin, one woman brought levity to the proceedings by telling a story about working on a past show that cracked up the whole room. […]
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America’s Most Trusted News Anchors Are …
“The gatekeepers are gone,” Colin Jost told a roomful of journalists at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 27, before pivoting to the punchline: “Did you know that 90 percent of people now get their news exclusively from social media? And that must be true because I saw it in a random guy’s TikTok.” For those […]
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Netflix Spikes the Football: Behind Its NFL Megadeal
In the last week of March, NFL officials and team owners huddled at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando for the league’s annual winter meetings. The gathering is an important date on the NFL calendar, with changes often made to the rulebook and its media deals always a hot topic. This year, commissioner Roger Goodell revealed that […]
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Peak TV Is Over, Welcome to Peak IP
Peak TV may be over, but even in a time of industrywide contraction, another era is forging ahead unabated: Welcome to Peak Franchise TV. Spinoffs of successful series are almost as old as network TV itself — the first ones premiered in the late 1950s. The current state of the business, however, with its nearly […]
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