The legacy media businesses are just plain bad businesses: they apparently never make a profit and require constant subsidizing from local and State authorities; they require constant legislative support for their legacy (and obsolete) business models, and yet the public get very, very little from this investment. There’s no share of copyright, there’s no real payback in money spent locally. Â It’s time to let these business stand, or fail, on standard business grounds.
With Netflix’s stated goal of becoming:
…HBO faster than HBO can become us.
Is that going to lead to a Golden Age of Television?
TV is replacing movies as elite entertainment, because players like Netflix, HBO, and AMC are in an arms race for lush, high-quality shows
Derek Thompson, writing for The Atlantic in Netflix, ‘House of Cards,’ and the Golden Age of Television seems to think so. A rare positive thought for our production future.
Northwestern Law professor Peter DiCola, has a new study entitled Money from Music: Survey Evidence on Musicians’ Revenue and Lessons About Copyright Incentives. What’s interesting is the divided opinion among musicians on whether or not unauthorized distribution, a.k.a. piracy, helps or hurts their income.
Adam Singolda writes a report on a CES panel he moderated covering with the topic “Who thinks ‘Gangnam Style’ is good content?” His motivation was to:
My goal was to open the discussion, asking if it’s possible to bring scale to niche content — and if so, what’s needed: Great content? Great distribution? Both? And how is it done?
Broadcast Engineering magazine thinks that the global market for 4K and beyond – ultra HD – will remain small into the foreseeable future.
Netflix’s new show House of Cards represents a $100 million investment: is it even possible that they can make that pay? The Atlantic has a terrific article The Economics of Netflix’s $100 Million New Show which considers the economics behind the program and reveals another interesting tidbit.
Ars Technica has a great article on Netflix’s House of Cards. The themes mentioned in the article parallel my own thinking, but I couldn’t help notice that there was no “network notes” nor FCC rules, leaving David Fincher to take the story where it goes.
According to Techcrunch Canceled Soaps “All My Children†And “One Life To Live†Coming Back From The Dead On Hulu, iTunes with a new business model.
Over the weekend Dylan Reeve published a blog post IN DEFENSE OF GOOD ENOUGH. We are so attuned to always wanting/having/striving for “the best” that we can get bogged down and miss appropriateness. He completely nails it at the end:
Don’t think of “good enough” as settling for something inferior or imperfect, think of it as striking a perfect balance.
Traditionally a broadcast network would be a world of transmitters or cable infrastructure, but revenues and views might make YouTube a broadcast network. At least that’s Broadcast Engineering’s question although there it’s framed as a competitor.