Good morning!
The Medium identifies a few key trends each fiscal quarter that reveal the most important tensions and seismic shifts in the rapidly and dramatically changing media marketplace. The key trends help you answer a simple question: "What's next for media, and where's it all going? How are the pieces lining up for business models to evolve, succeed, or fail?"
Read the three key trends The Medium will be focused on in Q3 2023.
Author's Note: There is no essay today in observance of Yom Kippur.
Wishing everyone who observes an easy fast and L’Shana Tovah to all readers of The Medium.
* The Hollywood Reporter interviewed director Richard Linklater, and his answers reflect the challenges for storytellers I highlighted in my essay “The Linklater Problem”.
Must-Read Monday AM Articles
The demand for “premium content” is being redefined by creators, tech companies and 10 million emerging advertisers.
* Analysts and industry sources point to two key pieces of the [Disney-Charter] deal that will likely be felt across the industry: Including ad-supported streaming in the bundle, and a “re-sizing” of the linear business.
* Disney starts drafting broadcast TV’s grand finale
* Peacock is adding a “catch up with key plays” feature to NFL games next month after trying it out earlier on English Premier League soccer and finding that it encouraged users to consume more content, Jelley said. “Users who consume and use this service watch about seven or so clips on average,” he said.
* The future of the Creator Economy continues to be promising, but the approach has significantly evolved and the bar has been raised. Startups will need to provide new functionality, create new forms of monetization, and adopt new technologies that make them more defensible to competition and in-house efforts by creators to replace them.
* Night says its current roster of 60+ creators bring in over 5 billion views per month.
* Tubefilter and The Publish Press had good articles on Sidemen’s latest charity match bringing in £2.4 million and 2.5 million concurrent viewers
* Data on how a Creator's content at the U.S .Open at performed vs. traditional media
* Brands got $2.40 back in brick-and-mortar sales for every $1 they spent on creator content in 2021 and 2022, according to a new study from creator talent management company Whalar.
* TikTok wants brands to change the way they measure campaign results. In a blog post uploaded just days after TikTok Shop’s U.S. launch, the platform argued that click-based attribution methods—which track clicks from sponsored posts to landing pages—don’t actually capture the full extent of its marketing power.
* On September 19, TikTok announced the launch of two new features: AI content labels and first-party attribution metrics.
* At its Made on YouTube event in New York on September 21, YouTube made several announcements including Dream Screen, a new tool that allows creators to generate videos and photos using AI to use in the background of their short-form videos. ($ - paywalled)
AI & cloud computing applications and services are increasingly dictating content consumption
* Like it or not, media and tech are at odds with each other, but their relationship is symbiotic. They both need each other, but generative AI could become the straw that will break the camel’s back.
* The problem with a lot of mainstream internet channels is that they are algorithmic in nature, and algorithms – in how they currently work – optimize for homogeneity by rewarding certain behaviours, content formats, and the interests of the audiences that feed them. And when you add generative AI to these algorithms, it’s adding fuel to an already out-of-control flame.
Legacy media companies are throwing in the towel on their bets to own the consumer relationship in streaming and beyond.
* Streaming research firm Antenna found two of every three Specialty SVOD Subscriptions that Antenna measures come through Amazon Channels, compared to just 9% for Premium SVOD services.
* Sean McNulty with a good breakdown of the economics of Charter’s deal
* The Information reported Disney has received inquiries from other TV distributors about potential deals for Disney+ and ESPN following the announcement of the Charter agreement. Verizon is exploring similar deals with other streaming services. ($ - paywalled)
* Cable companies have started to figure out a way to stay in the TV game: Reselling streaming services.
* Kasey Moore argued on What's On Netflix: "The perfect audience metric in streaming does not exist"
* Fox CFO Steven Tomsic told the 2023 Bank of America Media, Communications and Entertainment conference: “right here, right now, the most efficient, effective way for a consumer to receive sports and news is still in the bundle. The best way that we monetize our content remains in the bundle. That may change over time and we’ll adapt to that, but we still think that a bundled offering to the consumer where sport and news will become the bedrock of that is the best way to get to the consumer.”
* Warner Bros. Discovery announced the Bleacher Report Sports Add-On (or B/R Sports) for HBO Max. It will cost $10 per month on top of the subscription for Max, and it will be available for free during a promotional period that runs through the end of February, covering the MLB playoffs, and much of the NBA and NHL seasons.
Other
* If you read between the lines here, the growth in alternative currencies most recently is not coming from Nielsen competitors, but from Nielsen itself: It now has one official currency -- the MRC accredited one -- and one alt currency, the Big Data one.
* How the past of 1948's Paramount Decrees may be precedent for the market dynamics of post-strikes Hollywood.
* An excerpt from Michael Tedder’s new book, ‘Top Eight: How Myspace Changed Music,’ about how MySpace that changed music—and fandom—forever
* Local TV stations owners formed a new Coalition for Local News to push the FCC to force cord cutting services to be treated like cable TV companies. If the FCC agrees to change the rules, it would force YouTube TV, Hulu, Fubo, and more to strike deals directly with the owners of local TV station owners instead of the big networks.
* Born out of popular ‘80s and ‘90s games like “Contra,” “GoldenEye 007,” “Secret of Mana” and the original “Diablo,” the modern era of couch co-op games has grown in popularity over the last several years, industry experts said, fueled in part by a pandemic-driven need for quarantine-friendly activities and the desire to bond with friends and family.
* Former Amazon Studios Roy Price head argued “Maybe the big streamers’ increased focus on mass appeal will make room for a whole new species of TV — scrappy new voices that target the suddenly underserved demand for daring drama and comedy.”
* A study by Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP+) and Luminate found the major streamers (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Max, Apple TV+, Peacock, Paramount+) overall had a combined average cancellation rate of 12.2% —not much higher than linear TV (10.8%), but less than half of broadcast TV alone over that period.
* A good overview of the business implications of Taylor Swift’s deal for her Eras Tour movie with AMC theaters.