Non-UGC content became a feature

And scattered links across media, politics, tech, entertainment

Dec 27, 2022

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When it comes to content, tech companies (specifically social networks) have ruled over user-generated content and created online stars. In contrast, entertainment companies have dominated the highly produced content and created offline stars across movies and tv shows.

The tech giants started encroaching on Hollywood five to ten years ago by entering the original content game. They built homegrown studios, acquired studios, won industry awards, and competed for cast and crew with their traditional counterparts in studios that produced content distributed by theatres and TV channels.

I think 2022 was when tech’s dominance over traditional entertainment players became extremely obvious to casual observers.

Apple, Amazon, and Google have the following :

Unimaginably large budgets
A stacked organization with lots of senior ranking insiders from Hollywood
A growing library of content
Owned and operated hardware platform that hooks to your TV
An App Store for third-party streaming channels
Strategic position to become the home screen of internet TV
A lack of pressure to make the content business profitable for survival
Technology chops
Licensing rights to some games of at least one of the top sports leagues
Hit original shows
Cross-subsidizing and bundling opportunities
Global presence and distribution

Besides Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, and Netflix, it will be increasingly hard for entertainment companies to compete with the giants in the States and globally. Disney is the strongest player among traditional players in diversified assets (parks, merchandise, hotels, cruises, branded content). In terms of streaming success and financial strength, Netflix continues to be the top player.

A similar situation is playing out in India, where Disney is in a better position than Netflix because of Hotstar and the Star franchise it bought through the Fox acquisition. Prime is a strong player. Reliance owns Jio Cinema, which streamed the World Cup recently and has rights to the forthcoming IPL cricket.

Latest on Scatter Brain

I wrote recently about how we haven’t seen not nearly as many frauds as we should have given the environment of past few years in the startup ecosytem and that should be a cause for optimism about the integrity of the innovation and risk-taking system.

I also published my chat with the Cofounder of mobile streaming startup Turnip out of India and the CBO of Bangalesh based, B2B commerce platform ShopUP.

Scattered links

Media

A terrific entertaining Vulture piece on the nepo babies debate Hollwyood is engulfed in. The modern era of Bollywood might rip off Hollywood scripts, but it was ahead of the curve in having this debate. Indians, of course, had reactions watching it play out in the States.

We know Netflix co-CEOs keep reinforcing the message that they are committed to binge releases for shows and streaming-first or streaming-only releases for most of their movies. Here’s a Bloomberg interview with Scott Stuber, Netflix’s global head of films, talking about theatrical windows, Netflix movies currently in theatres, what success for movies looks like, release cadence, building out the movie exec ranks, dearth of comedy scripts in Hollywood.

Cynical tone aside, this is a good overview of how the streaming landscape has evolved over the past five years. Netflix losing subscribers in the first half of this year for the first time marked a watershed moment for the industry. I think the reality is the opposite of what the writer concludes. There’s an explosion of creativity in streaming TV these days. Arguably more than in movies.

One of the central characters in the Twitter Files discourse is Bari Weiss, who launched a new outlet. Here’s an interview with her by Semafor’s Ben Smith, whom I recently had a quick chat with a week after his media company’s launch.

Here’s an amazing WSJ story giving an inside look into the tension between Disney’s ex-CEO Bob Chapek and the CFO Christine McCarthy, who constantly sabotaged her boss in the months that led to Bob Iger coming back.

A look at the troubles family-controlled, NY-based entertainment company AMC Networks is in. It’s a great illustration of the state of the media industry. It shows how valuable having profitable movie studios and theme parks can be in offsetting the streaming pivot losses as the core linear TV business stagnates.

Netflix’s foray into fitness content.

Four Indian films, including RRR, Chello Show, All That Breathes, and The Elephant Whisperers, have been shortlisted across categories for The Oscars’ nomination stage.

The rise of Latin Music. Not just Bad Bunny!

Entertainment

New seasons of Emily in Paris on Netflix (overrated) and Jack Ryan on Prime (underrated) are back!

I’m a few episodes into watching the Harry and Meghan Netflix documentary. Here’s a good take on the drama in a really great pop culture newsletter. It is a fully controlled narrative and a great addition to The Discourse around the Royal Family. My basic take on the drama is we would all be better off paying less attention to the Monarchy, which is ironic because I’m here talking about it!

I’m a sucker for American spy and crime dramas. They typically have DC politicians, FBI agents, or CIA spies as protagonists. Netflix’s The Recruit is a gripping, novel, binge-worthy show that has an entry-level, new lawyer in the office of General Counsel of the CIA as the protagonist.

Hindi watchers: I recently watched the movies Goodbye and Doctor G on Netflix. I like Hindi movies that take on complex social and cultural topics. I also liked the shows, Hush Hush, Breathe Into The Shadows, and Guilty Minds on Prime.

David Letterman’s latest conversation with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Netflix is self-recommending.

The last HBO show I finished was White Lotus, of course.

