Hot List: CES, Venu, Meta and the LA Fires
“All the businesses, the dry cleaners, the grocery stores, the gardeners that work in this area, all the construction workers, you know, your convenience store, your gas station… it’s all of us, we’re all Hollywood. We’re fighting as hard as we can to save our city. Gosh, I never thought I’d say that. But that’s what’s going on.” - Dennis Quaid
Coming to you from Los Angeles, where pretty much anyone who works in entertainment knows someone or is someone who lost their home and everything in it.
A place where the winds of change in the industry are burning down the old models that sustained this town for decades, at a time when an actual change in winds can mean decimation for yet another neighborhood.
A town brimming with people from all walks of life is also a place where support centers are proving why this is indeed, a City of Angels.
[For those of you interested, here’s a list of places that can still use your help.]
And while magical algorithms help the internet pump out all manner of political divisiveness and misinformation, it is, ironically, the LA-area broadcast TV networks that have been live on the public spectrums, pumping out commercial-free marathon coverage and serving the public good in a way Musk and Zuck could never conceive.
But as with show business and your business, (and Queen, for that matter); the show must go on. And go on it did…
Alan Wolk predicts the future, as Venu gets mouse trapped by DirecTV/Dish, and analyzes the winners and losers of the [likely] TikTok ban.
Tim Hanlon examines the revolutionary platform RUN3TV.
And our news hound Jon Lafayette dishes all the hot industry news from CES and more:
Stay tuned for more fearless predictions about 2025. And thanks for being here.
