ViacomCBS Needs to Go All-In on All Access – and Maybe Let Pluto Drift Away
XuXu is blowing up. The streaming service now has over 24 million monthly users. And these users are accounting for 100 billion hours of video stats each month, as well... Read More
Amazon Ramps Up Originals Ad Spend Ahead Of New Competitors’ Arrivals
Amazon substantially increased advertising spending on its new original shows the first half of 2019, as it tried to pull in consumers before the arrival of several new competitors, a new report found.... Read More
Podcast: Amid Facebook’s Fake Privacy Pivot, Social Media Approaches An Inflection Point
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the blog post that launched a thousand hot takes, promising to pivot Facebook to privacy. As with many things Zuckerberg says publicly, that promise has little... Read More
WarnerMedia’s Zucker Returns To Sports Roots, And Another Chance To Remix An Industry
Well, that didn’t take long. Seemingly hours after a U.S. appeals court killed the Justice Department’s misbegotten (and, possibly, politically motivated) attempt to block the $85 billion AT&T-Time Warner merger,... Read More
Podcast: Netflix Wins Even When It Loses, Oscar Edition
Netflix had a very good Oscar season. Its most celebrated awards contender, Roma, from Alfonso Cuaron, picked up three major Oscars – for best foreign language film, directing and cinematography” – and a... Read More
Podcast: Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi On VR, Esports and the Future of Movie Theaters
With the possible exception of music, perhaps no corner of the entertainment business has faced more intractable challenges from tech-driven changes in our culture, lifestyle and consumption habits than the... Read More
The Joys of Directing, Hollywood’s Gender Issues and Poking Surveillance Culture – Soloway And Magid At Neuehouse
This episode of the Bloom in Tech podcast includes a fascinating discussion between two very different film directors, speaking together at NeueHouse Hollywood last week as part of the huge... Read More
Amateur Sports Highlights The Latest Competition For Audiences And Ads
As big media companies vie for pricey rights to pro sports broadcasts and streams, a smaller but equally hard-fought contest is breaking out for viewers of low-cost online videos about... Read More
How Micro Influencers, In-Person Events And Ephemeral Video Are Transforming Content Marketing
At this year’s Digital Entertainment World conference, I moderated a panel of top entertainment and e-commerce executives talking about the trends and technologies reshaping content marketing. It’s a fast-evolving field,... Read More
Viacom Building Formidable Ad-Supported Alternative For Hollywood’s Digital Future
With its $340 million acquisition of ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV, Viacom has added another important piece to its transformation as a player in the digital world. Importantly, the company... Read More
Netflix Turns Up Heat In Online Video’s Shark Pool As Three More Services Jump In
As if the pool of big fish in on-demand video wasn’t already stuffed full, this past week saw three more sharks dive in, just to make it interesting, along with... Read More
NBCU Building A ‘Bluprint’ For Its Post-Cable TV Future: Q&A With Dave Howe
Among a string of experiments and ventures at NBCUniversal, few are as intriguing as Bluprint, the revamped hobbyist education and e-commerce site formerly known as Craftsy that the media giant... Read More
Netflix’s Merry Holiday Season Sets It Up To Survive Challenging 2019 Competition
There, he said it: “Netflix, Netflix, Netflix.” If that punchline to a joke by host Andy Samberg wasn’t quite the theme of Sunday night’s broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards,... Read More
Q&A With WHOSAY CEO Steve Ellis On Integrating Influencer Marketing For Success
Steve Ellis is founder and CEO of WHOSAY, which after nearly a decade is one of the oldest and largest influencer-marketing agencies in the business. And as of about a... Read More
Immersive Entertainment’s December To Remember Reflects 2018’s Return To Optimism
If 2016 was a year of excess hype for virtual reality, and 2017 was mired in that rugged trough of disillusion, 2018 marked a return to optimism, growing consumer acceptance... Read More
Ninja Scores A Big Week as Video Games Spill Across Pop Culture
Last week was a very good California trip for the world’s best-known video game player, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. On Sunday, he played his signature game, Fortnite, alongside three prominent musicians in Studio... Read More
Amazon Prime’s BYO Bundles Scoring Big For Small Channels
One of pay TV’s biggest developments the past couple of years has been the rise of the skinny bundle of digitally delivered online video channels. But those digital bundles have... Read More
STIRR Fills Sinclair’s Pot With Hybrid Linear, On-Demand Approach
STIRR, the big swing at an online service by Sinclair Broadcast Group, came into much clearer focus this week, with CEO and President Christopher Ripley detailing its hybrid business model... Read More
Connecting The Next Generation Of TV Viewers To Publishers and Advertisers Wherever They Are
Nearly three-fourths of American households already have a television connected to the Internet. What’s less well connected? Some way to identify and tie those users to the video sources they... Read More
Giving Tuesday And NewsMatch Are The Real Spirit Of The Season
Black Friday and its consumption-minded spinoffs Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday make it easy to forget that the holidays are supposed to be about giving, especially to those less... Read More
Streaming Services Must Bear Down To Win, Or At Least Stay In, This Race
There’s an old saw about two guys confronted by a bear. One starts running, and the other yells, “Where are you going? You can’t outrun a bear.” His erstwhile pal... Read More
Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley on ATSC 3.0, M&A And Online Video’s ‘Sea of Blood’
Christopher Ripley, CEO and president of the country’s biggest chain of TV stations, Sinclair Broadcast Group, took to the stage at the recent NAB NY conference to discuss the transformative... Read More