This is a really well-written, nostalgic walk down memory lane of internet comedy, shitposting, and irony across eras, generations, and platforms. Here’s a take from the same reporter at Vox on the appeal of the “day in the life” videos going viral on TikTok and Twitter.

Here’s an essay lamenting the death of comedy movies. Here’s another making the case that the modern world has failed satire, using Veep and Silicon Valley, the shows, as examples.

Tech

Here’s the latest dispatch on what’s going on at Twitter from Washington Post. It’s an overview of the week leading up to Christmas. I have recently written about the doxxing episode as well as the now-reversed social apps link-banning policy episode.

The history of criticism of ride-share companies boils down to critics' desire to pay drivers more, charge consumers less, and become profitable. The problem is a company can only have two of those things, given the inherent trade-offs. If you want to focus on getting profitable, you have to charge consumers more while also paying drivers less, in theory. Given that demand is price-sensitive, what ends up happening is there’s an incentive to pay drivers less and increase the take rate. Here’s a blog post where the author argues that ride-share companies are not significant improvements over the taxi dispatch companies and that Lyft will go bankrupt despite taking a much higher than 30% take rate (that Uber does) if it doesn’t significantly cut costs. The other common critique of the model is that it exploits the drivers. I don’t buy that narrative because these companies had millions of drivers working for them in a really hot labor market over the past few years. The drivers have personal agency and a preference for flexibility, which comes with trade-offs.

Musings on a few big questions that most builders of AI products will have to grapple with. Here’s an essay arguing ChatGPT is banal and that passing the Turing test is boring.

Here are reflections by someone who fed a bot the transcripts of a podcast on whether such a chatbot can become a new content format and how the power dynamics will shift amongst operating systems, browsers, IP holders, and model builders. Here’s a video from Cleo Abram, one of my favorite Youtubers, on AI art, how it works, how it can be used, and the controversy around it.

Alright, here’s a roundup of prediction posts from VCs…..just kidding. Asking ChatGPT is more entertaining and gives almost the same answers.

Here’s an insightful case for why web browsers are the antidote to walled gardens, the future of gaming, and are a meaningful step up for gamers and developers.

This is a comprehensive deep dive into the past and present of the web browser market and corresponding technological developments and user behaviors. It is also a glowing review of a new browser startup trying to define the future of browsers.

Here’s an NYT piece on how Google is responding to ChatGPT internally.

Here’s a memo along with a Q&A for founders to navigate the current climate from well-respected NY-based IA Ventures cofounder Roger Ehrenberg.

I have long said how stupid, short-sighted, and ineffective the current FTC regime under Lina Khan has been. She has practically accomplished nothing in her promise to rein in big tech with her anti-trust philosophy of focusing less on consumer welfare and more on the bigness of companies. Here’s a critique of her mindless pursuit of Meta’s proposed acquisition of a VR app. Here’s the stance of Activision that FTC is trying to block from getting acquired by Microsoft.

A thought-provoking essay by Adobe’s CPO and Behance’s cofounder on the implications of recent developments in generative AI on careers, culture, creative confidence, creative output, and the learning curve in using creative tools.

Politics

Here’s an incredible NYT Mag deep dive into the history of TikTok, its rise to dominance, how its parent company Bytedance is run, its cultural and political impact, attempts to integrate American and Chinese working styles and values, internationalization of homegrown products, navigating the changing domestic political dynamics, TikTok’s lobbying apparatus in DC, Trump’s and Biden’s attitude towards China and TikTok, and the geopolitical crisis TikTok has created.

While American policymakers drag their feet for not banning Chinese apps simply on the principle of economic and business reciprocity, here’s a WSJ story on another app, Temu, building traction in the States after its recent launch. It was built by Pinduoduo, one of China's most prominent public tech companies. It has been installed 10.8 million times in the US in less than four months.

Here’s an incredible WSJ story on how the inner circle at the highest levels of the Kremlin has shrunk to only ideologically aligned insiders who are only sharing information and views that Putin wants to hear and misrepresenting the reality on the ground in the battlefield and how Ukraine’s people feel about Russia

Political persuasion is all about listening to non-tribal arguments from messengers from your own tribe. I really liked this Bari Weiss interview with Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley’s Congressman, on the Twitter Files, Hunter Biden story, Big Tech, Democratic party, and more.

Miscellaneous

This is a wonderful reflective essay on how our lives are about balancing between flops and wins.

Here’s an NYT story on the experience of engaging in sports gambling via apps, along with an overview of the recent developments in the gambling landscape.

Here’s a Tyler Cowen piece on a new study that found that some of the happiest states in the world are in the States. I got less interested in the finding and more in Cowen’s exploration of the various methodologies of happiness surveys.

Here’s a bold proposal from NYC Mayor Adams Moves to reimagine Fifth Avenue from Bryant Park to Central Park. We love to see it!

Here’s a fantastic piece with pictures of offline tech markets and districts across Bangalore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Jakarta, and Lagos.

Scatter Brain