Category: Media
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Netflix, Independent Cinema, and Hollywood’s New Business Model
The other day The Ringer published a piece about Netflix and their original movie strategy. The piece, entitled Netflix and Shrill listed the original movies that Netflix has already released in 2018 and challenged readers to see how many they recognised. For most people, the most familiar title will have been The Cloverfield Paradox. This…
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The Business Models of MoviePass and cPass
Over the weekend, a new company raised its heads above the parapets. cPass is a new subscription cinema going scheme that allows members to see one film a day at the cinema for a monthly fee of £9.95. Cinema membership schemes aren’t unheard of, but they tend to be more expensive. Cineworld has its Unlimited…
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Netflix: $8 Billion and 700 NEW Shows?
How much programming is Netflix actually making? The answer is a lot, but I think that the widely reported numbers are a little misleading. Heavily retweeted earlier today was this: Wow. Fact of the day: Netflix plans to spend $8bn on content this year. That’s roughly 700 (!) new series and 80 films. Shows how…
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The Tabloid Guardian
It has now been over a week since The Guardian, and sister paper The Observer, both rebranded. Perhaps more saliently, they also reshaped themselves, moving from the unique “Berliner” format to a tabloid. Now in some respects I feel unusual these days in still buying a physical printed paper. “It’s all online.” “You can get…
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Digitising My Life in 2018
Life is digital. We’ve known that for a long time. Digital offers lots of convenience, but it brings with it complications. In particular, safe storage. In 2018 I need to try to fix three or four problems/issues I have coming up. 1. Cloud Storage As longtime readers might know, I have a couple of Synology…
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2018 Media Predictions
It’s that time of year when, because not a lot else is going on, and pages need to be filled, everyone is busily predicting what might happen in 2018. So here are my bold and not so bold predictions in the coming year across the media industry. A streamer will win some Premier League rights.…
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11 Reasons I Hate Listicles – Stuck in Draft #5
Here’s a short piece I wrote years ago. Published here as part of my Stuck in Draft series. First things first – I’m not even sure that “listicles” is a real word. However I expect it pop up in the OED in due course because so much “journalism” is today being built around lists. So…
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Faster, Faster, Faster!
There was a Buzzfeed piece recently, exploring those people who listen to podcasts at super-fast speed. I don’t just mean 1.2x or something, but some of them listen at 3x speed or even faster. Elsewhere, a Guardian writer thanked Netflix for allowing him to skip all the intros to TV series and the ability to…
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Diversity in Media – Measuring Social Class
On Sunday I wrote a piece on Ofcom’s Diversity in Television report, and in particular, noted my disappointment that it didn’t measure social class. The feedback I got can basically be summed up with the question: “Yes, but how do you measure class?” So I thought it was worth exploring the issue a bit further.…
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Diversity in UK Media – Ofcom’s Report Doesn’t Go Far Enough
Last week Ofcom published the first in what it says will be a regular series of reports into diversity and equal opportunities in television. It focuses on the biggest UK television broadcasters: BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Sky and Viacom (owner of Channel 5 amongst others). Diversity remains a key concern in the media industry, from…
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Dwindling Choices
A couple of weeks ago, Ofcom released its annual Communications Market Report. It’s always stuffed full of information about the UK media marketplace that can be fascinating to dissect. In 2016, ownership of DVD players (including Blu Ray and games consoles with DVD functionality) was 67% of UK households. This year, it’s just 63% of…
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Netflix and Disney
Last week came news that Disney would be pulling its movies from Netflix at the end of the current arrangement, and that Disney would in future launch its own streaming service. This licensing agreement generated a vast amount of coverage, much of it ill-informed, and ignoring wider issues in the market. There are a few…
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What Does “Digital” Mean?
The OED defines “digital” in five key ways, but the key definition that interests us here is as follows: Digital technology; digital media, as digital television, digital audio, etc. Basically, nearly everything these days is digital. Even if it ends up in analogue form like AM or FM radio, it almost certainly originates digitally. Text…