Gold Rush

What a great time to be a consumer and a script writer

Hi all, I write a fair amount daily. But, that’s mostly in the form of tweets and private notes. A bunch of people have pushed me to blog more. I don’t think that’s because I am a good writer. I don’t believe I am. I just tend to have a lot to say. That often gets me in trouble!

I used to blog fairly consistently on Medium.

Sar Haribhakti@sarthakgh

Blogging is a powerful tool. Great things come to you over time because of it.

You just don't know when, what and how. Which is why being consistent is challenging.

September 21, 2018

Its 2018. So experimenting with podcast or a newsletter is essential. I am an avid consumer of both. So I might as well try to start my own short form newsletter. I have not settled on the format or frequency. We will see how that goes. I wont be writing about a specific topic. I will write about whatever is on my mind when I sit down to write or an idea that deserves to be more than a tweet.

I wouldn’t say my writing will always be insightful or provocative. I do subscribe to Fred Wilson’s thought process though. Just in a different way.

"I can’t imagine writing in a format that has an end. I can’t imagine writing in a format that doesn’t provide instant feedback. I can’t imagine writing in a format that requires a structure" - Wilson

So, lets get to it. My topic for today is script writers!

I came across this today.

Nick Wingfield@nickwingfield

This is nuts. You've heard of Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, but there are hundreds of other video streaming services (~200 are listed on Amazon's Channels feature alone). Many are struggling as viewers experience subscription fatigue. https://t.co/Wo6PxaNsN6

September 26, 2018

I no longer subscribe to The Information but that tweet coupled with the first two paragraphs that The Information lets me read for free got me thinking.

First, I love free markets. They enable competition and choice. But, as with everything else, there is a downside. We can plant seeds all we want, but only a few will germinate and fewer will grow into trees over time. An optimist would say that’s the cost of innovation. A pessimist would lament wastage of capitalism. I am in the former camp. An unsurprising consequence of trying to figure out why only few worked out coupled with our collective desire to attribute successes to a set of neatly defined factors often leads to an illusion ( with its own set of benefits and challenges) that those that did succeed got everything right or got more things right than the others. My point it is always important to keep things in perspective that for every single thing that works in any market, there most likely were dozens and dozens of attempts that went nowhere. This isn’t limited to streaming services market, obviously.

Second, and more relevant point, is that in all the chatter about the “peak TV” and “content gold rush” memes, we often forget that now is such a great time to be a script writer. Studios are no longer the only brokers of the entertainment business. On top of streaming companies like Netflix, entertainment companies like Disney and dozens of other smaller streaming services, tech giants have their own studio divisions that spend copious amounts of dollars on churning out original shows and movies. While this makes the market extremely competitive for consumer dollars and attention, this feels like such an incredible time to be able to write a script and shop it around. It surprises me that this isn’t discussed. Perhaps, it is. I am yet to see this narrative get traction in my information and conversation bubbles.